“Cooking is all about people. Food is maybe the only universal thing that really has the power to bring everyone together.” 

– Guy Fieri

I’ve always been passionate about food. Well, the art of cooking the food more than eating it, of course. From the beginning, I was keen on expanding my knowledge and learning more from here mainly because of the cultural differences and the variations that brings into food.

On the first day, we had to cook chicken quesadillas. Before getting to work, we were put into two groups- one was in charge of the chicken and one was in charge of the salad. I chose to do the chicken and we could successfully finish it under an hour. This way, I had focussed on improving my Collaborative Skills, Initiative and Planning and Ethics of Choices and Actions since we were cooking with people who were younger than us.

The next week, we made a pizza with the leftover bread from the last time to avoid any kind of wastage. I volunteered to make the chicken again and the kids started working on the vegetables and the bread. Then we assembled everything and put it in the oven to bake. This day, we finished a little over an hour but it was worth it.

The following week, we made a chicken curry with rice and carrot juice. The chicken curry was supposed to be traditional Jamaican and so it had a lot of spices and ingredients we otherwise wouldn’t find in Sri Lanka. All of this took a long time to cook and some of us had to stay back to finish it. We couldn’t really manage time properly this day.

The week after that, we made chicken empanadas. This time, I didn’t volunteer to make the chicken because I really wanted to make the pastry and I felt like I’d made chicken enough. Making the pastry dough with the seventh graders was a bit of a challenge in the beginning and it slowed the whole process down but we were able to make them under an hour.

I feel like I’ve learnt a lot here. I have learnt basic survival cooking and I look forward to practically using my knowledge soon. (LO1 & LO2).