SMD Cooking Group

SMD cooking group is one of the “Kid Power” activities started with the initiative from Sandy Garson (one of SMD’s friends). Sandy has been working for years providing training on how to improve the nutrition in our school and now she’s working towards improvement in all of  Rinpoche’s institutions. 

Besides, that, Sandy has been teaching interested kids how to cook and she has been providing the funding at SMD so kids can learn how to cook. Sandy’s wish is to see the kids from Cooking Group go back to their villages to teach their parents how to cook and what to cook for better health. Sandy wants them to teach their brothers and sisters to wash their hands before and after eating! There are lots of students interested in cooking so the Cooking Group, is divided into five different sections.

Each group has its own captain to supervise group members. Cooking class is held every Saturday.  Since there are five different groups, the groups do the cooking alternately. There are 8 members in each group. In each class they are taught how to cook food starting from peeling, chopping, and washing. Every group is assisted by SMD’s Head Cook and all the other kitchen staff.  But, from now onwards there will be nuns in these cooking groups.

The Cooking Groups make Saturday lunches and Sandy is the one who gives budget for Saturday’s lunch. We usually have rice and dhal, tea momos, thukpa and more.  Before, we did have very well balanced diet in our school. When Sandy learned about this,  she taught our ex- head cook what to cook to make a balanced diet and what kind of food we have to buy for growing kids. And it was Sandy who sent our ex-head cook to training to make good and nutritious food for the kids. 

Whenever she visits our school, she comes with new recipes and cooks with SMD cooking groups to give new taste with enough nutrition. When Sandy visited us, recently, one of the cooking groups cooked different kinds of new foods with her help. There was ema datsi  (Bhutanese food), beans and pea curry, porridge and masala omlet for Saturday lunch. It was delicious and we enjoyed it.