Community Kitchen brings students nutrition and opportunities

The kitchen backsplashes are covered with up-to-date subway tiles. There are seven workstations, complete with sink, oven and range combo, counter space and storage cupboards and drawers. And there are even control panels operated with a code so students can turn on the power to the ranges and have them shut off automatically if a chef accidentally leaves them on.

On a recent Friday afternoon, students who participate in the Education Success Foundation’s after-school enrichment program, EnCompass Future Ready, filled the Community Kitchen to create Caesar salad with chicken strips. The program has several aims: help kids with academics (there’s a homework and tutoring segment before the cooking), teach students something about nutrition and cooking, and showcase a potential job path they can explore.

The kitchen was made after gutting an old convent kitchen in a building on the former Nazareth Academy campus on Lake Avenue. Education Success Foundation, or ESF, owns the campus now and conducts its educational support programming in some of the buildings, while also renting academic space to two charter schools.

The students in the after-school program come from a couple of nearby charter schools, a traditional public school, and a school focusing on students with learning differences. Most are dealing with poverty.

“The parents may be working multiple jobs, so they’re not home to cook,” said Rebecca Ferri, communications manager at ESF. “The kids don’t know how to prepare their own healthy meals.” And when they do cook, budgeting for groceries is an issue. “A lot of families were telling us there’s not a lot of food at home,” she said.

Besides personal obstacles, the students face national trends of families no longer passing cooking skills from generation to generation, and the demise of home economics courses that used to teach basic cooking skills in school.

The class began in January, but on this Friday it’s just the second time students have been able to use a full-fledged kitchen. Previously they worked in a nearby space using an electric skillet instead of a full range.

“This is definitely better,” said Jazyrah Wright, an 11^th grader from Young Women’s College Prep Charter School.

Her classmate, Jada Walker, said the kitchen facilities will allow students to make more varied recipes.

In the time they girls have been students of the class, they’ve learned to make healthier food options, Jada explained. “When we made mac and cheese, we made a roux instead of straight cheese,” she said. A roux, made of butter and flour, allows the dish to be creamy without needing as much cheese as in some recipes.

Since learning about nutrition, Jada said, she’s also tried to persuade her father to control the portion sizes he serves when making spaghetti. There’s just the two of them in the house, but he makes enough for more, she said.

Then she moved on to her afternoon’s assignment, which was making the Caesar dressing with Raajon Moss, an 11^th grade student at School of the Arts.

This class represents just one group that will use the Community Kitchen. Family dinners associated with ESF programs will also make use of it, as well as other age groups of students. In all, ESF programs reach about 2,300 students and their families.

It took about two years for the organization to raise money and make the renovations for the kitchen. Key sponsors were the Sands Family Supporting Foundation, a part of the Rochester area Community Foundation; Appliance Tec; Edward Hourihan and Bridget Dee; Five Star Bank, Excellus BlueCross BlueShield; Genesee Construction Service; LMC Industrial Contractors Inc.; Lynn Farash; and Whirlpool.

The students get a whole lot more than cooking lessons. Among other things, they spend time with adults who’ve experienced some of the same issues they’ve faced.

Jamarr Myers, coordinator for EnCompass Future Ready, an ESF program focusing on becoming independent adults, attaining higher education and finding careers, is on loan to the program from Wegmans. Myers is a role model who looks like many of the kids – but bigger and balder. And he’s had experience with survival, a result of losing his father to homicide and his mother to illness both before he turned 18.

Site coordinator Betty Wolfanger noted that she was born to a 16-year-old mother, a situation to which many students might relate.

Students also get extensive ESF tutoring in all the academic subjects, but particularly in writing. Wolfanger said,  “Writing is a huge reason kids flunk out of college, so we want to make sure they’re ready for that.”

And they get to shadow in fields, such as firefighting, that they might pursue, college or not. The Caesar salad class featured a guest instructor, Charmaine Walker, owner and chef of Stop One Kitchen, of 1160 N. Goodman St.

ESF connects kids and their families to food in a number of other ways, too. There’s a garden on the grounds that students help tend. The organization has partnered with Foodlink both to provide nutrition-counseling cooking classes and for its Curbside Market, a mobile food market that reaches into many low-income areas that don’t have access to fresh, reasonably priced produce.

Though construction on the kitchen is complete and the appliances are hooked up, Community Kitchen is still a work in progress in some ways. Basic tools have already been laid in, but the kitchen is in need of additional supplies, from paring knifes to lemon zesters to potholders. ESF has set up a wish list at Amazon for people who are interested in donating some of the needed equipment.

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