Three O’clock and the new students for this semester bounded into the kitchen to initiate the start of the My Family Kitchen Cooking Club! Present in class today were Scarlett Rodriguez, Tyejae Rodriguez (siblings) and Natasha Issahak, while next week we hope that Aleidy Cardenales and Isaac Velez can join us. Isaac graduated from the Fall MFK class and loved the cooking so much that he begged to be a part of the Spring semester. He’ll lead the rest of the class with the skills that he learned last semester.

First, we introduced the volunteer leader, Miss Chris Hoyler, then the assistant volunteers, Mr. Josh Siauw and Mr. Muhammad Hozien. The students introduced themselves and all 3 students mentioned that they’ve had kitchen experience at home and love to cook! Our jobs as leaders are much easier with experienced and eager students in the class. We reviewed the rules of the kitchen and demonstrated knife skills. After discussing the recipe for today, Breakfast burritos, we started off with the prep work. Each student had a leader to monitor them, and indeed, our students were skilled at handling knives! Lots of prepping goes into today’s recipe, including chopping onions, garlic, spinach and peppers, and grating cheese was a fun and tasty task, as we had enough for snacking! Each student cracked eggs, using a knife to be sure that there weren’t any bits of the eggshell in the mix. Everything was sauteed in the cast iron pan, then made into burritos and baked. Natasha mentioned that the cooks at her home love the cast iron pan, and Miss Chris agreed. The avocado was opened and sliced, and we were ready. I overheard Scarlett whisper that she didn’t think she would like the beans in the burrito, which Mr. Muhammad echoed, but the final evaluation after eating the burritos was a solid thumbs up from everyone, even Scarlett! There were a few burritos left over which were eagerly brought home to share with families. See you next week!