Week 3: June 23-27

 Monday, June 23 - Day 1

Welcome to Week 3! We were so excited to welcome a whole new set of sous chefs today! Don't worry, by the end of the week we are sure that our new friends will be ready to don their head chef hats and take over the kitchen - watch out, parents! We started off the day with a popcorn icebreaker game where we answered questions about cooking and our favorite foods!

Next, Miss Sam introduced a very important concept that we will use throughout the week of camp. We call it CHEFS for short:

                                                                             Clean

                                                                             Help

                                                                             Experience

                                                                             Friends

                                                                             Safety 
If we remember CHEFS every day, we are sure to have a successful, stress-free, and - most importantly - FUN                                                                         week of camp!

We're all smiles chopping up the tomatoes for our homemade tomato soup! We also added onions, carrots, and garlic to the soup pot - you can find the other ingredients and instructions on our Recipes page if you want to try your hand at this yummy recipe!

Next, we took a break from the kitchen to let our soup simmer and all of the flavors get friendly! We sat down to draw our favorite foods with Miss Sam. Some of us couldn't decide on just one (it's so hard to choose!), so we drew a few. Among the most popular favorite foods this week:

Pizza!

Macaroni and cheese!

Strawberries!

Quick note from the counselors: we're hoping that by the end of this week, our favorite foods will include a LOT more vegetables! :)

We learned that today we were making grilled cheese to pair with our homemade tomato soup! But this wasn't just your plain old, everyday, slice-of-cheese-between-two-slices-of-bread kind of grilled cheese - we made our sandwiches into croutons for our soup for a new twist on an old classic!

Doesn't that tomato soup look unbelievably tasty? And don't those grilled cheese croutons look mouthwateringly scrumptious? It's almost too good to be true! Alright, confession time - it is too good to be true! While Miss Carolyn was running around learning campers' names and leading some fun physical activities, she forgot to take pictures of the most important part of the day - the food! Ah, well, these things happen at camp sometimes when we're having such a great time. Looks like she has four more fun-packed days of camp to redeem herself! :)

Photos from this blog entry were retrieved from:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Supreme_pizza.jpg

http://thegalleydiner.com/macaroni-and-cheese-during-lent/

http://www.alwaysvibin.com/strawberry.html

http://parade.condenast.com/256845/catherinemccord/improve-on-tomato-soup-three-words-grilled-cheese-croutons/

Tuesday, June 24 - Day 2

We started the day with a craft project that would help us all to meet new friends at camp! Here we are working very intently to string macaroni noodles onto yarn for our noodle nametags.

¡Luego, aprendimos unas palabras españolas con Señorita Sam! [Next, we learned some Spanish words with Miss Sam!]

These words came in especially handy for Taco Tuesday! We learned the Spanish words for the ingredients that we would put in our tacos - some of us even knew a few of these words already!

Aguacate - avocado

Cebolla - onion

Lechuga - lettuce

Pavo - turkey

Pimiento verde - green pepper

Queso - cheese

Tomate - tomato

After our Spanish lesson, Miss Zeynep helped us to shred some fresh, crunchy lechuga for the tacos. Take that, pre-packaged lettuce!

Break time! Miss Carolyn led us in a game of Connect, where we learned that we have a lot more in common with our new friends than we might have thought at first!

While the turkey for our tacos was sizzling in the skillet, we had time for some physical activities outside! In this game of Four Corners, we got a full-body workout with jumping jacks, lunges, and lots of running!

Before we started playing, we learned that the most important rule of the day was to STAY OFF THE STATUE. Look at what a great job we are doing!

Taco time! Can you name all of the ingredients in this taco en español?

Wednesday, June 25 - Day 3

Aren't those the best we-are-so-excited-for-Day-3 smiles you have ever seen? Before we found out what we were going to cook today, we started to decorate our very own camper cookbooks and fill them with the recipes we have used so far this week. Now we can follow these recipes at home and maybe even try out some new twists!

Next, Miss Sam led us in an interactive activity where we finally found out what we would be cooking today - sausage gumbo! Gumbo is a traditional New Orleans dish chock full of veggies, meats, and spices. Check out this video of us to see how we actually became gumbo ingredients all getting friendly in a pot!

Here we are with some of the ingredients we would put into our real gumbo pot! Thanks to Miss Sam, we knew which ingredients we needed to add and how long we needed to stir, simmer, and boil.

We also learned that gumbo doesn't always have to have the same ingredients. For example, some gumbos have shrimp or chicken, but we decided to use sausage for our recipe! You can take this time to admire our superior chopping skills.

A good chef never leaves the kitchen until everything is cleaned, dried, and ready for his or her next culinary endeavor!

Next, we headed outside with Miss Carolyn to play a game called Chefs and Waiters where we all pretended to work in a restaurant! Unfortunately, our fun was cut short when we discovered some sneaky fire ants in the grass - yikes! Take cover, campers!

Even though we had to move inside, we still managed to have a great time playing the game and being active!

While we were finishing up the game, Miss Paige and Miss Zeynep were putting the final touches on our sausage gumbo. Oh boy, we can hardly wait to taste it!

The final product - look at all of those colors and veggies! We also added white rice to our gumbo to make it a little heartier - we were sure hungry after all of that physical activity and our narrow run-in with the fire ants!

One word: YUM.

Say hello to the birthday boy! Happy birthday! Thank you for spending your day with us :)

 Thursday, June 26 - Day 4

In our nutrition lesson with Miss Zeynep today, we learned about the MyPlate method, which helps us to remember the types of food groups and portion sizes that we should eat. For more information about MyPlate and healthy eating, check out the USDA website!

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for... the second official SoFAB Kids Culinary Camp Snack Wars! The objective of this activity was to create an original animal out of a banana and some pretzels, raisins, Cheerios, and peanut butter! Before we got down to business, we had a serious planning session with our teammates.

We are all so focused! The stakes have never been so high!

And... CREATE! We had just a few minutes to transform our plans into delicious, edible animals!

Presenting ... Stripes!
*Award: Overall Best Animal*

Blue the Ringworm! Uh... ringworm?! Word to the wise, fellas - we might want to rethink that name before eating!
*Award: Best Presentation*

Say hello to Gryphjane!
*Award: Best Name*

Here's Banana Tiger, looking mighty fierce!

The adorable Ellie the Elephant!

Come one, come all, and see the Walking Banana with your very own eyes!

Meet Rocket!

Aha! If you look closely, you can observe the Banana Dragon in its natural habitat!
*Award: Best Teamwork*

Look, a wild Crano emerged from its peel!
*Award: Most Creative*

Can we finally eat these things now? Adiós to our new animal friends :)

After the fierce competition of Snack Wars, we found out what we would be making for lunch today - blueberry pancakes, yum! We also chopped up bananas, strawberries, and grapes to mix together for a beautiful fruit salad!

With our pancakes on the griddle, we had time for a couple of games where we got a little silly! Here we are pretending to be pterodactyls- RAWWRRR!

Breakfast, anyone? We served our pancakes with the fruit salad we made and a drizzle of honey instead of syrup - we love finding ways to make our favorite foods just a little bit more healthy! What a great way to end our day of camp.

Just think - by this time tomorrow, we will have our culinary camp diplomas! But that still leaves us plenty of time between now and then to learn even more and improve our skills in the kitchen :)

Friday, June 27 - Day 5

Welcome to the final day of Week 3, campers! We started the day by decorating the bands for our graduation chef hats. I can almost hear Pomp and Circumstance playing already!

For Foreign Food Friday, Miss Zeynep taught us all about the culture and cuisine of a country that is close to her heart - Turkey! We learned about traditional Mediterranean dishes and practiced our Turkish with some food-related vocab words.

For her lesson on Turkey, Miss Zeynep surprised us all with some delicious Turkish treats! The smaller white piece is called Pişmaniye. Some people call it Turkish cotton candy because of the texture - some of us thought that it tasted like a sugar cookie! We also tried some Albeni caramel cookies - we were all dying to get our hands on more of that chocolatey caramel goodness! 

Thank you to Miss Zeynep and her mom for bringing us these true Turkish delights :)

Once we got a little sugar in our systems, we had lots of energy for chopping carrots, green peppers, and celery to dip in our homemade hummus. Hummus is a popular food item in Turkey and consists of mashed chickpeas, olive oil, lemon juice, and lots of spices! Check out our Recipes page to see how you can make your own hummus at home.

Next it was time for our last set of games with Miss Carolyn! And what better day than graduation day for some good clean sticky fun with marshmallows?! After we played a cutthroat over/under marshmallow relay race, we split into teams to play Marshmallow Fling. The objective of this game was to fling marshmallows from our spoons into the cup our partner was holding for us. The two teams with the highest success rates caught 13 marshmallows each! At the end of the game, we came to the consensus that out of all the skills we learned at camp this week, marshmallow flinging was one of the most useful :)

Ready, set, FLING!

Hummus, veggies, and pita, oh my! We all enjoyed snacking on this healthy meal and practicing the new words we learned in Turkish while we ate.

While Miss Jennie was explaining the graduation process, we were all a little nervous! Luckily, we were looking sharp in the chef hats that Miss Paige worked so hard all day to make. Thank you, Miss Paige!

Congratulations to the Week 3 campers for successfully completing the SoFAB Kids Culinary Camp! We had a week full of games, laughs, and, of course, FOOD, and we hope that everyone learned new things and had a great time! Thank you for spending your week with us - you are now prepared to enter the world of chefhood and knock our socks off with your culinary creations! :)

Take a peek at the thank-you signs we made for our awesome sponsors and supporters! Thanks to Domino Foods, the New Orleans Rotary Fund, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, we were able to host another set of fantastic chefs-to-be! Until next time, fellow food-loving friends :)