When it comes to cooking, My Family Kitchen is all about things like chopping, measuring, baking and tasting. It’s also about teamwork, sharing and caring.

In our second class, the young chefs of Bayard Taylor gave a great demonstration of teamwork and caring by stepping up to help a new student learn about cooking skills, a new school and a new language, too!

Shainysse is new to Bayard Taylor and also is learning to speak English. In our Week 2 class, her Spanish-speaking classmates helped her with both challenges. Led by classmate Ivette, the Bayard chefs stepped in to translate instructions for making Sloppy Joes and Quick Pickles, and broke the ice for new friendships as well. In response, Shainysse was all smiles as she learned techniques for slicing cucumbers for the pickles and stirring the ground turkey and vegetables that were the base for the Sloppy Joe sandwiches.

Also excited by cooking class was Carlos, who missed the first meeting due to a doctor’s appointment.

“My mom won’t believe I’m chopping things,” he exclaimed as he took on onions and celery stalks with our large kitchen knives. “I feel like I’m a chef!”

The Week 2 recipes were a great introduction to preparing two dishes at once for a meal and planning so that they are both ready at the same time.

And the class broke into teams to make it happen. Carlos, Nickless and Iralys took the lead chopping and dicing onions into small pieces, while Ivette, Shainysse and Jahira evenly sliced two cucumbers and combined sugar, white vinegar, salt and water to create the liquid mixture that would make “quick pickles” just by soaking.

Then it was on to the skillet, and everyone wanted a turn browning the ground turkey and sautéing the onions and celery to go with it. Everyone also was interested to see what Worcestershire sauce would taste like and how its flavor would work with ketchup and red pepper flakes.

While Carlos said “I thought it would be spicier,” the class loved the flavor of the Sloppy Joe mixture when served on soft slider rolls.

“It tasted like heaven!” Nickless said after class. “It was so good I want to make it at home!”

Ivette felt that way, too.

“It was my first time trying Sloppy Joes, and it was very good,” she said. “I liked the pickles, too, because they weren’t like a salt pickle but more like a sugar pickle.”

“I liked both, and when you mixed them up it was very good,” Iralys added.

All told, every student enjoyed the experience of cooking class. Iralys even said she would recommend it to other students.

“This class is very good,” she said. “You should join because it’s creative.”