It’s still a few hours before lunchtime, but the mouth-watering smell of melting cheese wafts through the second grade hallway at Sanford School.
Students look up from their assignments, eyes fixed on a cookie sheet covered with roasted vegetable quesadillas. Markers and glue sticks all but forgotten, they dig into the gooey treats.
It’s much more than just snack time – these healthy quesadillas are a teaching tool to show the students how easy and fun it can be to eat their vegetables.
That’s the lesson shared by teacher-turned-author Cindy Sardo, who penned children’s book “Cooking’s Cool” to get kids interested in cooking.
“If the kids get in the kitchen and are cooking with healthy ingredients, it teaches them that they should be eating a rainbow of foods everyday,” said Sardo, of Landenberg, Pa., a former fourth grade teacher.
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Cooking’s Cool Order online at cookingscool.org Sardo’s next book, “Cooking’s Cool in the Winter” is due out in December For information about author visits or school field trips, write csardo@cookingscool.org. |
The book, the first in a four-part series, chronicles the classroom at Old Mill School, where teacher Mrs. Sheff shows her students the finer points of healthy cooking. Part story, part recipe book, “Cooking’s Cool” also includes activity pages to keep kids engaged in the story’s lessons.
Sardo’s inspiration was two-fold. After hearing about a nonprofit organization founded by celebrity chef Rachael Ray that teaches kids to have a healthy relationship with food, she decided she wanted to advance that mission.
She is also the parent of a particularly finicky eater.
Her daughter, Sarah, had a lot of difficulty chewing when she was young and Sardo took her to the A. I. duPont Hospital for Children for feeding therapy.
She said those sessions helped make her expert in teaching kids to eat and the recipes are all favorites of Sarah and Sardo’s other daughters, Emily and Julia.
Sardo is hopeful her self-published book can open kids’ eyes to the world of tasty and colorful foods, but it also includes a message for parents.
“A lot of parents might be nervous about cooking,” she said. “They don’t know easy recipes they can make with their kids.”
Sardo’s veggie quesadillas came together in a matter of minutes. Making a simple recipe from scratch is not only much healthier than visiting the drive-thru, it tends to be a lot faster, she said.
That’s a message many schools across the county are picking up as the childhood obesity epidemic continues to spread. And someday, Sardo envisions sharing “Cooking’s Cool” with classrooms nationwide.
She’s already teamed up with the Young Chef’s Academy in Pike Creek to offer cooking workshops and had a patch designed for Girl Scouts and Brownies troops that resemble the book cover.
Healthy cooking is an important lesson for kids, she said, because if they learn it when they’re young, the chances are better they will carry the knowledge into adulthood.
