Laura Carter, center, creator of My Sister’s Granola and a volunteer at Gather Community Space, helps Sherlyn Veras, left, and Arianna Garcia, right, prepare salad greens.
Mark Guydish | For Times Leader
We found Friday’s feature story about teenagers learning to cook uplifting on several counts. Not only has some financial support of the program reduced or even eliminated the cost of taking the course called “Cooking with Confidence,” but many of the participating youngsters expressed appreciation for what they learned — and for the bonds cooking can create across families and generations.
The financial support came as a grant from the Luzerne Foundation. As the story noted, the Foundation’s Teen Advisory Committee visited an inaugural class at the Gather Community Space hosted on the campus of First Presbyterian Church in Wilkes-Barre. The program impressed, and the committee voted to provide a grant.
That alone is reason to cheer. The Foundation continues to be a tremendous asset to the county in part because of the many ways it raises and disburses funds, making sure that worthy causes don’t get overlooked.
The Gather Space and what it offers the area also merit accolades. The non-profit set the goal of providing a place “where people of all ages and backgrounds can come together, learn, and form meaningful relationships,” as per its website, gatherwb.org
But we also applaud the youngsters themselves. They took the time to learn an art many meticulously avoid. We live in an era when people —particularly those coming of age in a world of instant everything — seem not only to shun preparing their own food but prefer delivery of pre-cooked eats from the likes of DoorDash or GrubHub rather than taking the time to pick up an order or eat out.
These teens took classes for five weeks that started with basic kitchen safety, sanitary food prep and knife skills. They concluded it by cooking up an eclectic meal for family, friends and those who taught them: Salad, guacamole dip, pesto-enhanced sliders, both spicy and plain salmon, fried rice with veggies, and an array of desserts. They individually expressed gratitude to the chefs who taught them and a newfound appreciation for the skills cooking requires and the flavor options a well-stocked pantry provides.
Lastly, they each provided a favorite family recipe, which was included in binders provided as reminders of their experience. This, we humbly suggest, may be the most valuable part of the lesson.
Almost anyone who cooks a few favorite family recipes can recount traditions related to those dishes, often going back through generations, across national borders and even across oceans.
Frequent readers likely know the Times Leader has featured “Test Kitchen” articles since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic shut much of the world down in 2020. Long-time feature writer Mary Therese Biebel and her husband (and former TL staffer) Mark Guydish pen most of those articles, occasionally delving into the meaning behind some of their favorite family recipes.
We think one of Guydish’s insights, provided in a story about Good Friday baking tradition nearly derailed by a family emergency, applies here:
“Cooking isn’t just about eating to live. It’s about what that life means.”
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