I am a fan of Helen Campbell, and her Week of Tastes program. I admit, if I were a kid, I d be jumping up and down just to have a week dedicated to EATING with my friends, having chefs come in and cook for us a delicious spread of their most famous dishes, perhaps even designing my very own menu! And that was exactly what some of the kids who participated in the program got to do:

Here’s Kylie Kwong cooking up a storm at St Francis Paddington;

The Bourke St boys threw down some dough on the table and got the Bourke St Public kids shaping and baking

Chef Tom Kime took some lucky ones on a Taste Trail through Eveleigh Markets

While Colin Fassnidge from Four in Hand dished it out to Clovelly Primary

Let’s not forget our very own Artisan Bakers getting in the dough with Malabar Primary

(Week of Tastes via Helen Campbell)

And Paddington Public Year 4s got to design their very own restaurant menus, complete with photos of them (in all their messy splendour) preparing and cooking their various entrees, mains and desserts.

Cut to having my regular Training meeting with Michael in the caf , throwing around ideas over a new kids baking course, as opposed to a single new class option. I admit, I was in a little bit of a rut with the Summer School Holiday Baking Program. Yes, Kids in the Kitchen was all the rage over Winter, Masterchef was the new phenomenon storming the minds of children and adults. Spring brought with it the excitement and flavours of the Sydney International Food Festival. But what about Summer? A good number of families escape the Sydney heat in January, and outdoor activities rule the roost when it comes to children s holiday programs. Kids aren t meant to be in the Kitchen; they re meant to be running around, working up a sweat, lazing under trees, jumping into pools with plenty of floaty devices on hand.

If anything, this Summer problem made me realise the cheap way of relying on seasonality for promoting our baking programs, just as I can t rely on the novelty of kids cooking and eating their own food to sell itself forever. If anything, the last few months of Baking Classes and Excursions, along with the Week of Tastes program have really hit home the importance of the fun element and taking their opinions seriously when it comes to kids and their food. The foodie scene isn t just a niche space hoarded by food editors or bloggers anymore; it s grown to be quite a substantial part of what it means to be a Sydney-sider . Point is, to show our kids we take them seriously, we can t just be hawking the same class and tweaking descriptions – we should be tweaking the program!

Process and growth, that s what I ve been trying to get at in my usual roundabout, take-a-left-turn-and-continue-along-tangent fashion. Sustaining a passion and lively interest in food is a process. Growing that interest isn t just simply achieved after the first discovery, just as growing healthy eating habits for life isn t achieved after one baking class, or one excursion.

It s all about maintaining the search and discovery for something new, and keeping it fresh, intriguing and entertaining. Kids cooking their own food gives them a sense of ownership over their own actions and body, and clearly demonstrated by the Paddo Public kids who, by devising their own menu, sourcing their own ingredients, then documenting their own process of creating it, they are in control, what they create counts for something. It s not yours, if you don t own the process!