From Zoodles to Crepes, These Young Chefs Go Out of Their Comfort Zone to Learn New Skills!

Our week long summer camp based at Chaparral House in Berkeley offers young chefs an opportunity to learn and create in their sunny outdoor kitchen and garden space. Chaparral House is a senior housing and care facility that allows us to use their very spacious countertop, pizza oven, and grill for cooking in addition to providing us two garden beds to plant vegetables and flowers. This week we had a lot of fun learning new kitchen skills such as separating eggs and using a vegetable spiralizer.

Our two French summer camp counselors, Laure and Laurene, showed the campers how to make crepes from scratch. For the crepe recipe, each camper had a turn at separating an egg yolk from the white using a common technique the utilizes the cracked shell. Afterwards, we filled them with a spiced yogurt and a strawberry nectarine fruit compote.

We also got to try our hand at making zucchini noodles, or zoodles, using a spiralizer. We tossed the long curly zucchini ribbons with shaved carrots, bell peppers, cabbage, fresh herbs, and a soy-sesame vinaigrette. While creating this dish, the little chefs joined together in a cry of disgust, definitively asserting they would not enjoy a salad made of raw zucchini. Their reaction after trying a bite was quite the opposite, however, and the salad proved to be a camp favorite from the week!