Cooking Camp is Tomorrow!
Starting tomorrow, I’ll be leading a 5-day cooking camp for teens. My workplace offers summer camp, and the focus is on elementary kids. There’s usually a week or two of “teen studio” but the offerings are limited. Last year I proposed teen cooking to my education coordinator. Not just cooking, but historical recipes. She said yes.
I was anxious all summer as I monitored enrollment. I needed four students for camp to run. Registration was slow. I got my 10/10 enrollee the week before camp started, and then I was asked if I’d accept one more. Yes! So I led eleven teenagers through history and around the world and also basic knife skills.
The week was, by turns, incredibly fun and incredibly difficult. The teens themselves were delightful. Engaged, helpful, eager. They followed my two rules perfectly:
“1. Safety first. No running with knives. Make sure you wash your hands. Clean up spills. Et cetera.
2. No saying food is gross. You don’t have to try anything you don’t want to. But these recipes were important to people and we should respect that.”
On “Native Americas” day, we made elote. We had extra corn on the cob so I suggested we cook it in the microwave. They were so excited to use the microwave! They thought it was the neatest thing! I actually changed the recipes for the final day so we could make more microwavable foods.
They also just really loved corn in general. While slicing the corns off the cobs, they decided to start a Corn Cult, complete with prayers and chants.
But it was a physically exhausting week. I’d come in at 9 AM to set up, then camp from 10-12, clean up from 12-1, and then work my regular 1-4 front desk shift. I wanted to offer camp again, but with the caveat I could either do a three day camp, or I’d need an assistant. My education coordinator was more than happy to hire an assistant. The assistant is a long-time teacher and she is just amazing, both with kids and just in terms of being willing to jump in where needed.
Haha, additionally, this time last year I was just starting treatment for insomnia. Last year I would typically wake up at noon, so getting up at 8:30ish for camp was a struggle. We had already started working on moving up my bed and awake times, so at that time I was getting up around 11. After the week was over, to my horror, my doctor said we should “take advantage” of that week and make a bigger jump in upping my awake time. I think we moved to 10. For more about my insomnia, check out my other blog, Bad Sleeper! Anywhooooo, now I typically wake up at 8:45, so pushing that back a little isn’t so bad, but I’m not excited about it.
Camps go on sale around May, though they don’t start until July, and obviously mine isn’t until the first week of August. To my utter surprise, my camp filled up incredibly quickly this year. It was full by June. It had a waitlist! I have new and returning students! What a bunch of weirdos, I can’t wait to meet them.
Last year, we made recipes from throughout history, starting with Sumeria and ending around 1960. But last year, besides using the microwave, they loved making a historical version of fried rice. So this year, we are making “original/older versions of contemporary foods.” Each day will have a microwave component as well. I’m also hoping to talk a bit about using up left overs. For example, a Tuesday recipe will use cheese, and then on Thursday we’re microwaving potatoes, so we can use up the cheese.
The oldest recipe is still pretty old, 1390s (“Makerouns”). The newest is actually from 1978, not counting microwave recipes from 1980s cookbooks. That recipe is for horchata, which has a much longer history than I’d expected. Earlier Mexican cookbooks don’t mention horchata, save for one that was for a melon seed version. I wonder if it becoming a, like, Mexican symbol is relatively recent, from the 1960s or ‘70s. (The drink itself is much older, dating to perhaps Roman Egypt and introduced to Mexico by the Spanish.)
The plus side to this year’s theme is that there are fewer “weird” ingredients to track down. Last year I went to three different stores to find rose water. This year’s hard-to-find ingredient has been barley flour, which I finally found at H-Mart. I’m writing this right now because I need to finish shopping and I don’t wanna. Not thrilled to go to a grocery store on a Sunday afternoon, but I wanted to save all of the fresh ingredients for last.
