Let's Go Shopping

The wonderful Wegmans Food Markets provided the Southeast Steuben County Library Teen Cooking Club a free cooking demonstration for the February 2018 class.

Let's Go Shopping

Upon entering the cafe' to meet students, I encountered this welcoming table where Chef Andy was placing ingredients at each setting.  In order to get a donation from Wegmans, I needed to apply online for a grant.  I requested a cooking demonstration similar to a Saturday Young Chefs event that Wegmans hosts to guests at a low cost.

Each Place Setting

Each place setting had a plastic cutting board, appropriate for younger chefs, a plate with uncut vegetables, a plastic knife, chop sticks and gloves.  We were excited to honor the Chinese New Year with a noodle bowl.  Noodles are a good luck food, representing longevity.  Once our host covered some facts about Chinese New Year, each student received a chef's hat to start preparing foods.

Fashionable Friday

Once we donned our caps, the preparation began.  One important rule Chef Andy discussed is a term "Mise en place," (MEEZ ahn plahs) which french meaning "everything in it's place."  The idea is to have all of your ingredients washed, cut, measured and placed in your cooking area BEFORE you start cooking the recipe.  This is a rule I often overlook in my kitchen, but find can help cut the chaos in our Union Hall kitchen. 

 Lessons for the future! 

Radish

This little red veggie is a radish.  Most student were not familiar with this ingredient.  It has a little spicy flavor and creates a nice crunch in soups and salads.  The color red is a sign of good luck in Chinese tradition, so it was very appropriate for this recipe.

Concentrated Cutting

Although the lighting was tough for photography, you can see our chefs concentrating on cutting their food to their preferred sizes using only plastic butter knives.  This is more of a challenge than we normally face.  We use real knives in Teen Cooking Club.  Everyone was grateful that we do not use plastic cutlery all of the time!

Long Noodles

We discovered some new ingredients as we prepared our soups.  Nira Grass  was very new to me, but the description states that it is a garlic chive, so I realize I have it growing in my perennial garden.   Shanghai, a vegetable that looks like bok choy, is leafy green that mildly frightened these students.  The great part of this class was learning new ingredients and how to prepare them, but not being required to eat them.  All students were happy to chop, but many eliminated the greens from their soup when the broth was added.  Before any veggies were added to our cups, we took a serving of long noodles.

Noodles for Longevity

Long noodles represent longevity in Chines tradition.  It is suggested to only bite the noodle when it is completely in your mouth.  Biting it too soon can shorten life or give bad luck.  Adding our veggies to the bowl was step two.  Step three was adding broth.

Gather for the Goodness

Everyone gathered around the demonstration table to get their broth.  Our chef discussed ways of making broth from scratch, but showed the prepared package we can conveniently purchase.  Included in the broth was soy sauce, oyster sauce, garlic, ginger, touch of salt and pepper, plus some thai peanut sauce for anyone without a peanut allergy.

Yummy!

The vegetables were raw, but the noodles were cooked al dente, "to the tooth".  Adding the hot broth only heightened the vibrancy of color of the vegetables, but left them crunchy.  I really liked the variety of textures in this recipe.

Mangia!

The final step in this redcipe was to eat.  As my Italian grandmother would say when the food was ready, "Mangia!"  After our exclusive cooking demonstration, there was still time left to shop through the store to quantify the value of our meal.  We discovered that we could serve the fifteen people in our group the same size portion of soup for $2.20, which is less than half the cost of a medium sized prepared soup in the market.  This proved the value of cooking from scratch at home.  It was tricky to "shop" with 15 members of our Teen Cooking Club family, but it worked and everyone enjoyed the results!

That's a wrap for this month's installment of Teen Cooking Club.  Check back in March to see what edible wraps we concocted in our next class.

Thanks for visiting,
-Erica

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

Freaky Friday

Welcome back to ou first Teen Cooking Club of the Year!  

Class landed upon a Friday the 13th, so it only felt right to make some Freaky Foods.

Freaky or Not...they ate it ALL!!!

Growing up with the fear of Jason Myers chasing me on any given Friday the 13th (yes-- over-active imagination AND horror-flick-follower) has made me a bit superstitious.  It turns out, Friday the 13th is a lucky day and working with this group of budding teens makes me a lucky paralibrarian.

Our menu was dedicated to the Freaky Look, but Delicious Taste.  Knowing that they ate ALL the food proves the delicious quality, these pictures will prove the Freaky Factor.  Let's start with a beverage the color of ooze or worse.

Worms and all...

Goosebumps Punch is a sweet concoction of soda, sherbet, food coloring and gummy worms.  This was, by far, the easiest of the recipes.  The bowl was stored in the fridge while the rest of the menu was prepared.  Between those colors and lumps, along with the slimy worms, this adult COULD NOT consume this without a squirmy face!

Not-Yet-Cooked Meatball Mummies

Meatball Mummies were less freaky, but actually adorable mini treats.  The recipe was also quite simple.  Black olives made much cuter eyes than ketchup.

"Looks like guts and goo."

Beef and Tomato Macaroni Soup was not the prettiest creation if you're in the Freaky Friday mindset.  "It looks like guts and goo," announced a young chef, and I have to agree!  Imagination makes and breaks a creation, but luckily the olfactory sense pushed aside the visual and this pot got DEMOLISHED.  Having a few vegetarians in the group allowed me to introduce Wegmans' Don't Have a Cow Meatless Beef Style Crumbles.  No one knew the difference.

CHEESY!!! Breadsticks

Cheesy Breadstick Bones were a delight to the whole crowd.  The team that made these had to struggle with fresh dough, which is a learning experience. Leaving teens with as much cheese as I purchased (in preparation of a much larger class) was a personal learning experience.  You can check for yourself, but more than double the amount of cheese required for this recipe was used.  Releasing the breadsticks from the pan lifted all of the breadsticks at once.  These were basically Cheese Bones with some Bread filling.

Enough Cheese for 2 Recipes!

Brain with Blood Clot Cupcakes were the ABSOLUTE MOST FREAKY DISHES POSSIBLE!! We broke the rules and made the cake from a box, but the icing from scratch.

Intestines or Chewed Bubble Gum?

Just seeing these cakes again makes me queasy.  I had a few troubles with this recipe.  For one, I forgot eggs!  I usually forget to bring a cooking element from the Southeast Steuben County Library building, but it's just a few hundred feet from the Union Hall, so no biggie.  Forgetting a cooking ingredient leaves us scrambling for substitutions.  Luckily, we discovered my neglect very quickly, and a mother offered to pick up a dozen.  Disaster averted.  Unfortunately, the grocery store did not have piping tools for icing, so the "brains" really looked like intestines or chewed up bubble gum.  I think this added to the Freaky Friday frenzy and certainly makes me disgusted in a good way!

So good it was gone in minutes!

All the food we made was eaten---quickly!  It's like a mad dash to get everyone to the spot on time, separate into even groups, whip up the recipes, and have enough time to eat and clean up.  When the food vanishes before dishes get prepped for the final stages, I know I compiled a good menu.  With siblings and parents arriving just as we started serving the food, we had plenty to share.  The resounding response to what was the favorite food? "Cheesy Bones" won the prize.

February is Made with Love

That's a wrap for the first Teen Cooking Club of 2017.  A special thanks to Wegmans Food Markets for sponsoring this program.  We had a great time in the kitchen and started the year off right.  Next month, we celebrate Saint Valentine's Day with the theme "Made with Love."  So many yummies for your sweeties.  See you then!

 

Iced Teas and Black Cows

June is National Iced Tea Month and June 10 is National Black Cow Day.  In case you were not aware, a Root Beer Float is a Black Cow.  And let's not mistake this Black Cow with Drew, the Big Brown Cow Who Goes Moo, Moo, Moo.

This Teen Cooking Club was super packed with 28 of us running wild cooking and cleaning, serving and eating in just 2 hours.  We had a slew of recipes to test.

Super Duper Pretzels!

First off was a delicious pretzel concoction called Bavarian Pretzel Grilled Cheese.  With meat and cheese between warm, buttery pretzels, these were sure to be a winner!  Except...so many picky preferences surfaced.  Who didn't want sour kraut, who didn't like mustard, who didn't like turkey (I substitued the pork for turkey in consideration of religious and dietary restrictions).  I wish we had just served hot pretzels!  The team that made this recipe was very accommodating and made a variety of options for all involved.

One Pan Prep

The next dish was a One Pan Mexican Quinoa.  I was branching out to try some new ingredients and flavors...and it was a SUCCESS!  The team that made this recipe was salivating over the smells and appearance, even as it was cooking on the stove.

Not quite Smell-O-Vision>>>try this recipe!<<<

Another team hit the dessert portion of our menu with Twix Cookies. 

Nom-Nom-Delish!

These sweet treats were a HIT! (go figure)  The shortbread dough came together quickly.  I cheated on the caramel and purchased a bottle of caramel sauce from the ice cream aisle.  This was a quick fix replacement for anyone with a dairy allergy, but the caramel goo, which Twix have, was not there.  The cookies absorbed the caramel sauce.  Luckily, no one complained.

Just keep swimming!

Finding Dory Treats were also on the menu.  This recipe popped up in my search and I absolutely fell in love with the adorable presentation from Hungry Happenings.  Unfortunately, I could not find the cereal needed, so I substituted with Lucky Charms.  I also could not source blue melting wafers from our grocery store, so I substituted with green and pink wafers.  The popcorn took a purplish hue and we called this "Charming Treats."  The recipe went so quickly, I asked the team to attempt another batch, which was completely off the cuff with a brighter appearance.

"Charming Treats"

Now for the Iced Teas...

"Flavored teas are so thirst quenching!"

Iced tea has a thirst quenching capability.  The team in charge of the teas used this flavored teas listing to inspire their varieties.  The issue with this recipe was the time needed for all the flavors to marry, which usually takes 24 hours.  Flavor options included apricot ginger tea, pomegranate black tea, apple cider green tea, peach jasmine tea, and honey lemon green tea.  I overheard that the apricot ginger tea was the high ranking favorite.

The Black Cow portion of our menu was the tail end of the program.

Root Beer or Cola Float = Black Cow

The irony of my shopping experience was unpacking the groceries to find, "I forgot the root beer!"  Serendipity saved the session.  There was a case of diet Pepsi leftover from another Union Hall renter and we were allowed to take ownership!  Everyone thought this was the ABSOLUTE BEST RECIPE of the afternoon.  Sugar, soda, ice cream, chocolate sauce and a cherry to top it all off>>seems like all of the food groups are covered, right?!

I am very pleased to tip a hat of gratitude to Wegmans Food Markets who sponsor this fabulous program through their Community Sponsorship efforts.  Their financial assistance allows for high quality ingredients to be purchased for large crowds of teens and avails more funding to further teen programming in the SSC Library.  Thank you Wegmans!

Stop by in July for a peek at our Teen Cooking Club Annual BBQ.

We will fire up the grill and turn the great outdoors into our kitchen.

Lawn games and silliness will ensue.

Happy Summer Solstice!

-erica