Webinar: Culinary Literacy in Libraries

What is Culinary Literacy? This is exactly the question I was thinking of when I saw the title of this webinar by WebJunction. It is writing a recipe, transcribing a recipe to instructions, a math to measuring ingredients, a science that happens when you put food in the oven or freeze, cultural stories, reading nutritional labels, consumer literacy: navigating grocery stores, technology that we use to find food access points, and it is learning how to to cook using literacy. The free library of Philadelphia has a kitchen in the library. They converted an old cafeteria room that was being used for weeded books into a beautifully renovated kitchen. The renovations cost 1.2 million dollars. They use this to teach people from under-served communities how to read, how to use fractions, and basic literacy using cooking! The presenter stresses the point that you do not have to have a 1.2 million dollar kitchen to do this. She began cooking on a conference table. She purchased a kit for $700 but this could be purchased with a grant or by a donor. Good and Cheap is a book that is used or the courses by Leanne Brown. In this book, Brown teaches how to cook on a budget. There is a free PDF copy of the book available online.

I selected this webinar because we have a flourishing Culinary Arts program and a Community Garden at our school. It is actually right next door to the media center. So, I was very interested in how to fuse the two programs. I would love to do something like this but I am concerned about the clean up. Currently, we do not allow students to eat in the library media center.

Safety and Logistics:

They are moving towards having all presenters being certified safe food handlers or Chefs. The certification costs $15. Also, cooking knives are only used by certain age groups. There are multiple hand washing stations and people are encouraged to use gloves. The space is certified by the health department as a demonstration kitchen and they have surprise visits. They use Amazon Fresh to order food or have the presenters bring in the food.

People in the chat had some great ideas:

Chat ideas

Cook Book Club

Community Garden

Summer Free Lunch Program in the Library

#culinary #culinaryliteracy #library #cookinginlibraries