LINO LAKES, Minn. – (June 29, 2017) – Even though it’s the middle of summer, some local kids are willing spending their days in school. A small non-profit school in Lino Lakes focuses on cooking skills, while also teaching kids about self-confidence and healthy eating.
“I teach kids how to love cooking with real food instead of fast food,” said Executive Director and Chef at the Kids Cooking School, Tiffany Cavegn.
Over the summer, Kids Cooking School has week-long camps focusing on different cooking skills or themes. They’ve made breakfast foods, pastas, chocolates, and planted their own vegetable garden.
“Today we are making treacle tarts, because it’s a Harry Potter themed week.”
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The Harry Potter book series is the theme for the week, and the kids are making foods and beverages that they have read about or seen in the movies.
“Most children just really adore the books and movies,” said Cavegn.
She got a Harry Potter themed cook book and realized that many recipes in the book taught a lot of fundamental aspects of cooking, including how to make a pie crust from scratch.
Tiffany opened the Kids Cooking School in February. And it’s a school that she hopes can help give kids a different path than she had.
“I was an obese child. I was bullied. It was really hard to grow up without a healthy lifestyle,” said Cavegn. “After twenty-five years in the marketing industry, I decided that I wanted to do something where I really gave back to our community, and I really wanted to do something that tackled childhood obesity.”
From there, she started teaching classes, got certified as a health coach and went to online culinary school. Then, these classes started selling out, and many of them have a waiting list. And she is doing all of this as a non-profit.
“The mission, really, is two-fold. It’s not only to provide financial assistance, but it’s also to teach our kids about healthy living, and how to use everything from scratch, so they are learning those cooking skills,” said Cavegn.
Clinton Kish-Bailey has become a regular at the school. He says that his interest in cooking and baking is pretty simple.
“Cause I like to eat,” said Kish-Bailey.
He has learned a lot of things through classes, and is now working as an assistant at the school.
“I learned how to make macrons, French macrons. Those are tough. I’m still having trouble making those,” he said.
Clinton has been baking most of his life, and still recreates one of the first recipes he made with his grandmother.
“When I was little, I baked with my grandma. We’d make sour cream coffee cake. But, I didn’t start baking on my own until a couple of months ago.”
And using what he learned through his family and through the school, with the help of Tiffany, Clinton took a big chance and tried out for the Kids Baking Championship on the Food Network.
“It was an amazing learning experience,” said Cavegn. “I could not be prouder of Clinton.”
“I didn’t make it, but I was so close,” said Kish-Bailey.
He made it through several rounds of audition tapes and recipes, and was cut out of the contestant pool just before they started taping the show. But, he is already working on some ideas for his tryout next year.
The Kids Cooking School primarily does week-long camps during the summer, but also has after school classes and Saturday classes, as well as other special classes that revolve around the school year.
“All days those days that school is closed, but mom and dad still have to work – there’s like twenty of them throughout the school year – and so we offer a day camp that is very much like summer camp through the year,” said Cavegn.
After three hours of learning and cooking, most of these tarts were headed home, to be served with dinner and shared with pride.
“They love bringing what they made home, because they have such pride in what they did. Then they show it to their parents, and their parents are usually completely amazed by what they are actually able to do.”
And while the focus is on cooking skills, Tiffany sees that these kids are also learning much more.
“They are having a lot of fun, and they don’t realize all the things that they are learning. Not just cooking skills, but self confidence and self-worth. If you are watching any of these children when they are making this flaky pie crust by themselves, their faces really light up that, ‘I did this, all by myself.'”
As there treacle tarts came out of the oven, the smells and smiles filled the room.
“That’s the real reason, I think, that keeps us going every day here is the joy and the smiles on all their faces.”
