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LLI GOLINE/NORMAN WELLS
By the end of the school year, 10 students in Norman Wells will have the necessary skills to get through university without having to survive on Kraft Dinner for sustenance.

A new after-school cooking course, funded through Nutrition North, kicked off at the start of March at Mackenzie Mountain School. For five weeks, students from Grade 10 to 12 will learn essential skills like kitchen hygiene, food preparation and the basics of nutrition.

The goal, according to principal Michael Duclos, is for them to share their knowledge with the wider community.

"Nutrition is a big issue in the North, right? It's hard to get fresh food all the time and people end up eating unhealthy things for convenience," he said. "We want to make it a community thing. Hopefully the kids can really get something from it."

Since the course started two weeks ago, students have learned how to chop onions, make vegetable stock and cream soups, and cook chicken and broccoli stir fry. On March 12, they made soup to distribute to elders in the community.

Grade 12 student Siobhan Quigg said she decided to take the course after attending a Skills Canada competition for baking.

"I saw the cooking kids there and they were amazing at cooking and I thought, 'Well, I'm alright at baking, but cooking is really what's going to get me through university,'" she said. "I can barely make my way through a grilled cheese sandwich, so I decided I might educate myself a bit in cooking before I go off by myself."

Joshua Rose, a Grade 11 student, said his motivations were the same.

"I'm not the best of a cook and I decided, I'm leaving for college in a couple years, so I need to know how to survive by myself. This is a good opportunity to help add to the skills that I have," he said. "I knew how to make Kraft Dinner and microwave dinners, but that's about it."

Duclos said the school hopes to host a community feast when the course wraps up at the end of April and said students will likely make presentations and posters to promote healthy eating in the North.

In addition, he said they plan to start providing healthy snacks to the community daycare a few times per week.

The cooking course will continue on for another three weeks after spring break, according to Duclos. Depending on how far they get in the lessons, students will earn four to five credits toward their high school diploma.

Five teachers, plus Duclos and a professional cook in Norman Wells, are helping run the course.

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