March 21, 2001
Gourmet theme creates stir
Food focus of Children's Reading Month
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Finding a cookbook in an elementary school library in Traverse City will be challenging task this month.
Students across the Traverse City Area Public Schools District are fired up about food, thanks to this month's district-wide theme of gourmet reading in honor of Children's Reading Month. This year's topic inspired librarians to set a full table for their eager students - covered in a red-checked table cloth, of course - and school days have included cooking demonstrations, food games and a chance to make everything from peanut butter to cookies.
All month, teachers, librarians and students have rallied around the theme, using food as a vehicle to discover different cultures, practice math principles and hone their reading skills.
Last Wednesday, Chef Hermann Suehs visited Glenn Loomis Elementary School to give a cooking demonstration for fourth, fifth and sixth grade students. After whipping up Jaegar Schnitzel and Crepes Suzette in the school's library, Suehs read recipes to students and gave them tips on how to read a gourmet menu.
He also discussed that his life as a chef has taken him from native Austria to Sweden, London, Bermuda and Thailand. Suehs also told students about the time he accidentally burned down the cooking tent when he was the cook for the Austrian base camp on Mount Everest in Katmandu, Nepal.
"Cooking is universal, like music, reading and eating," said Suehs, owner of Hermann's European Caf‚ and Inn in Cadillac. "Always be interested in what you are eating because it makes life more interesting."
Some Norris Elementary School students were also treated to a cooking demonstration last week, courtesy of their own school chef Will Sanborn, affectionately known to them as Chef Will. With knives and soy sauce bottles flying, Sanborn gave a whiz-bang demonstration of how to make a healthy stir-fry in just 25 minutes. He also used the time to discuss different types of rice, how different cultures use rice and which countries prefer what type of rice.
A lesson in food presentation rounded out the demonstration as Sanborn showed students how to dress up a plate instead of just slopping food onto it. He then read students an assortment of bizarre food facts and laws (for example, in some areas it is against the law to peel an orange in a hotel room.)
"To have that many fifth- and sixth-graders attentive for 35 minutes is just great," said Connie Boylan, librarian at Norris Elementary School, who arranged for the demonstration. "The questions that the children asked were great and they got a really big kick out of watching him."
Boylan also invited the owners of Bay Bread Bakery in to demonstrate bread making for the younger students. She enthusiastically embraces the theme month each March, watching how the activities grab students' imaginations and get them excited about reading.
"You cannot believe how much children love cookbooks, boys as well as girls check them out," Boylan said. "You can apply math to cooking and the teacher can use them in many ways because there's so many good folk tales to pull in around cooking."
While Interlochen Elementary School did not bring in outside speakers to celebrate their gourmet reading, librarian Helen MacArthur spearheaded a schoolwide effort to excite kids about food and reading.
Older students played Food BINGO and Food Jeopardy while younger students made homemade peanut butter. She also hands out special bookmarks to the students and the students are writing Bistro book reviews throughout the month.
"I go a little nuts every year," she admitted, recalling how last year she dressed as a clown for three weeks and a ringmaster for one week after she turned the whole library into a circus tent. "The kids start in the fall and they ask what are we going to do (in March)."