During the month of January, Chef Miguel and the Culinary Arts department hosted elementary school students LEARN’s “Exciting Science" program, pairs up five suburban and five urban schools within the community for an entire school year.  They are all second grade students that are matched with a friend from their partner school.  They primarily study Science topics, the children partake in field trips and hands-on presentations to explore various themes in Science.  These students also write pen pal letters and keep a journal of their experiences.

This month’s topic was nutrition. Chef Miguel and the junior culinary students were to teach these young students about making healthy food choices, nutrition and healthy substitute foods. For three hours each day over the course of five days these young students learned how to make nutritious cookies with honey and oats similar to a granola bar. In addition they had a first-hand view of the culinary juniors in action making homemade english muffins. For a “test” they were given a healthy muffin to eat and were asked to guess what ingredients were in it. Chef Miguel listed substitutes for ingredients such as wheat instead of white flour and brown sugar for sugar.

Grasso Culinary Arts welcomed these young students with respect and had as much fun as they did.