One of the great things about My Family Kitchen is that it teaches kids healthy ways to make popular fast foods. In Week 2, Bayard’s young chefs learned to make chicken wings with clean, salt-free baking instead of deep-frying the way Popeyes does it. In Week 6 they learned to make Philadelphia’s famous cheesesteaks using vegetables instead of meat.

The students were interested to learn that the recipe for Mari’s Vegetarian “Cheesesteaks” was first served at a “fancy restaurant” in downtown Philadelphia. They also were intrigued to see how big, round portobello mushrooms could take the place of cheesesteak meat.

The mushrooms were a new food for most of our chefs, and they wanted to explore every part of them. Arielis Lopez was fascinated by the “gills” on the underside and wanted to touch them with her finger. She was so excited at how soft they felt that she rushed to have Ms. Linda and other students touch them as well.

Jenaliz Valerio, meanwhile, was enjoying how the big mushroom caps sliced cleanly into handsome white-and-brown strips and took great pride making sure they were all the same width. In this recipe, it is important to slice the mushrooms, onions and green pepper evenly so they cook at the same speed.

Arielis, who loves to chop, made short work of the onions before moving on to the peppers. She was delighted to learn that if you dry and save the seeds in a fresh pepper you can grow more peppers by planting them. With this knowledge, she scooped up all the seeds and packed them in plastic cups to take home. “We’ll grow all the peppers we need!” she exclaimed.

First, however, our young chefs needed to learn to make sweet potato fries baked in the oven. Sweet potatoes are a challenge for young chefs, because they are hard as rocks and even harder to cut. But Elvin Jimenez quickly rose to the challenge, employing all his arm strength to slice the potatoes into perfectly thin strips. He also learned how to “toss” the strips in olive oil and the herb paprika to evenly coat them for baking.

On the other side of the kitchen, Rosalee Sanchez was thrilled to be working with Ms. Linda to make the first dessert of the class. The choice, which students would make again for their families, was a strawberry shortcake that replaces whipped cream with healthy vanilla yogurt. Rosalee was proud to handle everything from slicing the fruit, to mixing the flour, sugar and salt, to spooning the mixture into a muffin tin for baking.

“I liked everything,” she said later, with a big smile.

Overall, she said the meal was “a-mazing,” pausing in the middle for emphasis. She liked the strawberries, of course — and cleaned the bowl to make sure there were no leftovers. But she also said “the mushrooms were better than I expected — I was not expecting this to taste this good.”

Jenaliz also had a change of opinion as a result of the meal.

“I loved the sweet potato fries, even though I said in the first place I didn’t like sweet potatoes,” she said. “But now I do.”

On top of that, “the cheesesteak was amazing,” Jenaliz said, because “I have eaten mushrooms before and I love mushrooms.

“I loved the texture,” she added, and to emphasize the point she made a heart with the fingers of both hands. “Today’s meal was delicious, every single thing.”