Young Adults Learning Skills Around Preparing Food (or not)
The inspiration for my project came from growing up cooking with my family and my family expecting me to make lunches for myself and learn how to cook some things at a young age and which inspired a passion for learning more about where food comes from and learning how to cook non-essentials. Additionally, thought out college I've engaged on issues of food justice, community gardens, and worked at a food coop in the twin cities for almost the last 5 years. I care about young people such as myself and my friends as well as the broader community knowing how to cook for ourselves and not always relying on convenience food. But I also know the pushes and pressures in our society for young people to continue to do more and more through internships, classes, and extra curriculars. there may not be extra time or emphasis on learning how to cook for oneself. I see this as a problem especially on college campuses- while I come from a position of privilege on this issue as a college student, I also see that if I was able to learn how to cook and understand food that others can as well.
(want to put pictures of myself gardening here... can't figure out how)
Enjoy! Feel free to engage with comments, questions or your experiences. Thanks!
Here, a college student talks about she ordered a CSA (community supported agriculture) share last summer and didn't know some of the vegetables that were in it and talks about a good way for her to learn and know more would be creating an infrastructure of community meals where she can learn the skills needed and learn more about vegetables she doesn't know about.
Here, two Bethel students talk similarly about how they know how to cook one or two things but want to know more- the infrastructure around food- that they know of at their campus really isn't there and they also want to have community meals where they would learn skills and be in community with others interested in food.
Here Imani talks about how to make kale chips and other easy healthy foods. This is to say that the young people interviewed are not all doom and gloom when it comes to preparing and knowing about food and healthy food options.
All these clips come from the Storymobile interviews off of the Frogtown page.