Super Star Chef Day Camp

With the growing number of families eating on the run instead of cooking at home many young adults don’t receive needed basic cooking skills. Also approximately 4 out of 5 children do not consume the recommended fruits and vegetables each day.  In an effort to encourage more youth to get into the kitchen and to improve their diets the Adair County Family and Consumer Sciences Agent and the University of Kentucky SNAP-ED Program teamed up to offer a 3-day Super Star Chef day camp.  Seventeen children ranging from ages 9-15 attended this 3-day, 5 hour (each day) camp. Youth were taught basic cooking skills such as food and equipment safety, knife safety, safe food handling, proper cutting techniques, reading a recipe, how to measure properly and basic nutrition. In the process they used basic learning skills such as math, science and reading.  Participants learned to make a variety of recipes such as Calzones, herbed butter, yogurt parfaits and much more.  This was a hands-on program.  A pre-test and post-test were administered to the children during the program. As a direct result of the program several of the children went home that evening and prepared one of the recipes.