For the first two weeks of August, Passion for Spices had the joy of teaching over twenty determined kids our favorite recipes during our 2015 Kids Cooking Camp. With the help of three top-class chefs, these kids learned how to tackle a variety of ingredients, from understanding the difference between lemons and limes, learning how to cut gnarly pieces of ginger, to discovering the many properties of chocolate. The recipes themselves demanded attention; rolling out smooth pizza dough while keeping it intact, stuffing ravioli while keeping it from bursting, let’s say no recipe would turn out if minimal effort was given. But despite the challenge and a few broken eggs, these young chefs tried and preserved, even if the first batch didn’t turn out, until the results were delicious.

Our camps are unique in how we use non-processed, locally grown, pure ingredients. For instance, we used organic peaches, high quality chocolate nibs, pure local honey, and absolutely no artificial products when cooking with our kids this August. Similarly, our recipes aim to make nearly all dishes doable from scratch; they do not only tell how to construct, say, a chocolate marshmallow pie, but our recipes also say how to make no-corn syrup marshmallows. This emphasis on pure, sustainable food and the “from scratch” approach are what define the Passion for Spices methodology. We believe that choosing local and organic is good for both you, our planet, and future generations.

To us, the goal of our cooking camps is not for profit’s sake but rather to start a revolution of using healthy, all natural food. And now, these young chefs are eager to go out and reproduce their fine work at home. To us, that is success: getting younger generations excited to cook. In the future, we hope to not only create delicious memories in our local towns but bring our love of cooking to the nation.