Guest Post: by Kensey Goebel, Contributing Author
Frozen Themed Day:
We started our week of cooking camp with a “Frozen” themed day. The day was based off of the movie so everything was snow, or ice related! We made banana snowmen, pasta with “snow” sauce, Olaf noses with homemade ranch dip and finished the day with all natural snow cones.
If you have picky kids try having a themed dinner. Base everything off your kids favorite movie or character and your kids are much more likely to try it because it is fun.
Mexican Fiesta Day:
This day was my favorite! Partially because we made chocolate blueberry cupcakes in honor of my birthday but we also got to try “papusas.” This was a masa corn pouch filled with black beans, ground beef, bell peppers, onions and cheese. We learned how to make the dough from scratch and then we diced all of the veggies and filled our pouch and pan fried it. Yum! You can change this up by adding any type of veggie or chicken or whatever you like.
Pool Party Day: (and we did get wet in some camps!)
Well we didn’t actually have a pool party but we had all the best summer treats instead. We had a delicious watermelon lemonade slush, mini hamburger stackers and fried potato rounds.
The watermelon lemonade slush would be very refreshing for a pool day and it can be adjusted to your liking. We started with watermelon chunks that we scooped out of a whole watermelon and we added halved strawberries, ice, carbonated water, lemon juice and just a little bit of sugar to a blender and blended until smooth. You can allow it to freeze or just drink it cold and slushy.
Cooking Competition:
This is what happens when you give kids who love to cook a recipe and free range of the kitchen. They used their skills that they had learned all week in order to create a veggie stir-fry.
The kids had a lot of fun reading the recipe, cutting of veggies and cooking all of the food. Their competitive sides came out and they both worked very hard to make a good product. We had a contest and “judged” on teamwork, effort and taste of the final product. Both teams did a great job and they learned a lot from each other as well.
A stir-fry is a great way to incorporate many different vegetables into a dinner. The possibilities are endless.
We also painted with vegetable stamps on canvases. We used fresh fruits and vegetables such as pears, okra and blueberries to stamp on canvases to make colorful art work. We got very creative!
Overall, the kids learned a lot and had a great week. They learned how to measure, read and follow a recipe, chop, dice and sauté along with learning nutrition information, fun facts and completed art projects that bring food and nutrition IN FOCUS!
