|
|
[Home] [Guidelines] [Taste
Education] [Examples]
[Appendix]
The KiKoKlub
Taste Education
Oldenburg Convivium
Oldenburg, Germany
Klaus Ruwisch, oldenburg@slowfood.de
“A dipper of fun and a spoon of knowledge”
is the motto of this project. Learn about how children can
handle pots and frying pans becoming the protagonists of the
kitchen.
In Oldenburg, a German North Western city with around 160.000
citizens, initiatives for environment are well developed,
especially in the green areas along the coasts bending towards
the North Sea and the green areas in the South, where diverse
types of cattle breed.
Slow Food Oldenburg was created on January 28, 2000 with 10
members. At present the Convivium has 100 members and are
both small producers (fruit jam, wine, fish, ham smokers)
and private citizens with any occupation (i.e. university
professors, translators, retired people).
A group of 15 members has regular meetings to exchange their
experiences and organize the initiatives of the Convivium.
We work in close contact with nearby Convivia in Northern
Germany, such as Bremen, Diepholz, Osnabrück and Ostfriesland.
We coordinate together the Slow Food agenda in our region
with various events, fairs and meetings. One of the most succesfull
is Genuss im Nordwesten (Taste in the North West), which in
2005 gathered more than 8000 visitors in one day to discover
the traditional artisan products of our region.
Let them cook
We started from the perspective that children are tomorrow’s
consumers and that they will determine the food we will buy
in supermarkets in the future. Moreover we could not believe
that cooking couldn’t be great fun for them. In March
2001 we created the „Kinderkochklub“, KiKoKlub
in short (children cooking club). “A dipper of fun and
a spoon of knowledge” is our motto. We do not teach
the children how to cook, but we experience with them the
joy of cooking and of eating with taste.
When the idea of the KiKoKlub first came to my mind I found
Erika Häcker, a member of the Convivium, who was amazed
by this project. For more than six years we have been running
the KiKoklub together and we are still a good team. Erika,
a previous teacher, takes care that children wash their hands
before cooking and clean up the kitchen afterward. I supply
the ingredients and explain recipes to the kids. I also play
the role of the clown sometimes and tell funny stories. We
both show the children how to do things, control that everything
is goes well and answer all their questions. We do not mean
to be neither critical nor dull. We try to cook at most with
12 children but we do not either want to divide friends or
sisters and brothers…which means that often they are
more than 12! When radio or tv journalist visit us some relatives
help us.
We had a
precise idea: children had to cook with fresh products and
have fun in their own dimension. We have a member teaching
home economics at the Oldenburg University. “We can
work something out”, stated Prof. Armin Lewald and he
put at disposal the kitchen in a lecture hall of his university
for free. This kitchen is now closed, so we had to move in
another school.
We never tell the little cooks “You must eat it because
it is healthy!”.
We are convinced that healthy children means most of all giving
them a rich variety of food and healthy products. Children
are between 6 and12 years old. They cook with fresh ingredients
basically from our region, which they generally like a lot.
But of course it is the same as with adults: some of them
like raisins, some others don’t.
We do not consider ourselves as “street workers”,
who “take children away from the street” and none
of us even has had this kind of education. We have cooked
with school classes and have been requested to have regular
courses (on Mondays), but unfortunately this goes beyond our
possibilities.
During the big market of regional products and delicatessen
from North Western Germany Genuss im Nordwesten children cooked
and served the meal in the first Slow Food children restaurant.
Feedback and children’s voices
Since the first year we started, important articles about
the KiKoKlub were published in the regional newspaper and
it narrowed more children to the project. Afterward many articles
have been written about the young chefs in several national
magazines and many reports have been broadcasted on the radio
and on tv.
The first parents discovered the KiKoKlub from our agenda.
Children brought their brothers, sisters and friends. More
parents were reached through the media. Some parents have
become Slow Food members and further people have become interested
in our events agenda for children and adults, so that they
have already shown their support to Slow Food. We are now
two groups, sometimes three on different days so that as many
children as possible can cook. Most of the parents are not
Slow Food members and children come from families where healthy
food plays an important role or whose parents are very interested
in good nutrition.
Now let’s
hear what the children told us:
“Hmm, it smells really good! It’s funny!”
(Finia, 6 years old)
“May I have another Limousine beef steak? It’s
a delicacy!” (Johannes, 8 years old, with a fleck from
the grill on his nose)
“It is such fun!” (Amrei, 7 years old)
“May I cook with you again next time?” (Max, 8
years old, at his first time)
“I want to mix too!” (Linda, 5 years old)
“I find it good that we can cook with other children,
and if something goes wrong, we can start again” (Fleming,
8 years)
“Parents are always afraid that something goes wrong,
that it’s too difficult, that you can get burnt or cut!”
(Adrian, 8 years old. Note: in 6 years not a single child
got hurt).
“I’ve
been in the KiKoKlub since 5 years! And I will stay here for
a long time!” (Lara, 11 years old, showing a thick book
with all the recipes she collected).
Do the KiKoKlub
Costs for food products are covered by the children’s
families (max. 8 Euros), whereas the Convivium supplies cooking
cloth and further materials. When becoming part of the club
every child receives a “KiKoKlub Slow Food Oldenburg”
cooking apron with the snail on it. Children write their names
on it so that we can call them by their name. We look for
recipes and invent new ones which are suitable for the children.
The KiKoKlub agenda is published on the internet and in our
newsletter. Most of the times meetings are sold out.
The Kinder Restaurant (Children Restaurant) during the fair
Genuss im Nordwesten is sponsored bt one company and one of
our members, Stefan Aufleger, owner of the restaurant Tafelfreunden,
who also helps as a chef.
Now and then we organise a trip, for instance we visited the
Thoelen farmhouse, which breeds the Bunte Bentheimer Schwein
(Bentheim Coloured Pig), which Slow Food Oldenburg brought
into the Ark of Taste. Here the children learnt that meat
does not “grow in supermarkets” and that what
we eat is “animals”.
In this way they learn to respect food.
In another occasion the little chefs all dressed up went out
to an elegant restaurant. But in the end it was so boring
to sit at the table and look at each other that some children
were allowed to help the chef in the kitchen: some children
helped the waiter to lay the table, others served the dishes
and some others took the orders. It was not so easy with 50
children and parents around but it was a great experience.
…and spread it worldwide
Cooking is great fun for the children, but cooking with children
is much greater fun. The secret of the KiKoKlub is, as already
written, “a dipper of fun and a spoon of knowledge”.
We show the children how to cook but then leave them alone
to do it by themselves and we only intervene if they have
questions or if we see that there is a problem. In this way
children have the feeling they are really cooking on their
own and with their friends.
Children want to be taken into serious consideration. In our
group there is no “Donald Duck-dish”, instead
recipes have the same names adults use for their own food.
If needed children also use big knives to work better. They
learn a lot about food and taste by having fun.
Doctors and nutrition experts also enquiered us about our
know how. And we have already brought our experience to other
Convivia.
We wish every Convivium opens a KiKoKlub. There is nothing
better than cooking with children. Except from, maybe, cooking
on your own.
<<
[Back] [Home] [List
all examples] [Next]
>>
|
|
|