Amidst the Chaos... Carribean Food and Amazing Kids

I arrived at the Sheraton yesterday afternoon after a surprisingly quick road trip and ran up to my room, dropped my bag, and ran right back out again. In the lobby, I met up with Devra from Parentopia, Goon Squad Sarah, Anne-Marie Nichols, and Melanie Edwards from Modern Mami and we were spirited away by Jessica Braun from Quaker to an amazing event.

We headed to the Washburne Culinary Institute to have a cooking class on Carribean cooking with 60 8-11 year old kids from Chicago's inner city. The class was part of a Common Threads six-week camp where the kids had been learning all about cooking and nutrition. The chefs and camp counselors were amazing: caring, engaged, and enthusiastic. I could see the simple nutrition lesson that Chef Courtney was sharing with the kids sink in with every word. "Eating one color is boring! Eat the rainbow, it's more fun and more nutritious." "When you take off the chicken skin, you take out 50% of the fat of the chicken. See how easy it is to eat healthy?"

Our role was to volunteer and help the kids out in preparing jerk chicken wings, sweet potato souffle, avocado salad, and a tropical fruit crumble, but the kids were so skilled that I barely had to lift a finger. These little guys flashed their huge knives and created gorgeous diced mango and zuchini slices. After closing my eyes in fear that they would cut themselves, I soon watched them with respect, amazed at all they'd learned in the camp. I also was blown away by their positive attitude and their enthusiasm, no jaded cynicism in this group of kids.

We were joined for a portion of the time by Top Chef Chicago winner Stephanie Izard who's taught the kids a couple of weeks ago. She too was impressed by their skills!

I'll be trying out some of the recipes with my kids when I get home next week. For now, I'm just thankful for the delicious meal they prepared which gave me strength to head in to the madness of Blogher.

I'll be living blogging two sessions today at Blogher both on the Blogher site and here so please check back in later today...