The Cupertino Courier

Education

Young chefs create some tasty, nutritious dishes

By ERIN HUSSEY

Getting children to eat healthy, nutritious meals isn't always easy, but with fun hands-on activities such as cooking contests, the Sunnyvale Elementary School District is making it a lot less difficult.

"It's a great way to educate children on healthy nutrition," said Cynthia Sixt, a food service consultant from Sodexho, the company contracted by the district to provide food and cafeteria services to all of its 10 neighborhood schools.

Sodexho's "Be Smart, Eat Smart, Live Smart" campaign" encourages students to make healthy food choices through a number of innovative and educational activities and programs including student cooking contests.

"Children usually don't have the self-discipline to make the right choices," said Sixt. "But the more you expose them to the right choices, the better the chances are that they will eat healthy."

The Sunnyvale District Cooking Contest was open to the eight elementary schools in the district. Every student was invited to submit a fun, easy-to-prepare, healthy recipe for consideration. More than 250 recipes were turned in and one finalist was selected from each school.

"They are kid-friendly and for the most part, very, very nutritious," said Daryl Henry, Sodexho regional chef for school services, who was in charge of choosing the finalists.

The final eight recipes included a fruit salad, fruit smoothie, English muffin pizza, crunchy Asian salad, celery caterpillars, a bean dip and apple smiles.

"I really like to eat apples and peanut butter so I decided to put them into a little snack," said Wenting Zhang, a third-grade student from San Miguel Elementary.

Wenting's apple smiles consist of two slices of apples, peanut butter and miniature marshmallows for teeth.

"My mom told me that apples have a lot of fiber and vitamin A and C and half the vitamin C is in the skins of the apples; and the peanut butter is healthy for your heart."

On May 25, Wenting and the rest of her competitors had a live cook-off at Lakewood Elementary. Each student was provided a chef's hat, shirt, apron and all necessary ingredients.

"I think it's a great idea," said Kristine Lawrence.

While parents were allowed and encouraged to help their student-chefs, Lawrence's fourth-grade son Kyle, who attends Cumberland Elementary, preferred to cook without a sous chef.

"He loves to cook," said Lawrence.

Kyle's chicken quesadilla recipe consisted of whole-wheat tortillas filled with chicken, cheese, salsa, black beans and shredded carrots.

"He helps out in the kitchen a couple times a week and I think pretty soon we'll have a Kyle's cooking night,'' said Lawrence.

Rebecca Sagherian, a fifth-grade student from Cherry Chase, shares Kyle's love of creating new recipes and cooking. She created mini-pizzas made from whole-wheat English muffins, pizza sauce, cheese, black olives and turkey pepperoni.

"A lot of kids like to eat them because there is nothing disgusting in them," said Rebecca.

"She's one of those kids that would rather watch The Food Network than cartoons," saidCarolyn Sagherian, Rebecca's mother.

"When she cooks at home she talks out loud like she's Rachael Ray."

After all the student-chefs had completed their recipes, four judges, including B.C. Gibbons, district assessment coordinator, evaluated them on taste, presentation, ease of preparation and nutritional value.

"They all are really proud of what they have done," said Gibbons.

After all the dishes had been tasted and evaluated, Lakewood fourth-grade student Alex Ciseros's fruit smoothie was announced the first-place winner. His smoothie consists of three ingredients: fresh strawberries, bananas and nonfat vanilla yogurt.

"I just made it up in my mind," says Alex, who received a new bicycle as his prize.

"I just thought about something that I would like that was good and had healthy things. It was perfect the first time I tried it out."