A secret recipe to capture your children’s interest
By Hayden Moore
LEARNING how to cook is a skill that could be very easily overlooked as a youngster, but One Yummy Mummy has the secret recipe to get them interested.
Multiple award-winning food blogger and cookbook author, Jolene Cox, has taken all of the skills she picked up while working as a nanny around Dublin and brought them into a ‘Mini Cooks Summer Camp’ – with tickets flying out the door.
Jolene Cox giving her daughter Lily-Mae some life lessons
The two-week cooking camp for children aged five to 10, sponsored by Lidl Ireland, will commence in Jobstown Community Centre on August 12. It is currently booked up with a waiting list, but the Tallaght resident, who is originally from Fermanagh, is not stopping there.
Jolene told The Echo: “Cooking with kids can be so much more than just making cupcakes and licking the bowl.
“Getting them involved in the food prep of everyday meals from a young age not only teaches them about ingredients and where our food comes from, it also gives them life skills they will have forever.
“In my experience, putting the tablets and the phones away and cooking together is just as much about the confidence gained as it is about the final creation. Entrusting kids with little cooking tasks gives them freedom of self-expression, a sense of responsibility and self-worth.”
Cox is dipping her toe into the programme side of things with the Mini Cooks Summer Camp, but the Family Food Made Easy programme is the ultimate goal.
Since the launch of her book last September, ‘One Yummy Mummy: Family Food Made Easy’, Jolene has been developing a family food programme directly for parents in disadvantaged areas.
When speaking to The Echo just before the launch of the book, she explained how she wanted to “make home cooking the new convenience for families”.
The mother of one explained what she has been up to: “I’m in the development of the ‘Family Food Made Easy’ programme and have been accepted into the social entrepreneurship Academy.
“The Family Food Made Easy programme is a six-week cooking and meal-planning course brought directly to parents in disadvantaged areas.
“I will facilitate the programme in community centres, parents’ rooms in schools.”
Although a date has not been set for the Family Food Made Easy programme, Jolene regularly updates her website and will be posting status updates around her developments.
