blog.camps.com

Bringing Food Home For The Holidays

camps — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:15:51 +0000

I don’t know about you, but these days I’m finding the buzz around food a bit daunting–and I love to cook. Recently I’ve spent some time thinking about how the average home cook must be feeling about food in general. If we just take television as an example of what’s going on out there, it’s an eye opener.

At one extreme we are inundated with amazing food shows. I’m stunned by the number of cake shows alone. There are shows about strange foods, people consuming enormous amounts of food, and many shows featuring chefs creating things no one could even imagine making in their home kitchen—six-foot tall cakes are just the beginning!

At the other extreme we are bombarded with programs about weight loss and inspirational stories about communities working to help kids get healthy. We both glorify and vilify food, creating a mystique around it that, in my opinion, is making the average person feel stuck.

I think a lot of us feel like we’re missing something, and it’s not just the time to cook. I mean, let’s face it, we’re spending a lot of time in front of screens these days—even after work. Someone is watching all these shows or they wouldn’t be streaming into our homes in such incredible numbers. I believe that most people are feeling rather intimidated by cooking, and it has a lot to do with the opposing messages we’re getting about food.

We’ve lost personal, everyday food knowledge. Parents and grandparents aren’t passing down the old food traditions anymore and now cooking seems like an exotic undertaking to most people.

Is there no middle ground? No safe place for people to learn the basics anymore?

The mini camps I did over the holidays were all about baking and sweets. Every single one of them. The cookie decorating one was especially sugary. As an advocate for healthier eating for kids I suppose I could have had a crisis of conscience over those classes, but I didn’t. In fact, I felt great about offering them because they were fun. We did some serious old school, home-style cooking. And even though we used a lot of butter and sugar at least it was butter and sugar and not some weird list of chemicals. We made traditional holiday cookies, built things out of homemade gingerbread, and chopped dried nuts and fruits for sugarplums until it felt like we couldn’t chop another thing. Both the kids and parents loved it.

When I was a kid it didn’t feel like Christmas until the cookies were baked. I’m hoping these mini holiday camps helped add a little old-fashioned holiday spirit to my campers’ holidays this year.

Happy New Year to all the Camps.com readers out there. I hope everyone out there will make it a resolution to cook more at home in 2011. I doesn’t matter what it is, just get in the kitchen and try something new or ask a parent or grandparent for a favorite childhood recipe.

Chef Lisa Holmes
The Childrens Culinary Academy
Tel. 774.392.1711
www.childrensculinary.com

Books by Lisa Holmes
Bitter Harvest
In Mother’s Kitchen
Lunch Lessons

Camps Aren’t Just For Summer

camps — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:39:39 +0000

Summer is over, but camp doesn’t have to be! Some camps are created just for the summer, but many organizations offer school vacation camps throughout academic year as well. Taking a “staycation” doesn’t have to be boring for the kids—in fact making camp part of family’s week off is great for the kids who will have an engaging and unique experience away from the television and video games, and the parents who will undoubtedly find ways to put their free time to good use.

In the past, I have run week-long themed cooking camps for kids during spring and winter vacations. The possibilities for themed camps, particularly in the kitchen, are endless. One of my favorites is Kids Cook Around the World week. We’ve mashed chick peas for falafel, rolled dumpling skins for fresh potstickers, soaked rice paper for fresh Thai spring rolls, and marinated skewered chicken tenders for flavorful, earthy chicken satay. We have experimented with Taiwanese bubble drinks complete with tapioca pearls and giant straws, rolled our own California rolls, and have even made our own puffy pita bread. Seeing the kids every day for a week gives me the opportunity to create a more in-depth curriculum and helps create a stronger bond among the children. One week we might focus entirely on Asian cooking, another might be all about European food, still another could be centered on something as simple as seasonal snacks.

If you’re a camp director or teacher, think about running mini camps around holidays. For example, having a couple of Saturday “camp” days around the winter holidays can give parents the freedom to have some time alone to go shopping or wrap gifts. I will be offering holiday cookie-making mini camps for kids ages 5 and up on the weekends leading up to the holidays. Three free hours for parents can be priceless at that time of year and they get added bonus of holiday cookies without a mess in their own kitchens. What could be better?! A Valentine’s Day camp is another great opportunity for mom and dad to get away without the kids for a romantic dinner. For the kids it sure beats being stuck at home for the night on such a special day!

Though they’re not special occasions, Friday nights are also perfect for the same reasons. A themed series of classes (these ideas are not limited to food camps!) is always fun. Working towards a goal of some kind, like cooking for and serving the parents, or studying and practicing for a cooking contest, like a Kids “Iron Chef” event on the final day adds a level of excitement and keeps the kids engaged and interested from week to week. We recently had a fantastic little Kids’ Iron Chef event at The Children’s Culinary Academy. We kept it simple. All they had to make was salsa and baked tortilla chips. We were all surprised by the individuality they showed and were impressed to find that every recipe was uniquely flavorful. The parents couldn’t have been more pleased.

Do you run a unique mini camp during the school year? Has your child participated in one? If so, we’d love to hear about it!

The Season’s Best

camps — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:39:14 +0000

Every spring we start the garden anew, planting seeds and seedlings, dreaming about their seeming limitless potential. We fertilize and water and weed and stake. And we wait, wait, wait. The first treasures are always the herbs and we use them like crazy—in frittatas, biscuits, breads, sandwiches, pestos (pesti, if we’re using proper Italian), and sauces. In the absence of other, more substantial offerings from the garden, herbs are the kids’ primary focus. They ask me their names as they hover inquisitively over the plants. “Can we eat this?” they ask, over and over again. “Of course,” I say, as I encourage them to take small bites. “The flavors are strong,” I warn.

They eagerly taste everything, one child egged on by another. The best kind of peer pressure moves them from the friendly-sounding Chewing Gum Mint, to the extremely aromatic Rosemary. Basil and chives tend to be their favorites, and the intensity of the mint surprises them without fail.

As spring turns to summer, orange and yellow flowers give way to green tomatoes, small peppers, and the first of many zucchini. All the kids want to do is pick, pick, pick. We are anxious to taste the treasures we’ve cultivated. In our zeal we pick extra small summer squash, beets before their time, and a few too many green tomatoes before the sun and rain have a chance to bestow the garden’s true bounty. Our excitement grows along with the garden.

Then all of a sudden, everything happens at once. Tomatoes ripen faster than we can pick them, and a zucchini that sits unnoticed for a week grows to a monstrous 4 pounds, 10 ounces (we know, because we weighed it!). It was so large and so dark in color that some of the kids mistook it for an eggplant and came running into the kitchen proudly yelling, “Look at this giant eggplant!” If it had been an eggplant it would have been a giant indeed! I had not intended to burden the kids with another zucchini recipe this year (in the past we’ve made zucchini pickles, zucchini bread, and even zucchini burgers), but a squash that huge yielded enough grated zucchini for two dozen kids to each make a sizeable loaf of quick bread.

In other parts of the garden, onions seem to be jumping right out of the soil. Beets are ready, and the pumpkins are growing so large that we’re beginning to believe that for the first time in four years we’ll actually get to harvest our own pumpkins for the annual Ghoulish-ious Grub Halloween class.

Right now the kids are picking vegetables and herbs to use in the CCA’s kitchen, but we have such an abundant crop that they’re also taking a lot home. These days I often overhear parents and grandparents asking whether the children would like to cook the items they’ve harvested for dinner that evening. The pride on their faces is priceless. We aren’t ready for summer to end, but I think the kids are realizing that the best parts of the summer are ripening in the garden and will still be with us well into the fall.

Chef Lisa Holmes
The Childrens Culinary Academy
Tel. 774.392.1711
www.childrensculinary.com

Books by Lisa Holmes
Bitter Harvest
In Mother’s Kitchen
Lunch Lessons

Do You Speak Culinary?

camps — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:39:20 +0000

Do you know the difference between mincing and dicing? Chiffonade and julienne? Would you know what to do if someone told you to use the biscuit method? Any idea how yeast makes bread rise, or where vanilla beans come from? Did you know that cinnamon sticks are the inner bark of a tree?

The kids in my camp do, and some of them are only five years old.

It’s not enough, I’ve discovered, to simply show them how to cook. They need more information. Putting a vanilla bean in their hands, slicing it open, smelling it, scraping out the inside, and explaining that it comes from an orchid helps them to grasp the bigger picture. “Oh! So that’s what those black dots are in the ice cream!” Suddenly vanilla isn’t just a strange brown liquid in a tiny bottle, it’s something they can hold in their hands and as a bonus, a curious ice cream mystery has been solved.

That type of connection is the reason the kids in my camp maintain a garden too. It’s not enough for me to go to the store, buy a package of blackberries, or a bunch of kale, put it on the table and tell them what it is and how they should cook with it. They need the context. To understand a fruit or vegetable they need to see how it grows and what it looks like from seed to plate.

In the garden right now we have an amazing little crop of cantaloupes. Some of the children have been with me for many weeks this summer and have seen the melons go from flower to a sizeable piece of fruit and they are anxious to know when they’ll be ripe. I could describe to them what a ripe cantaloupe looks like, and I could even bring one in to show them, but I’ve decided to let them figure this out on their own. Two cantaloupes have been picked. The first was completely white inside. The flesh of the second, picked a week later, was beginning to turn orange. The seeds had turned pale orange and changed shape. It looked different on the outside too—there was more “netting” effect on the skin and less green showing. They know that they need to wait a bit longer now, and when they finally pick one at its peak they they’ll also know what to look for the next time they go grocery shopping with a parent.

Sometimes, if I’m doing my job right, the kids who take my classes even end up teaching their parents a thing or two.

Today we used more Bright Lights Swiss Chard from the garden to complete our gnocchi dish. We’ve had an amazing crop this year, and to my surprise, the kids have been receptive every time we’ve used it. After class, at pick-up a mom pointed at her son’s plate and asked, “What’s this? Kale? Spinach?” I didn’t even have to look behind me to see the boy’s eyes rolling. “No, mom, that’s SWISS CHARD.”

He speaks culinary—how about you?

Chef Lisa Holmes
The Childrens Culinary Academy
Tel. 774.392.1711
www.childrensculinary.com

Books by Lisa Holmes
Bitter Harvest
In Mother’s Kitchen
Lunch Lessons

Making Memories at Day Camp

camps — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 11:59:33 +0000

I remember being green with envy for years over the stories my friends came home telling about their adventures at sleep away summer camp. They regaled me with tales of canoeing, campfires, swimming in lakes, ghost stories, and, of course, the requisite pranks and practical jokes. No one was ever too excited about the food and there were always some who were desperately homesick, but that never seemed to me like reason enough to stay home. In my early teens I finally had my own summer camp adventures, and have never forgotten the sense of freedom I had. No one stopped us from playing in the rain and when we felt like it, we canoed for hours on the lake. Sleeping (or not) was our choice, and we had acres of gorgeous land around which to roam. Every so often I still think about my best summer camp friend, Maggie Welch, and wonder if she still thinks out of order signs on soda machines are as hilariously funny as she did that summer.

Day camps make great memories too, but they are short lived, and lasting memories are a bit more tenuous. That is especially true in camps like mine where we consume what we create. To help give kids a stronger connection to day camp, at the beginning of each new session, I provide them with blank cookbooks/journals where they can paste their recipes, write down what they did each day, create illustrations, and insert photographs of themselves cooking and gardening.

The first year our books were made out of construction paper and yarn, but the second year I made more substantial journals for each child. I sewed a couple of stitches in the bindings with multicolor crochet yarn to hold the pages together and attached colorful buttons as decorative closures. Each year the journals look different so the kids who come every summer will be able to easily identify them from a distance. On the first day of camp they approach their journals hesitantly, coloring a bit on the cover after they paste the recipe in, the second day they get a bit more adventurous, cutting the recipe out and arranging it artistically on the page, and by the third day they’re asking me midway through class when they get to work on their books. They draw pictures of the food they made with accompanying descriptions, and sketch pictures of their new friends. On the last day of class I surprise them with photographs that I’ve taken throughout the week. They spend some time looking at each other’s pictures, exclaiming, “Hey! That was me making bread!” or “Look! I’m chopping onions!” Most recently they’ve even spontaneously started asking each other to sign the last page of the book, creating an annual summer yearbook of sorts.

I get a lot of repeat campers and this year quite a few of them have talked about their journals from previous summers. Sometimes they’ll tell me about how they keep all the books and recipes in a special place in their kitchen so they can use the recipes again. Other times they’ll use their journal as a sort of benchmark, saying things like, “I know it was two years ago because there’s a picture of it in my book with the green cover….” I’m delighted that they walk away from their week with me with a scrapbook of a fun time in their lives and I think some of their overnight camping friends must listen to my campers’ stories and feel just a little bit green with envy.

Chef Lisa Holmes
The Childrens Culinary Academy
Tel. 774.392.1711
www.childrensculinary.com

Books by Lisa Holmes
Bitter Harvest
In Mother’s Kitchen
Lunch Lessons

Packing Clothes for First-Time Campers

camps — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:53:26 +0000

When packing clothes for a young child to take to camp, remember that your child may be living in a tent or cabin in close proximity to several other children in possession of very similar clothes. Clothes may easily become mixed up or lost in the ensuing clutter. Also, many parents overestimate a child’s ability to make wise clothing choices, pairing shirts properly with shorts and cycling each outfit appropriately into a dirty clothes bag at the end of its day of wear.

To combat this, first consider the number of days your child will be away at camp. If your child will be gone for a week or less, assemble each complete outfit—all the way down to the socks and underwear—and place a set of clothes for each day into a separate plastic bag. Using a marker, write the name of the day on the bag.

If your child will be gone for more than a week, have him or her use an indelible pen to label the tag of each item of clothing. Then make sure he or she knows how each week’s worth of clothes will be washed. Will your child do the wash by himself? Or will the camp take the clothes, wash them and return them? In either case, it may be wise to pack a few extra outfits, anticipating that some items will be lost from one week to the next. Also: Remember that you can never pack too many pairs of socks and underwear.

- Erin Sweeney

Dishwashing at Summer Camp

camps — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 19:50:56 +0000

Just outside the antique village of Zoar, there is a wonderful used bookstore run by two white haired ladies who might be sisters. The two have been in business for several decades and the books on a few of their shelves are very old– the type that have publication dates printed in roman numerals and tissue paper-covered frontispieces. There are also a few shelves of books from the 1950’s, written in a post war era and influenced by the prevailing culture in ways with which we’ve lost touch, usually for the best.

It was on one of these shelves that I discovered a dusty copy of “Useful Information for Girl Guides and Campfire Girls, A Camping Manual for Girls and their Families.”

The contents were as you might imagine, and I read over them with a kind of perverse, fascinated amusement. Girls, according to the book, were utterly helpless in the outdoors, were not to overexert themselves immodestly, needed extra protection from wind, cold, water, darkness, reality, and so on and so on. As my fascination was beginning to wear thin and I was about to place the book back on the shelf, I stumbled upon a section on “meals, meal preparation, and dishwashing.”

At a girls’ camp, said the book (I paraphrase this), dishwashing should be an elaborate ritual. It should involve as many stages as possible and many tasks that can be shared, ideally in the form of an assembly line. The dishes should be passed from hand to hand as they are scraped, soaked, washed, rinsed, boiled, cooled, and dried. Teamwork should be emphasized, as should singing, preferably rhythmic singing. Girls, after all, will spend a significant percentage of their adult lives engaged in the act of dishwashing and camp is an opportune time to ward off the sense of bleakness and drudgery that can accompany this task. Weave a tapestry of positive feelings and memories around this chore and you will influence many young lives for the better.

My feelings, as I read this passage, were twofold.

First, I had a realization. I had started Girl Scouts in the eighties, when many of these old attitudes still had a bit of life in them. “That’s why they always made us boil the dishes!” I thought.

Second, I was a camp counselor at that time during the summers and I did a quick review of the unconscious habits I had taken on when instructing my campers on dishwashing. Did we ever sing during this process? I wasn’t sure. But I resolved that from that point forward, we never would. My camp had different ideas about how to influence young lives for the better.

We would wash the dishes and dry them—quickly—and then we would get back outside. Into the lakes and the fields, off and away on the long rocky trails, and back into the Pennsylvania mountain wilderness where we belonged.

Singing voices sound better out there anyway.

- Erin Sweeney

Summer Camp Song Lyrics

camps — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:14:22 +0000

Camp songs change over the years, but a few patterns seem to hold true generation after generation. Among them: Camp songs tend to be catchy. They require simple musical accompaniment, if any. And most camp songs have lyrics that make absolutely no sense at all. I attribute this to a “whisper down the lane” effect resulting from generations of words heard and repeated improperly. How else do we explain camp songs like “Little Bunny Foo-Foo” and “Rigadandoo”? If you are familiar with these songs, please do the following: write down the words, as you know them, and send them to me, so I can compare what each of us heard and remembered. Did Little Bunny Foo-Foo really scoop up field mice and bop them on the head? He many have been playing basketball with them or teaching them Latin verbs. I may have misunderstood that song. I may have missed the point entirely.

Kids Have Palates Too!

camps — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:43:29 +0000

I started thinking about teaching kids to cook right after I graduated from culinary school. I didn’t have kids at the time (I have two now), but I’d always loved working with children and had come up with what I thought was a great concept for a children’s cookbook. By that time I’d written enough books to know that understanding the competition was essential, so I started doing some research.
I was surprised to learn how simplistic and silly most of them were. Cartoon fruits and vegetables with carefully crafted personalities clearly took more time to conceive than the recipes, which were composed of canned foods thrown together and, at best, heated in the microwave. The rest didn’t involve cooking at all—sandwiches with silly faces, tortilla pizzas, fruit kebabs, and the old standby, ants on a log, were ubiquitous. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t figure out why parents would invest their time or money in cookbooks that aren’t about cooking. I think underneath it all a lot of people believed, and still do, that children aren’t interested in cooking real food.

Children’s cookbooks have changed a bit since then, but I’ve noticed that most people are skeptical when I tell them I teach cooking classes to three year olds. When they ask what we cook they grow wide-eyed with disbelief. The truth is that the three year olds are some of my best students. One reason is that they are virtually fearless. (Which is also the reason they should never be trusted in a kitchen alone!) Some may have begun to develop a few idiosyncratic eating habits, but in general they are still willing to try new things. One of their recent favorites was Blueberry Clafoutis. The five to nine year olds will consent to trying new things if they’ve had a hand in making them. Recently they loved eating Mediterranean roasted vegetable sandwiches with fresh basil and mozzarella on bread we made in class that day. Another time, on a whim, I brought in some Gruyere cheese for their roasted root vegetable galettes and they went absolutely crazy for it, both on and off the galettes. Yesterday we made Filipino-style empanadas, loaded with garlic, onions, peas, and carrots, and seasoned with soy sauce and rice vinegar. The majority loved it.

Not every kid likes everything we cook and I’m okay with it. When that happens we engage in conversation about it and I remind them that the important thing is they made something new and tasted it. Sometimes they surprise me and like something I don’t expect (like caramelized onions). It’s my job as their teacher to help them expand their palates, and it’s satisfying to see their excitement and pride as they discover new flavors and become more independent in the kitchen.

I haven’t gotten around to writing that cookbook yet, but after everything I’ve learned from my students over the past few years, one thing is certain—when I do finally put that book together, there won’t be a single smiley faced sandwich or ant on a log in it because I know that kids enjoy complex flavors on their plates too!

Chef Lisa Holmes
The Childrens Culinary Academy
Tel. 774.392.1711
www.childrensculinary.com

Books by Lisa Holmes
Bitter Harvest
In Mother’s Kitchen
Lunch Lessons

Tree Planting at Summer Camp

camps — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:48:59 +0000

Tree planting can be an excellent and memorable camp activity for children of almost any age. Even very young children who can’t yet handle a shovel can still help bury the roots of a newly planted tree and will walk away from the experience with a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of connection to the land.

First, make sure the landowners have given permission for the tree planting and have specified the desired location for the new tree or trees. After all, a new tree is ideally a permanent alteration of the landscape.

Second, research native tree species that are likely to thrive under the conditions of the chosen location. Is the soil wet or dry? Well or poorly drained? Clay-like or sandy?

When procuring the new saplings, choose the healthiest specimens available. If you aren’t sure what a healthy hornbeam or silver maple sapling looks like, seek the assistance of an agricultural extension agent or tree specialist.

On the day of the planting, make sure all children have access to work gloves. Follow the planting instructions for your specific tree species carefully. For almost all tree species, err on the side of shallow rather than deep planting– It is better to leave a few roots exposed then subject the trunk to rot by burying too deeply.