Harvest Kitchen: At-Risk Youth Learn Culinary, Business Skills
GoLocalProv Features Team
Harvest Kitchen: At-Risk Youth Learn Culinary, Business Skills
The Harvest Kitchen Project is a 15-week culinary and job-readiness training program for youth within the Division of Juvenile Corrections. Besides learning basic cooking techniques, food safety, and how to prepare healthy meals at home, the youth create and market a line of high-quality preserved foods using ingredients sourced from local farmers.
Job skills in practice
In mid-October Farm Fresh RI’s Harvest Kitchen program began their third session of classes in a church kitchen in downtown Providence licensed by the Department of Health. The youth trainees have been peeling, cooking, jarring and selling local applesauce at the Pawtucket Wintertime Farmers Market ever since. They have also been using a dehydrator to dry apple slices to sell.
This session builds upon the groundwork of the first two Harvest Kitchen sessions. Session 1 did recipe development of the applesauce and taste testing at the Wintertime Market. Session 2 did more recipe development, sending off samples to food scientists at Cornell to be tested for their pH levels. After hard work from all the trainees and staff, Session 3 could finally begin the production and marketing of the applesauce.
“The Harvest Kitchen program is exactly what these kids need: a positive and productive setting where they can build their self-confidence and acquire job skills for a successful future,” says Chef Instructor Jen Stott.
This session’s Harvest Kitchen classes run four days a week. During that time, trainees slice and cook up two or three bushels of Hill Orchards mixed cooking apples. As the year goes on, the program will continue to incorporate seasonal and local items, like cranberries and honey in a new Cranberry Applesauce.
While making value-added local foods from fresh ingredients, the trainees are learning valuable life skills, people skills and an appreciation for the culinary arts. “I’ve learned so much since I started the program,” says a male student from the current session, “I’m learning new things about cooking and what it takes to make and sell a product.” The program also benefits farmers by buying their surplus cooking-grade crops, and offers consumers new healthy and tasty food options at the farmers market.
Where to get the applesauce
The Harvest Kitchen will be hosting Farm Fresh RI’s fourth Arts and Eats fundraising event at Firehouse 13 on January 27th, 2011 from 6-9pm. The Harvest Kitchen trainees will be preparing the food for the event and youth from AS220 will display their artwork.
You can find Harvest Kitchen products and one or two youth trainees at the Wintertime Farmers Market in Pawtucket from every Saturday 10-1pm. In their first four weeks, Harvest Kitchen youth have already sold $500 worth of applesauce and dried apples at the market. But it’s the experience the trainees get in interacting with customers and producing and selling their own product that is ultimately priceless.