Week 8

Another amazing session. This week's menu consisted of delicious pasta with salami,onion, tomatoes and chees; garden salad and bruschetta...yum: )

Week 7

This week kids were making absolutely delicious wontons with chicken, nutricious Kangaroo burgers, pancakes with wild peaches and sour cream, and a fruit salad.
Excitement: 10/10
Food: 10/10
Fun: 10/10

Great session: )

My First Koori Kitchen session

Although, I've always been very comfortable when it came to dealing with kids, I realized that I was a bit too concerned about the possible differences in reactions/ perceptions between kids I've dealt with before and the aboriginal kids I was about to meet. When I realized that I actually knew next to nothing about their culture, traditions, way of life, it made me even more aware of my actions towards them. However, when I actually met them, I realized that they were not that much different from the rest of the kids. Throughout an entire session everybody was having fun preparing all kinds of food: from chicken and veal to a fruit salad.

I felt like it was a truly unique experience for kids- one of those moments when they were really enjoying what they were doing. At some point I realized that it is not just a project about the benefits of healthy nutrition. It is a set of amazing team building and leadership activities that will definitely help these kids to become more confident about themselves. Just wanted to thank everyone who was involved in organizing the project- you have done an absolutely amazing job.

What has Koori Kitchen given me?

Before I leave on my trip, Tina asked me to write up a few points on what I've gained out of being involved in the Koori Kitchen program.

Firstly, the program has exposed me to the indigenous Australian culture. Prior to my involvement, I knew very little about the culture (let alone having met an Aboriginal person). It's taught me that people can be indigenous, no matter what their background, location or skin colour is.

Being involved has also shown me how generous people can be. All of those involved in the program volunteered their weekends (and more!) to provide the kids with a fun and constructive learning environment. It's absolutely wonderful to see it all coming together and to see the kids gain something out of the program, and I think everyone who has been involved (from Tina to the PBoX team to the supervisors to the chefs and sportspeople) has contributed to this. I think they can be proud of what they've done.

I have immensely enjoyed my time in the programme, and I hope the remaining sessions and the gala dinner are a great success! Thanks for letting me be a part of it.

Jeremy

Recommendations for the program

So... Tina has asked me to give feedback on the program so we can improve it in the next round. Here goes!

* Flow of kitchen sessions

It would be good to organise the kitchen sessions a bit better. That's not to say that they should be totally rigid, but I found that in some cases there were people that were left without something to do. As a result, some of the kids got bored, which isn't good for retention. It's something that's hard to do, but we need to do it better in the upcoming sessions (and in the next round of Koori Kitchen)

* Bottlenecks

I found that there is a big bottleneck with Nic. We usually had two groups going, with Nic organising one group and someone else with another group. This causes some problems, in that whoever's in charge of the second group of kids (and supervisors) needs to talk to Nic to find out what to do next. If there was a documented set of steps ( 1) cut up tomatoes, 2) wash lettuce, 3) cut meat), then we wouldn't have to annoy Nic to get info (when he's running around madly trying to make sure everything's working anyway!).

So... telling the supervisors what is required and the steps they need to take would be beneficial, I think. It also makes it look like we know what we're doing (even if we don't!). Another option would be to have the chef taking one group, and Nic the other. That might work, too.

* Celebrities

I thought having the celebrities there was good for the kids. They seemed to talk to them a little bit. I'm not sure how much of an incentive it was to come, though. Considering that we didn't advertise to the kids that they'd be there, it was also difficult. We really need some way of letting the kids know well in advance (earlier in the week) about who's going to be there, what we're cooking, etc. This might be someone going to the school during the week and talking for 5 minutes to the class, or an email, something...

* Involvement

I thought the results in recent weeks have been great. It's wonderful to see the kids grasping the concepts in the kitchen and wanting to get involved. I guess the hard part is getting them to trust you and making it fun so they come. The Zoo was a good introduction, but it would've been great to spend some more time there and perhaps get a better sense of how food is integral to the zoo.

* Opportunities

Given how young the program is, this has been hard, but it would be great to stress the opportunities that the kids can have by taking part in this program. Establishing some links with TAFE or Aunty Beryl's program would be an excellent way of doing this, so that kids can move into those programs if they want a future in cooking (or restaurant management, etc).

I think that's about it! Hopefully this will help make the program better in the remaining sessions and next year! Thanks for letting me be a part of it. :)

Jem

Roast Chicken is sssssoooooo easy!

I can't believe how easy it is to cook roast chicken... this week went unbelieveable smoothly despite the fact that Nic was sitting an exam for the first half of the class and had me in charge of the Kitchen, setting up, shopping and starting the class. Thanks to Lorr, the chef who turned up early, we were well organised for when the students arrived. Though they didn't think much of my attempt at iced tea (not sure what went wrong..) the students were ready to go from the moment they walked in the door. First up we got one student up the front to help Lorr demonstrate how to prepare the chicken for roasting, she gloved up and quickly got into rubbing the il and herbs onto the chicken, so that we could get it into the oven in time t eat by the end of class...aparently a whole chicken takes an hour and a half to cook, and the chef was very surprised that we got it done on time. The chicken was then sealed in a pan (by a student) before roasting. For the rest of the class the girls "fought" over who "made" the chicken and which was more important. sealing or oiling! Either way it was perfectly moist and very tasty.

Next up we got everyone up to crumb up their own piece of veal snitzel, could have been incredably messy but due to an awesome tip from Lorr about "one hand for dry stuff and one for wet" we didnt end up with too many crumed fingers. In the mean time we had the students chopping up tonnes of cool incredients for a very funky greek salad, with crumbed fetta, yellow tomatoes, yellow capsicum, red onion, red tomatoes, cucumber and marinated olives which we pitted ourselves. We also had some salmon to add at the table, to cater for our peeps that don't eat fish.

We also had a col fruit salad with mango, honey dew melon, ruby red greatfruit and apple. Yummy.

All in all the meal was fantastic, I was really impressed by the snitzel, which i was actually expecting to be a little dodgy (though by the price of the meat you'd hope not). It was golden and crispy. Totally awesome, especially withthe salad and roast chicken to boot.

The best thing is that student numbers are growing and the kids skills are improving unbelievably. I feel like not only are they really enjoying eating the food, but really getting into the preparation part of the meal too. No problems finding someone to demonstrate in front of the class, everyone wants to have a go at everything! Now the only problem is finding enough stuff for them to fill the whole two hours, though it was great to have a little extra time to chat about the menu for the gala dinner and all the other things that are coming up.

I'm so proud of all the students, and so sad that I wont be able to see them graduate, having put a year into developing this program I'm also so relieved to have it up and runing and to have students actually enjoying it.

The coolest thing is that i cooked roast chicken for dinner tonight and didnt set the kitchen on fire! Amazing huh...