Squash Your Hunger

What food lasts forever in your pantry and can fill an army of friends on the cheap?  SQUASH!!!  That's right, squash is part of the cucurbita family and boast many health benefits for low cost, long shelf-life produce.

Squash Your Hunger

January is a cold month amidst the dark hours of winter.  To brighten our spirits and palettes, we cooked with gourd-geous organge hues to squash our hunger.  The first recipe involved curry, apples, onions and pumpkin.  We made Autumn Squash Soup, which was a great decision for a frigid afternoon.  The bomb cyclone was headed our way, so we needed to warm up quickly.

Soup Prep

Preparation was a snap with a responsive team.  Ingredients were sauteeing before I had relayed all the steps in the process.  The kitchen filled with savory scents, calling to our bellies.

Bubble and Boil

Once the soup was complete, it needed to be blended to a smooth consistency.  I brought my trusty immersion blender to class just for this step.  Students were fascinated by the speed and precision of the immersion blender.  "We need more recipes using that tool!"

Blended Squash Soup

 I learned some fun facts preparing for this class.Cucumbers are part of the squash family.  Look at the species name- cucurbita.  Cucumbers fit in the name!  An adult student who likes to participate so she learns new life skills took ownership of a Creamy Cucumber Salad.

Whipped up in Minutes

This salad was mighty popular and a great way to cool off tongues after eating a hot soup.  Dill and cucumber are cool ingredients versus a hot curry or spicy onion.

A Cheesy Butternut Squash Pasta plate was tackled by a third team.  This seemed to be the most unusual of our recipes.  The girls made a cheesy sauce with blended squash and tons of cheese.  This sauce was mixed to cooked pasta and voila!  Cheesy goodness that disappeared in moments.

So good, it was Gone!

Now that the savory plates are covered, we can step into Sweetsville.

Muffin Mania

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Swirl Muffins were the first stop in Sweetsville.  This is not an actual town, but the place we all like to be when making meals.  Desserts are often coveted, despite knowing we need savory foods, too.  The library is undergoing construction, so some important tools are trapped from usage.  It turned out that the hand mixer is one of the hostages.  Therefore, team mates took turns flexing their muscles and working the cream cheese to a fluffy consistency.

Mmmm...muffins

This was a winner recipe!  I took this photo before the pan emptied with few crumbs remaining.  Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies were the last recipe to tackle in our plan.  I wanted to test the theory that gluten free (GF) all purpose flour acts equivalently to regular all purpose (AP) flour.

Cookie Experiment

In theory, GF flour should equate to AP flour.  The recipe mixed up just fine, but we noticed a major difference in cooking.  These cookies were only supposed to take 12-15 minutes to bake, but the GF flour seemed to cause a delay.  This recipe took upwards of 20-25 minutes per batch to firm up.

Yummy in my Tummy!

Regardless of the extra bake time, students still called these cookies, "Yummy in my tummy!"  My favorite joke for this recipe was a teen consistently calling them Goatmeal Cookies.  I finally understood his reference to the Gluten-free part.  This student often expresses his opinion that Gluten Free recipes result in cardboard quality products.  "Only goats eat cardboard."  I found that hungry teens and tweens devour Goatmeal Cookies, too. 

Time to Eat!

Many thanks to Wegmans Food Markets for sponsoring this teen cooking club.  The community of Corning, New York is supportive of these learning lessons and we are grateful.  The Local Steelworkers Union Hall provides our giant kitchen, the students provide the fun.

Let's Go Shopping

This wraps up another delicious cooking club event.  Join us in February as we go shopping at Wegmans Food Market.  We will meet and shop just like a large family preparing to stock up their pantry for the month.  Their chefs will also engage us with a cooking demonstration!  That will be fun to see how the professionals get the task complete.

Until then, thanks for visiting!

~Erica

Vegan Ventures

Teen Cooking Club ventured into a Vegan menu on Veteran's Day 2017.  For those readers who are unaware, vegan diets eliminate all animal byproducts.  Meat, dairy, and honey are also eliminated from this diet.  "NO CHEESE?!" screamed a few unsuspecting students.

Soup's On!

Once we covered the basics of what not to expect, we rolled up our sleeves and got chopping.  Despite no cheese, the apparent main food source in the minds of these students, the menu was filling and easy to accomplish on a cold Friday afternoon.  Soup is a great entry into a vegan diet.  It's easy to avoid meat, while getting lots of flavor and substance using beans and greens.  Cookie and Kate provided this yummy Spiced Lentil Soup, which included curry powder.  Insert the olfactory scent of the kitchen here.  

Sweet Treats

When veggies are involved, I stress to students to "Try it!  We made it together, so it won't kill you.  If you decide it's not for you, the round file is in the corner."  They laugh at the idea of a trash can being a round file, but they respect my efforts and give the required taste.  Not everyone liked the soup, but those who did came back 2 or 3 times!

A sweet addition to our menu involved no-bake cookie balls.  The Beaming Baker posted this recipe for No Bake Peanut Butter Coconut Bites (Vegan, Gluten Free).  Since they were gluten free and no-bake, this seemed like a simple recipe to tackle.  I swear the holiday off of school and the phase of the moon had a portion of my students in a tizzy!  Just look at the top left corner of these pans---that is not the best work of my budding chefs.  I believe we need to focus a class on meal presentation.  At least these treats disappeared in zero seconds flat.

Chewy Cookie Bars

The last recipe on our menu was a suggestion from a patron.  These Reese's Chewy Chocolate Cookies are tried and true in her vegan home, but we ran into some issues.  Switching the butter with a vegan replacement was not much trouble.  Using "fleggs" in place of chicken eggs offered a great lesson. {A flegg combines ground flax seed and water to create a gelatinous mixture quite different from the average egg from an animal.}  Despite following this recipe step by step, the group of students found the mixture to be tough to blend and very dry.  We added extra oil and water to adjust the issues.  Baking the mixture in a pan to make bars rather than cookies allowed them to be quicker to prepare, since class was quickly coming to a close.

Come and Get It!

Despite our concerns about the cookie bars, they also disappeared within seconds!!!  Families were arriving to pick up their charges, so younger siblings and curious parents tasted the foods we cooked.  Everyone was surprised to eat simple food that tasted so good.  Only one family of the group lives by the vegan diet, but everyone decided it's an easy solution to cook healthful foods that have a low impact on our environment.

Clean up!

Kitchen chores are the least favorite of my students.  I stress that balance is important to life, so with fun comes responsibility.  Sometimes it's a struggle to get these students to clean up, but I love when I catch them in the act without any prompting. <3

Last chance to create with Me!

This wraps up another fun-filled year in the kitchen with teens.  Join us in December to catch a recap of the annual Make & Bake Gifts event.  Filomena Jack will bring her stuffed creatures to teach some sewing skills.  Craft Farm will enlighten students with some kitchen chemistry while making lip balms.  We will also test an old-fashioned corn flake candy wreath recipe, plus add in cinnamon-sugar pretzels.  It is always a great way to get into the holiday spirit.

Thanks for visiting!

xo,

Erica