Last week we presented a cooking class that allowed us to stretch a bit in our ideas of the mobile cooking school concept. A couple of months ago a teacher asked if we could do a one-time cooking class for a parent engagement group of pre-k students.
Teacher: not sure how many will be there, but I heard your cooking school is great and would be a good fit for us
Me: yes! That would be awesome. We’d love to! Just let me know when you have better idea of how many to expect
Week of the presentation:
Teacher: Ok, so it looks like we’ll have about 75 people
Me: Yikes! I don’t think we can do our hands-on cooking classes like we usually do because we only have 4 cooking stations that serve 4-6 people….but we’ll come up with something!
Solution: No-cook Kits!
We made “kits” for no-cook recipes with pre-cut items the participants could quickly put together and feed about 8 people with each kit. One kit was for a Chinese Chicken Salad. The “kit” had each of the ingredients pre-cut and pre-measured in separate bags or containers all inside of a gallon size bag that could be used to mix the salad and then pour into bowls to serve. Even the bowls and forks were in “kits” that were easy to place at each table/station. The other kit had ingredients for Yogurt Parfait, with a container of yogurt, cut frozen fruit in snack size baggies, and 2 oz cups with lids of granola. Another “kit” had small clear cups and plastic spoons to use for assembling the parfait.
This method created a lot of waste with the bags, but it was easy to present and everyone got to participate. Also, the menu was a good “MyPlate” representation with all of the food groups and the food itself was yummy!
This was a little different than the fully hands-on cook a meal with skillets method we usually do, but nonetheless….Success!