I finished out my final Wednesday ‘cooking with teens for the summer’ this week. We celebrated by making homemade Chicken Alfredo, lard fried green beans and bacon, croissants, banana chocolate chip bundt cake with cauliflower hidden inside and three different kinds of brownies. We also had a store-bought cake for a staff members birthday. Along with this yumminess we had white and chocolate milk, orange juice, apple juice and even some guava mango juice! We were full for an entire day I think! We had a wonderful summer learning from each other, cooking up food, talking food and books and the teens teaching me way more than I teach them, and bringing me far more joy than they’ll ever realize. Cooking food with love, I highly recommend it! I brought a box of books as well for the kids to pick through. It’s always fun to see what books they pick! The required reading is all finished up and I say goodbye to much loathed and much-loved classic reads: Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaidens Tale, 1984, Catcher in the Rye, A Brave New World and Tuesdays With Morrie…….
My next project is putting all our recipes in a book together and then making copies for the kids who want them.
This was a wonderful way to spend the summer and although cooking brings zen to me anyway, the gathering and cooking and eating of good food made for good community, beautiful memories and closer ties, binding us together to weather the storms of middle and high school starting up again next week!
I would be so busy talking and cooking that I forgot most of the time to take pictures of us all cooking! I managed a couple of times! Pictures aren’t the number one focus when I’m there and I am quite often no where near my phone. I don’t want the kids to see me use it while I’m talking with them, of course.
Blessings.
Peace.
