Cooking Something Up

If you walked into the Cooperative Extension building in Robeson County today you would have been knocked over by the smell of bacon, watermelon, and the smell from the grill wafting inside.  In case you couldn't guess this is day one of our 4-H Jr. Chef Academy.  Of course we started the day with laying down the ground work and setting our rules for camp and the kitchen.  We also started by designing our own apron for the camp.  It didn't take long to get the basics under our belt and split up to cook and do some other fun things.
In the kitchen, our day campers got the chance to make their sides for lunch.  On the menu baked beans, mashed potatoes, and coleslaw to go with our hamburgers and hot dogs.  Many of our youth love these items but have never made them from scratch.  Today they learned about mashing and ricing potatoes to get rid of lumps.  They also had the chance to peel and slice cucumbers from Mrs. Janice's garden which they consumed for lunch.
While one group was in the kitchen the other was learning where their food comes from.  We travelled to the raised bed garden at the Extension office and planted some items, saw cucumbers, banana peppers, green peppers and eggplants.  Each camper planted a sunflower, which we talked about the seeds being edible and they all got a chance to pull a carrot out of the garden and eat it.  After going back inside it was time to start some plants of our own that we could take home.  The youth started basil and a sunflower.  With some water and sun they will have some awesome edible plants.  Our youth took the opportunity to talk food and country.  We would name off food and they would tell us which country it was from.  It was a lot of fun.
It wasn't long before we sampled the hard work of our Day Campers over lunch.  Everyone enjoyed what they made and I believe everyone had seconds of something.  They might of had thirds but there was a really big watermelon that Mrs. Christy came in and cut for their enjoyment.  Many of our youth decided they needed a couple of slices of watermelon just to make sure it didn't go to waste.
After lunch we split back up again.  In the kitchen our youth started making a syrup for a project tomorrow and husking corn.  In the auditorium we talked about the importance of pollinators and made beehives using Honeycomb cereal.  After making our art piece our youth worked on coloring pages involving pollinators and pollination sources.  After we all got a chance to do everything it was time to hit the carpet and vote on the winning apron design.  It took a lot of voting but our youth narrowed it down to one design.
Of course no 4-H camp is complete without the silent game.  It is probably the most requested game we have ever had and over the last 15 years it has become a requirement from our campers that we must play it at every day camp.
Please stay tuned for more updates over the next few days of all the fun we are about to have.