Teen Cuisine Coders
Teen Cuisine Coders is a 4-H classroom club. Current participants are students at Beloit Learning Academy and Rock River Charter Schools.
They complete Teen Cuisine, a curriculum designed to teach youth (grades 6-12) important life skills and addresses key concepts about nutrition, food preparation/cooking, and food safety. This hands on learning in their school sites becomes a shared leadership initiative. Teen Cuisine Coders build youth voice as members work together and with community organizations to positively impact Rock County nutrition efforts.
Do you want to learn how to cook food that tastes great but doesn't cost a lot?
Explore All Fruit Recipes (PDF) in our Snack Category–These are recipes selected by our youth leaders. Explore an Easy to Use Shopping List (PDF)– These are shopping lists you can use to make multiple recipes. The items approximately total under $20 (the average grocery gift card donated). Get motivated with this smoothie video!
Explore All Recipes in our Delicious Meals Category folder–These are recipes selected by our youth leaders. They are great to fill you up and to share! Explore an Easy to Use Shopping List (PDF)– This folder contains shopping lists you can use to make multiple recipes that total under $20 (the average grocery gift card donated).
What do you think when you hear the word bear claw? This new term kicked off our first session, and we never looked back. (If you’re wondering, youth learned it’s not just an animal’s hand nor a sweet treat. It’s actually a way to hold your onion safely while you cut.) Youth increased cooking skills with these recipes. Not sure what to choose. . . Start in this folder!
On their way out the door each week, youth happily grabbed their own bags of ingredients to take with them. Several were excited to prepare and share the dish immediately. Give the recipes we explored a try and challenge yourself to understand why they are smart choices using MyPlate.
Share these resources with someone else! Download our PDF flyer.
These lists are based on the most common grocery gift card amount donated ($20). By using the list provided, you will be able to make all the recipes shown on the grocery list. (*Prices may vary from the time these lists were created).
Do you want to connect food to those who need it?
The Beloit School District promotes a gift card drive to support youth experiencing homelessness. Youth dedicated their time to soliciting gifts card donations during the month of November and attaching the QR code sticker that led you (our reader) here! When this project started, the partner organizations had one question. How can we support youth to choose healthy when receiving community support (i.e. gift cards)?
Beloit Learning Academy manages a food market. This market functions from a Second Harvest food donation. Every week students share a food request form and then create specialized boxes for up to forty families at a time. Teen Cuisine Coders participated in a Safe and Healthy Pantries educational workshop and continues to make improvements to meet families where they are. They also created resources to share family friendly meals with donated ingredients that people did not know how to use. Try Ham and Brown Rice!
Youth work on policy, systems and environmental changes based on their experiences. Teen Cuisine Coders met with community organizations who serve the unhoused population in Janesville and Beloit to learn more about their needs.
They created an action plan (PDF) and partnered with a team of nonprofits and businesses to create shopping lists that provide multiple meals with healthy ingredients. The community organizations were grateful to learn more about which foods to add to their donation lists!
Youth already knew A LOT about what it means to eat healthy, such as choosing whole grains, adding a variety of fruits or vegetables and checking the amount of sugar and fat (even all their long and hard to spell names). BUT can it be good for you AND still taste good. We want YOU(th) to continue to add to what we know.
- Leave a cooking or shopping tip in our Padlet.
- Rate recipes we share.
- Share your best dish! (Upload a photo)
- Be safe in the kitchen (How many mistakes can you find in this video?) Find the answers to your Food Safety questions in FoodWIse Resources.
Every year we update our resources so our experiences and questions provide useful answers for YOU(th)!
