Our biggest challenge for our first week of cooking class was finding our cooking supplies. The office staff thought it had been packed away in the Bingo storage room in the school basement. There was a lot in that room, including a life-size statue of St. Bonafice, and another of Santa Claus and boxes and boxes of decorations, candlesticks, cleaning supplies. No sign of the pots and pans, cooking utensils, plates and silverware we needed for our class.

But there was a closet behind St. Bonafice, and inside, behind a rack of First Communion dresses and white suits, our prayers were answered! We found all our supplies and we were on our way.

Christian Bonilla-Letriz, Giannalie Burgos, Alexander Fields, Jade Estrada and Elianah Tapia couldn’t have been more enthusiastic to start class. And after initial instruction, each undertook his or her task with gusto — chopping the onion, breaking the stems off the spinach leaves, cracking the eggs, measuring out the milk and yogurt, grating the cheese, chopping the basil. When it came time to saute the onions, Alex and Elianana were having a conversation about the different words in Spanish for rice sticking to the bottom of a pan. Concon is Dominican, peagal is Puerto Rican and raspa is Cuban, they said. All mean the same thing.

These children were model chefs and kitchen helpers — setting the table, washing dishes as they went along, taking turns filling the muffin tin with the mixture of eggs, cheese, spiniach that would become the fritatta.

As it cooked, they wrote in their journals about why they were taking this cooking class: “What I hope for at the end of these two months, I hope to create a meal my Mom would love,” wrote Alex.

“I want to be a good chef,” wrote Jade. “My mom is a really good cook and I wanna cook like her. I hope to cook for my Mom when she doesn’t want to cook.”

When the frittatas came out of the oven, puffed and golden brown, the young chefs were excited. They paraded to the table behind Elianah, who was proudly carrying the tray like it was a silver platter. Everybody devoured their first one. The rating was 8 or 9 out of 10, only because some thought there should be more cheese. There was no doubt the seconds would not be leftover. Some wanted to give their second one to a teacher, or take home to a parent, or just save for later. Some ate it right there.

“I can tell I’m going to like this class,” said Christian.

They are off to a great start!