By Grace Collery and Natalie Lovelace

Editors Note: We want to introduce you to one of our new CSA members, The Kitchen Project — a hands-on, integrated after school class that teaches students basic cooking skills. To introduce you to this cool program based at Sequoia High School in Redwood City, some of the students decided to interview their culinary teacher, Christopher West.

The Kitchen Project is available to all Sequoia students. Mr. West says, “The class will teach students basic cooking skills as well as kitchen safety, teamwork, food philosophy, cultural diversity, environmental consciousness, and manners.” Students have made exotic dishes such as Blackened Catfish Burritos with Cabbage and Cilantro and Rainbow Swiss Chard Cakes with Crema New Mexican Rancher sauce.

Mr. West explains that the project goal is to help “Sequoia students walk away with a deeper sense of confidence in the kitchen and being able to cook basic recipes with positive results.” In addition to the cooking class, students also help in the garden, which is located behind the football field on the corner of James and El Camino. By working in the garden students learn not only about where food comes from, but also the garden-grown food is planed to substitutes some ingredients in the cooking class. By next year Mr. West would like “to expand the class and the garden, build student involvement and create a financially stable program.”

Not only does this program teach students how to cook, but about healthy eating. Mr. West says that in order to eat healthy it’s important to “eat local, eat mostly plants, eat food that is seasonally produced.” Eating locally grown food is important because it not only supports your local economy, but the products have a higher overall nutritional value, and they taste better.” He emphasizes preparing things simply to retain the maximum nutritional value.

The class is able to cook with fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables because we joined the Capay Valley Growers CSA (community supported agriculture) program, FarmShares. Every Wednesday we get our share at Caffé Sportivo, located on Brewster in between El Camino and Arguello. These shares allow people to get a box of fresh produce for $16 or $24. These boxes come once a week and contain fresh, local, organic produce.

Grace Collery and Natalie Lovelace are both Freshmen studying journalism at Sequoia High School.