COLLEGE STUDENTS INVOLVED in Middlebury College’s Nutrition Outreach and Mentoring program led a cooking lesson on Zoom with local families last month. Recipes are centered around a different produce each month and offer a chance for multiple people to get involved in the cooking process.
Photo courtesy of Lucca Franz

MIDDLEBURY — Grade-school students learn a variety of important life skills in school each day, such as responsibility, critical thinking and collaboration.

A program run through the Middlebury College Center for Community Engagement is helping local elementary students add another key skill to their toolkit — cooking.

MARY HOGAN ELEMENTARY School students and their families whip up beet pesto pasta during a Nutrition Outreach and Mentoring cooking session this past spring. Such cooking experiences are designed to introduce students to different local foods and teach them about all that goes into preparing a nutritious meal.
Photo courtesy of Lucca Franz

The Nutrition Outreach and Mentoring program, or NOM, works with area schools to provide hands-on cooking lessons for students with the goal of building community and introducing students to different foods and food practices.

“Our main aim is to create community and connect with people through food, and especially families and kids in the local elementary and middle schools,” explained NOM Co-Vice President Lucca Franz, a Middlebury College junior.

NOM is one of 15 student organizations supported and advised by the college’s Center for Community Engagement. These organizations collaborate with community partners in areas like civic engagement, food security and social justice.

Cooking experiences offered through NOM differ from school to school. The program organizes monthly cooking sessions at Cornwall and Mary Hogan elementary schools. College students also visit Middlebury Union Middle School about twice a month to make a quick, nutritious snack with students during the school day.

Cooking activities offered through NOM’s partnership with Mary Hogan Elementary are organized in a dinner-style format and alternate between being held on Zoom and in-person. Each month, students and their families are guided through a different recipe, often centered around the Vermont Harvest of the Month.

For example, March’s harvest of the month was maple syrup, and students used the ingredient to whip up maple green beans and maple bacon mac and cheese. Apples were the harvest of the month for October, and participants prepared apple crisp and stuffed bell peppers.

“One of my favorite recipes from a Mary Hogan family dinner that we cooked, the harvest of the month was beets, and so we made a beet pesto pasta,” Franz recalled. “The pasta was pink, which was really fun. The kids loved that because it added some fun color and also tasted amazing.”

NOM provides all the ingredients participating students and their families need to complete each month’s recipe. The program currently purchases produce for meals from area grocery stores but hopes to eventually source some ingredients from The Knoll, Middlebury College’s educational garden.

“This is still a work in progress because there’s a few logistical things that we’re trying to figure out, but that’s definitely a partnership that we’re looking to develop more because they have a lot of leafy greens and different herbs that would be awesome to start incorporating more into our recipes,” Franz said.

The group tries to pick recipes that might be new to students and that offer a chance for multiple people to contribute to the final product.

“It’s also a fun challenge for us to think of new recipes and get creative with the harvest of the month and with meals that are both time efficient and have multiple steps to get everyone involved in the process,” Franz said.

NUTRITION OUTREACH AND Mentoring college student volunteers prepare stuffed bell peppers during a cooking event last month. The program hosts cooking sessions at three schools in the Middlebury area throughout the school year.
Photo courtesy of Lucca Franz

BUILDING A MEAL

NOM President Aliya Hosford said the program is intended to help create space for students to learn about all that goes into building a nutritious meal.

“For me, I was really lucky that my parents involved me in the kitchen when I was little, but I also recognize for a lot of families that’s not something that’s feasible, whether kids are off at sports or parents are really busy or it’s a frozen meal,” she said. “This really gives kids the opportunity to learn how to measure, how to read a recipe, how to follow directions. There’s the food element but there’s also a lot of really practical problem-solving skills that come from learning in the kitchen.”

Franz said the program has been well received by parents.

“Even though cooking in person would be more ideal, the ability to have a Zoom option is also super nice for parents who are busy with their workday and different things their kids are a part of,” she said.

The program also offers benefits for college student volunteers, such as providing a chance to get off campus.

“I just love the opportunity it provides Middlebury College students to connect to the local community in general,” Franz said. “It’s so easy to get caught up in college life, but the ability to cook and hang out with kids is very refreshing and rewarding. I feel like every time I leave, I’m so happy that I went.”

The club also organizes member-only dinners where college students involved in the program cook a meal together and, in some cases, meal prep for upcoming cooking events. Around 50 students are involved in the program, about 25 of whom are active members.

“It’s just another way to connect and be able to make a homecooked meal,” Franz said of the club dinners.

Hosford said her favorite meal the club has made is a butternut squash and sage pasta dish from long- distance runner Shalane Flanagan’s cookbook “Run Fast. Eat Slow.”

“The first time I had it I was really homesick for a homecooked meal, and we made it at a club dinner my freshman year,” she recalled. “We’ve made that a few times with Mary Hogan and that’s definitely a fan favorite for the club dinners on campus as well.”

NOM is currently working to get this year’s program up and running at MUMS and interested students can sign up to take part in the program during their flex block once it becomes available. Mary Hogan families looking to take part in an upcoming cooking session can keep an eye out for information in the elementary school’s newsletter.

To learn more about NOM visit tinyurl.com/nomprogram or @middnom on Instagram.