This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Teens Test Taste Buds at Library Program

Chef Liz Barbour leads program on cooking, local produce and healthful eating.

Sautéing garlic perfumed—yes, perfumed (sorry, non-garlic lovers)—the study area of the Thursday evening in a program aimed at teens.

No, the subject wasn’t vampires.

Chef Liz Barbour led the audience of about 17 people, including several adults, through three recipes she said teens could cook and bushels of information about cooking in general, using fresh, local produce and healthful eating.

Find out what's happening in Woburnwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Then she offered the audience a taste of what she had just cooked in front of them:  cherry tomato sauce, spinach pesto with walnuts and scrambled eggs.  Yup, scrambled eggs.

The tomato sauce, which included the aforementioned garlic, seemed to be the audience favorite.

Find out what's happening in Woburnwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Teens in the library’s Teen Book Club wanted to do a cooking program, teen librarian Christi Showman Farrar told Woburn Patch after the program. She focused the broad state and almost-national library theme of  “You are Here” to Woburn, she explained, and thought about the Farmer’s Market on Sundays at Spence Farm.

Even older pre-teens can make certain recipes, according to Barbour, who brings the culinary arts to audiences as Creative feast.

“It’s easier than you think,” she said, about preparing a meal. The tomato sauce and pesto took a little over half an hour, total, to cook. Either could be served over pasta, she suggested, or even on the scrambled eggs, as a good meal or snack.

She urged families to shop locally for their produce—the closer the better.  Buying produce locally supports local farmers, she said, keeps land open, saves on fuel otherwise used to transport produce and even supports farm jobs for teens. Fresh produce tastes better, she said, and is more nutritious.

Prepared foods can have all kinds of additives and preservatives, she said. You should be able to pronounce the names of all of the ingredients on a food label, Barbour said.

Cooking and eating is as much about smell and sound—the sizzle of searing a piece of meat, for example, as sight and taste, Barbour said. Among her cooking tips:  have all ingredients ready before you start to cook. Move away from foods that are white—except, she said, vanilla ice cream. And watch the size of your portions.

Barbour recommends that teens try different foods using the “’No, thank you,’ bite.” That means trying at least a taste of a food, and, if you don’t like it, explaining why, politely.

By the time Barbour was done cooking, Emily Messina was almost salivating.  Emily gave a thumbs up to the tomato sauce, because of the garlic. The pesto was good too, said Emily, who is going into 11th grade at WMHS; she liked what she described as the hint of basil. Emily comes to many library programs, she said; her mother is a children’s room librarian there.

Edward Hollohan also liked the tomato sauce best. He’ll try anything, his mother, Kathleen said. Edward is going into sixth grade at the Kennedy Middle School.  Edward’s sister, Mary, just shrugged when asked what she likes to eat. She’s going into seventh grade at Kennedy.

Adult Philip Sandberg had come to the library to read, not for Barbour’s program. When the Woburnite found that the audience could sample the recipes Barbour made, he said, “I’m in.” He liked the pesto, something “new to him” and described the pasta sauce, with its sweet cherry tomatoes, as “very different” from what he usually eats, and “delicious.”

After the audience left, Barbour packed up her equipment. The aroma of sautéed garlic remained.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?