'Cooking with Katie' showing kids the finer points of the culinary arts
Published on July 25th, 2007
STONEHAM, MA - For cuisine and cooking lover Katie Wilton, there's nothing better than watching young children and adolescents chopping-up fresh ingredients and dropping a tasty snack into a frying pan.
But for many of those youngsters' parents, spotting their child handling sharp knives or working near a hot stove top evokes a much more nervous and worrisome response.
According to Wilton, who operates the youth focused Cooking With Katie company, her mission is to change those parental attitudes.
And this Monday, with the help of a grant from the Stoneham Business and Community Education Foundation, she took that calling to the Stoneham Public Library, where 15 young cooks learned some basic culinary and cooking techniques.
"This age group is very interested in cooking. But what I've found is that parents are sometimes a little nervous about their children using knives, or a frying pan, or a toaster oven," the Buffalo, N.Y. native explained.
"The best way I'm able to overcome that is to have these hands on cooking classes. Once you give [kids] these responsibilities, they get so excited about it," Wilton elaborated. "So my goal is to show parents that these kids are really flipping a pizza wanton in a frying pan and that they really can do this."
This Monday, armed with a toaster oven, blender, stove top, and loads of hand sanitizer, Wilton instructed a class of 9 to 14 year olds on basic cooking concepts. After that introduction, the lifelong elementary and middle school teacher then let the participants prepare five popular snacks from her newest "Cooking with Katie Cookbook".
According to Wilton, her cookbook, which costs $13.95 and has sold over 5,000 copies since its May of 2006 release, primarily focuses on four food groups: eggs, cheese, pasta, and blueberry's and strawberries. The 15 youngsters, who each prepared a separate recipe this Monday, then shared the homemade yogurt fruit shakes, deviled eggs, parmesan pita triangles, pizza wantons, and cream-cheese strawberries amongst each other.
"They make one recipe, but they get to try everything," the teacher said of her cooking courses, which she offers all across the region. "The crowd favorite was pretty typical, the pizza wantons. They just go crazy over them."
"I try to focus in on better eating habits. So I talk about how if you make it at home, you can control what you put in," the local author and lecturer said. "I also talk about smaller portion sizes. So for example, instead of eating an entire piece of cheesecake, you can have a strawberry filled with cream-cheese."
According to Wilton, she's had a passion for teaching ever since she was a fourth grader in elementary school.
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