Crock-Pot program helps kids learn to cook at home

Dawn Bauer is helping fight hunger in Mineral County.

According to Montana Kids Counts and the No Kid Hungry Program, more than half the students in Mineral County participate in the free or reduced-priced lunch program and nearly one out of every five kids in Montana struggle with hunger during their childhood. Children struggling with hunger are more likely to have impaired cognitive development, lower math and reading scores, and higher rates of absenteeism.

These are issues not lost on Bauer, the Superior school secretary and after-school program coordinator. Through her years working for the district, she has seen her share of children who come to school hungry. But rather than just feel sorry for them, she’s taken the lead on doing something about it.

Around four years ago, Bauer, along with Superintendent Scott Kinney, worked with the Montana Food Bank Network in Missoula and started a BackPack Program for the school. The program distributes food to students on weekends and holidays. The small packages contain pre-packed, kid-friendly nutritious foods. Bauer showed a Zip-loc bag containing two fruit cups, two small cans of lasagna, two juice boxes, a boxed milk, two small bowls of packaged cereal and a healthy snack. She said, during this last school year, they distributed 500 such packages a month to students.

Working with this program planted the idea for Bauer to do more than just hand out food. She came up with the idea to also teach kids how to prepare and cook nutritious meals. Armed with a $10,000 grant from the Town Pump, along with funding from other grants (including the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program), Bauer bought Crock-Pots, ingredients and other equipment to help kids help themselves.

“Kids don’t know how to bake or cook anymore. I had a little girl last year who had never made cookies before,” Bauer said as she stood in a room in the school that was being used previously to store computers. Now shelves line the walls and are filled with beans, pasta, rice, canned fruits and vegetables, peanut butter, jelly, spaghetti sauce, macaroni and cheese, pancakes and syrup.

She popped open a freezer door and showed bags of chicken and bread. In another section, there are bins full of spices she buys in bulk and then sends home in bags for the kids. In this program, children learn how to make easy meals using a Crock-Pot and, if they don’t have a slow-cooker, they are able to take one home, thanks to the Town Pump grant. Additionally, there is a wall lined with jackets, clothing and toiletries such as deodorant, feminine products, toothbrushes and toothpaste.

Essential basics are often taken for granted, but being without them can cause trauma for kids who have to interact closely with their peers and teachers. It’s hard to concentrate in class when a child is hungry, dirty or cold, Bauer explained.

“With the Crock-Pot class, they are learning how to take care of themselves, or help Mom if she’s sick or if they live with grandma and grandpa. They can help out at home and it’s a skill they can take to college and they won’t have to worry so much about food and can make their food buck go further,” she said.

A binder shows a number of Crock-Pot recipes including meals such as “Simple Slow Cooker Lasagna Soup”, “Minestrone Soup”, “Stuffed Peppers” and “Italian-Style Pot Roast.” All easy to make with minimal ingredients.

Bauer said she learned how to cook from her school’s home-economic program along with her mother and grandmothers, but the schools don’t offer home economic classes anymore. Cooking and other home skills are taught at both the after-school program and the summer programs. Last year, they did a four day class.

On Monday, they cut up and dehydrated fruit and vegetables with a dehydrator the program had bought with grant funds. On Tuesday, they made jams and jellies and learned how to preserve them using a pressure cooker, and then, on Wednesday, they made bread. On Thursday, they prepared their own lunch meal making soup with their dehydrated vegetables along with granola bars from their dried fruit and had jam and jelly on their homemade bread. The kids were thrilled and wanted more. As a result, this year, they expanded the summer program to last three weeks with more in-depth work using the food dehydrator, pressure cooker and Crock-Pots.

Bauer is also spearheading another project to create an outdoor school/garden in front of the Superior Elementary School. A greenhouse was built last spring and the committee is working on raised gardening beds, one for each classroom where they can plant whatever they want.

“Then high school kids can put their chemistry and earth science skills to work,” said Bauer. “They can test the soil and determine what it needs to make it a better growing climate along with other experiments.”

Bauer showed several large boxes which contained benches and explains how the back can be flipped up and made into a table for the outdoor school. Over the summer, they will put weed mat in an area to the right of the front doors where the raised plant beds will reside. Bauer also bought whiskey barrels in which she will plant with ornamental native grasses and flowers to put near the school yard in the hope of someday creating a native plant area.

“We’ll never grow enough lettuce to supply the entire school or to fill up the salad bar, but if the kids can pick a few handfuls of lettuce or carrots and incorporate it into whatever they’re making, that would be so great,” she said, “Maybe, someday, they can grow enough to take a basket of veggies to the senior center.”