Student Chefs Create Mexican Meal

SEELEY LAKE - On Oct. 20, 13 Seeley Lake Elementary (SLE) students from grades five through eight tied on plastic aprons, slipped their hands into disposable food preparation gloves and transformed themselves into the SLE Culinary Club. The club is one of the afterschool offerings made possible by the 21st Century Community Learning Center grant.

In keeping with the community focus of the grant, participating students were welcome to invite one adult family member to attend the two-week, Tuesday through Thursday sessions. Under the guidance of Spanish teacher Bridget Laird and SLE head cook Susie Ferdinand, the club's first project was preparation of an authentic Mexican meal from scratch. On the menu was carne guisada (meat stew); beans a la charra (cowboy beans); Spanish rice; fresh, homemade salsa; homemade tortillas and fried ice cream for dessert.

Laird said her goal for the club was to help the students realize that creating meals using fresh ingredients, instead of commercially prepared products, was relatively easy, inexpensive and delicious.

Another goal was to emphasize sanitary and safety issues such as hand washing, tying back long hair, changing gloves between preparation steps and knife and stove safety. With the exception of procedures that involved hot oil or grilling, students were responsible for every aspect of the meal. They rolled scoops of ice cream in corn flakes, chopped meat and vegetables, washed and sorted pinto beans and stirred simmering pots.

Laird explained to the students that Fernandez is one of those master cooks who do not need to use recipes for most cooking. Fernandez's directions sometimes included instructions such as cut half of this or add a handful of that. This method gave Laird the opportunity to work with the students to formulate written recipes for each of the foods they prepared.

Together the group estimated measurements and discussed adapting the recipes to feed smaller or larger numbers of people. Laird later typed up the recipes and gave each student a copy to take home. Niky Whitman announced that she had already made the carne guisada for her family's Wednesday dinner.

On Thursday the students reheated the guisada and the beans, made the salsa, cooked the Spanish rice, mixed and rolled out their tortillas and the feast was ready to eat. More parents and some siblings dropped by to sample the meal, which everyone agreed was rico! (Spanish for "delicious").

For dessert, the coated ice cream balls were brought out of the refrigerator, dipped one by one into hot oil, and quickly pulled up ready to eat.

Eighth-grader MiKayla Bracha said, "They were awesome. Cold and hot in the same bite."

Enough food was left over to treat the teachers and staff to a taste of Mexico for their lunch the next day.

The Culinary Club will have its second session Oct. 27-29. Laird and Fernandez are contemplating teaching the students to make a turkey dinner. Said Laird, "It's a lot easier than people think and pretty inexpensive." She said the students may even make enough food to provide the entire student body with an early Thanksgiving feast on Friday.

 

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