High school students cook up an exam

While many high school students across Belize are preparing reports and taking written exams, one first form class in Belize City had to make their exam and then eat it. But like all true cooks know, the joy is not just in the preparation or in the tasting… it’s in the sharing.

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Most parents would agree that getting children to eat their vegetables is a challenge. But one high school, Canaan Seventh Day Adventist, through its food and nutrition class, has been creating some tasty vegetarian dishes that students enjoy with every bite.

Maybelline Campos, Teacher, Cooking Class
?Here at our school and at all Adventist schools we promote health. And so on our campuses we do not serve meat and we do not prepare meat even in our cooking classes. We teach them how to live a healthier life without meat.?

?When my students came here and they learnt that we will preparing only vegetarian meals, a few of them were like, I do not think I really want to stay in this cooking class. But when we did the first one, they were like, ?Miss I didn?t know that this was so nice!? and they came to love it and appreciate it.?

Today?s serving included a three course meal and consist of scalloped potatoes, fish balls, wheat rolls, corn and cucumber and some desserts. The preparation was not only done for the young men and women to enjoy, but it was a practical exam the students must take every year to pass the course.

Maybelline Campos
?They will be graded first of all on their presentation, the time that they use to prepare the stuff, the way they go about getting it done, following instructions, all of those things are what they will be tested on.?

The students not only got the chance to taste their own creations, but for the first time, the school has invited members of the community to the luncheon. The boys and girls from Dorothy Menzies Child Care Centre arrived just in time for the presentation.

Maybelline Campos
?People will see that we are a school that doesn?t just exist by ourselves, but that we are reaching out to other people in the community and we are making a bond here between the school and the people in the community.?

?When I call the lady from the childcare centre she was pretty excited because she told me that she knows today, God worked things out for them because today they have a workshop and the entire staff would be off. And so we have the twenty-one kids from that childcare centre that goes to the primary schools, we will be feeding them all for lunch, so they were quite appreciative of this.?

Twenty-four students are enrolled in the food and nutrition class. Jacqueline Woods for News Five.

It’s only first form students who take part in the course.