Tasting Notes

Tonight, two of my students got to be tasting judges at the NYC Healthy Food for School competition. They got to see how the kitchen is at the Food & Finance HS and how their program is running.

They also got to taste 26 different dishes from different competitors, including that was chosen from one of my students' entries, which he was overjoyed to see on the list.

It was a great experience to see my kids tasting and taking notes alongside some of NYC's more talented & socially-conscious chefs. The man on the left of my students is Francois Payard, an outstanding, award-winning pastry chef with a career spanning decades.

I am always amazed at what one single day entails for me. Really, it is never the same. I think this is what keeps me in this profession. It is also quite possibly the only thing that could keep my ADHD tendencies in check, this constant stimulation.

My kids are very happy to be going to judge the NYC Healthy School Food contest. They really seem to be beside themselves with the whole idea of going. I rarely get to see them light up so much.

It always makes me a little nervous, making a promise to a child like that. I feel like so many people have failed my kids, I don't want to be another one of them. This whole judging thing started as such a far-fetched thing that I thought I would just try and ask for to something that I think will really greatly benefit the young men who go. I can't wait to see what happens.

This whole event is at the Food & Finance High School, which I only recently found out about. I think the boys will be impressed.

More than making do

I had a great conversation with Amie from the NY Coalition for Healthy School Food the other day about my program and work we might do in the future. My current kitchen is, well, not up to my standards and we have a long list of issues with it. It's a little embarrassing for me to have guests come into our kitchen when:

• we have no ovens
• our sinks run only cold water & we have to go into the next room to wash dishes well
• All of our equipment is electrical and we keep blowing switches all over the room.
• most everything that we are doing is done with home equipment

That said, the kids are amazing. They:

• work beautifully together
• eat up any skills that I can teach them so quickly, it is hard to plan for (this is a very good problem for me, actually)
• have an excitement for food and learning that has surpassed anything I might have hoped for. I hope that I can deliver more for them.

Amie's comment on this was simple & very supportive. She said that anyone visiting will understand that you are just a teacher that loves food trying to do the best for his kids with what he has. They walk into a lot of situations like this, she said, and the programs still work beautifully.

Recipe research

This coming week, my kids will be judging a NYC School healthy food competition. Thanks to some incredible arrangements made by the NY Coalition for Healthy School Food, four of my Culinary Arts students will be able to judge.

Before they could be picked to judge, students created recipes, wrote about what they wanted to learn in Culinary Arts and then judged chili recipes.

What possessed me to have 12 thirteen year-olds do a taste-testing of various chilis, I have no idea. But the obvious result has convinced me that in the future, I need to use something without beans.