By Khalida Sarwari
Eden Israel plopped a roll of dough on a wooden board in front of her, rolled it with the palm of her hand and then twisted it into the form of a pretzel as a group of seven children huddled around a kitchen island watched her carefully, taking mental notes. After sprinkling a dash of kosher salt and garlic powder atop the roll, Israel scooped up a palmful of dough and dropped it in front of each child.
“It’s soft like a baby’s bottom,” she declared. The analogy didn’t take with every camper. Some giggled and others squirmed. “I don’t want to feel a baby’s bottom!” One squealed.
Once the giggles subsided, the kids put their heads down, and with their fingers emulated the same motions their instructor had just demonstrated to them. The rolls, Israel informed them, were not for eating now; it would be their homework assignment for the evening.
“Their homework every night is to take food home to their family and share it,” she said. This part of the assignment is about hospitality, she said, and “the joy of feeding people.”
No one who stops by the “Cooking Up Fun” camp at the Montalvo Arts Center leaves without sampling the food the campers have made that day, said Israel, who works in the artist-in-residence program at Montalvo and is also a semi-retired substitute teacher in the Santa Cruz area.
“We want to be very hospitable,” she said. “I want to teach them that the fun of cooking is feeding people.”
Israel encourages her campers to not only share food with their family but to initiate dialogue at the dinner table about food.
In a room to the right of the kitchen, another group of eight campers sat at a long rectangular table and worked on an arts and crafts project, occasionally racing to the front of the room to grab supplies. Shayna Roskoph, 9, and Sereno Do, 8, were making their own placemats and chef’s hats.
Shayna is no stranger to the camp, having enrolled in it three times. The Saratoga Elementary School fourth-grader said she enjoys helping her father cook at home.
“He just likes to cook for fun sometimes,” she said, adding that her favorite part of the camp is hanging out with her friends and doing projects.
Sereno, a San Jose resident who attends James Franklin Smith Elementary School, said she also likes to help out in the kitchen at home.
“I usually help my mom make brownies and dinner,” the fourth-grader said. “Sometimes I mix; sometimes I put in the ingredients.”
Each day of Cooking Up Fun camp has a different theme. The first day was seed day and the kids made popcorn balls. For bread day, they made pizza and pretzels. Both Serena and Shayna said they were looking forward to Friday “fun day,” when they’d be making a mysterious food that camp leader Melissa Lanctot revealed would be ice cream.
“We’re going to serve it like a restaurant, and they’re going to serve their parents,” she said.
Lanctot is one of three camp leaders and she, too, is no stranger to the camp. She said she makes the half-hour drive from her home in Santa Cruz to Montalvo every morning because she enjoys working with the kids.
“I have so much fun here,” she said. “I work with kids with disabilities [at Cabrillo College], so when I come here, it’s such a different feel.”
Cooking Up Fun has been offered at Montalvo for at least three years and is one of the more popular camps at the venue. At least 30 people were enrolled in the morning and afternoon sessions of the weeklong summer camp, which will culminate with a barbecue on July 26.
For more information about this camp and other camps offered at Montalvo, visit montalvoarts.org/camps.
