Fiddleheads Cooking Studio, has been teaching kids and teen cooking since 2016, and is continuing to offer a variety of after-school programs around Westchester this Fall. Registration is now open on the Fiddleheads website.
Last year Fiddleheads founded Grassroots Kitchen, a culinary and food education training program for high schoolers who can take on significant responsibilities, and become full partners in the mission of educating our community about the impacts of food and its sources.
This is a year-long program for high school students that include 2 semesters: Fall-Winter (September – January), Winter-Spring (February-May). Each semester has 14 weeks, totaling 28 weeks. When a student applies for the program, he or she also commits to a minimum of 10 hours of community service, which will be a combination of cooking for families in need and teaching elementary-aged kids. The community service will be done alongside an adult supervisor and will begin in the winter.
Grassroots Kitchen educates the next generation of food responsible citizens by training young adults about the impact of food choices on the body, community, and environment. The program empowers youth as advocates for healthy, sustainable eating practices through pedagogically sound, hands-on learning. The participants are encouraged to take their knowledge back to their families and communities and are provided with opportunities to become food educators in different settings.
Students will meet for weekly lessons in which they will engage in a discussion of a food related topic (for example food waste, the importance of local food or Fair Trade). Some weeks they will be given short reading material to expose them to different aspects of these topics (for example GMO’s and food accessibility). We occasionally have a guest speaker/chef and have optional field trips to a farm.
Alongside a theoretical discussion, they will learn how to make a complete dish from start to finish. We will learn how to follow a recipe, how to cook without a recipe and rely on intuitions, experiment with recipe writing, and learn how to teach and create lesson plans.
Grassroots Kitchen is now accepting applications, and we are happy to offer full or partial scholarships.
