Cooking with Kate encourages family fun in the kitchen
Cooking with Kate is an extension office program that encourages kids to capture the joy of learning how to create tasty dishes.
For many decades one of the best ways to bring a family together has been to gather around the dinner table and connect over a good meal.
Kate Shumaker, educator with the Ohio State University Extension Holmes County, is reinventing the way families can unite in the name of food.
What could be better than sitting down at the table as a family and eating together?
How about gathering in the kitchen beforehand to prepare the meal as a family unit?
For the past several years, Cooking with Kate has been a staple of the extension office, inviting youngsters to gather in the kitchen facility at the Love Center Food Pantry near Millersburg to learn the finer points of navigating their way around the kitchen.
In doing so, she is not only introducing meals for the kids to prepare and then take home with them, but also teaching them kitchen safety and the importance of cleaning up after they are done preparing a meal.
Recently, she and her troop of volunteers invited a handful of youth into the kitchen to experience the joy of cooking, creating dishes like chili garlic shrimp on the grill, curry quinoa salad and creamy lemon pie.
“Part of this experience is creating opportunities to enjoy cooking in the kitchen with their families at home,” Shumaker said. “That is family tradition. It creates fond memories of their time in the kitchen, where they can create family recipes that get passed down to the next generation.”
Another benefit of the sessions is it provides youngsters with their own set of kitchen utensils, which Shumaker said gives them more ownership of what they are experiencing and taking to their homes.
“It’s not family cookware; it’s their own measuring cup, their own apron and whatever they take home with them,” Shumaker said.
As for the experience, the kids had a blast working together as teams to create each dish.
Collins Taylor said she attended last year and was excited to come back.
“I enjoy learning the new recipes and taking them home and making them with my family,” Taylor said. “It’s a lot of fun, and Kate is really good at explaining things because we don’t know the recipes.”
Olivia Miller said learning how to properly cut food has been a learning experience that has paid off. Like many of the others, the pumpkin muffins were a favorite.
Mason Hernandez was back, having taken the class for the first time last year.
“It’s so much fun,” Hernandez said. “I like making stuff a lot and being creative.”
He said he would highly recommend that any youngster attend the classes. “Anyone can do it and should do it,” he said.
Skyler Wengerd partnered with Hernandez, and he too extolled the excitement of exploring the kitchen setting and learning new things.
“I like to bake, and this has been fun,” Wengerd said, noting this has inspired him to cook more at home. “I put all of these recipes in my mom’s cookbooks so we can cook them later.”
For each youngster in attendance, Cooking with Kate has helped them develop a greater passion for cooking and baking and offered them the benefits of something that may help them in years to come.