Our first session of Growing Taste Buds is complete, and today couldn’t have been a more triumphant finish!  Before I tell you all about that, I should get you caught up on the excitement of our last few classes.

After Brad & Hannah Long, and the great Afrim Pristine, our final two guest chefs were Mark Cutrara from Cowbell Restaurant, and Jamie Kennedy from Gilead Café.  Mark brought a full beef loin to break down and give the kids a lesson in butchery.  I wasn’t sure how they would handle the whole dead-animal-on-the-table thing, but to my surprise, they were all totally cool with it.  We talked openly about the circle of life and eating animals.  One of the kids asked, “aren’t cows good because they give us milk?  Shouldn’t we let them live?” Awesome.

They watched remarkably patiently as Mark broke down the loin, then they ground up their own meat (and a nice piece of fat) and we made sliders.  I couldn’t help myself and brought some of my dill pickles from last year, and made asparagus “fries” to balance out the colour on the plates. 

The kids really handled themselves well around the meat, and were all so curious about what was happening in front of them.  You could see hesitation at some points, but they all really took it in. 

Then we had a lesson in portioning with gloves that are too big for your small hands…it’s actually an added challenge!  Every single one of the kids who wanted to eat the meat they ground up was unphased by seeing the butchery in front of them.  They saw it, and they still wanted to eat it. This is just more fuel for the kids-can-handle-way-more-than-we-give-them-credit-for argument.

Jamie brought us a lesson about frites with homemade mayo.  We had a lovely discussion about local food and what it means to support farmers and eat real things.  They watched attentively as drop by drop of oil was whisked into egg yolks for mayo, and squealed with delight at a taste that Jamie dotted on the backs of their hands.

We took a once-blanched batch of frites out to Jamie’s sons Micah and Jackson who sell JK frites in the Farmer’s Market.  They fried them up for us, made mini cones, and let the kids go to town with squeeze bottles of mayo.  It was a lovely moment and we caused a nice bit of commotion in the market. 

With some time to spare, we did a blind, spice smell test, which ended up with the kids leaving with cardamom pods in their pockets for tea!  

We also had a market shopping trip, and were lucky enough to get a taste of some snap peas from the ever cheerful Vicki from Vicki’s Veggies. 

Mark, Jamie and I all marveled at how great it was to be making good taste imprints in these kids’ memories.  Now that they know what a good burger tastes like, they’ll always have a gauge for every other burger they eat.  Now that they’ve had high quality fries and luxurious homemade mayo, they’ll (hopefully!) look at all future ones a bit more discerningly.  This is precisely what Brad was doing with his mushroom dumplings, and for sure it's what Afrim did with his mighty cheese tasting. Iit’s just wonderful for kids to be able to learn these important things at a young age, AND from masters of their craft!  All the grown ups in the room shared really excited smiles about having the chance to engage honestly with kids about good food.  With promises to visit the restaurants, the kids were off and our volunteers and I high-fived each other for being the coolest kids food program ever.