PERMITS
March 9, 2016
Anterina Guidry
March 9, 2016
On most days after school, kids of all ages can be found inside a white building on the edge of Polk Street in Houma whipping up batches of muffins and transforming dough into sweet, yet savory slices of pizza fit for a Hawaiian luau. It may seem like simply an excuse to get their little hands dirty, but the pint-sized cooking classes are also imparting valuable life skills while encouraging kids to try food they may have shied away from in the past.
Mix It Up! owners April and Chris Sins know a thing or two about food, particularly how diet can affect a person’s overall well-being. Chris is a registered nurse and April is a registered dietitian/nutritionist, with both holding masters degrees in Health Care Management. Combined, the couple have roughly 18 years experience promoting better health throughout south Louisiana.
Working in the medical field for so long fueled the couple’s desire to create a space where a younger generation, including their own children, could come to learn about what goes into making their favorite meals. Establishing such a space also allows them to impart their working knowledge in a fun, safe atmosphere.
“I’ve been working with food and nutrition for almost 15 years. I wanted to do something with the younger generation, because they need information about food and what’s in food and how to make their own food,” April explained of Mix It Up!, which opened its doors in August 2015. “They need to learn to not just depend on picking things up that are already made for them at a restaurant or at a fast food restaurant. They need to know what is in it. What’s in bread, not just that you go pick up a loaf of bread at a grocery store. You have to know what’s in it.”
Mix It Up!’s class schedule, which can be viewed on the business’s website (mixituphouma.com), is as varied as a well-versed diner’s palate. April, who works as the program coordinator, keeps the calendar packed Tuesdays through Saturdays with themed courses ranging from preparing breakfast favorites to whipping up stews and rouxs for classic Cajun dishes like gumbo and rice dressing. These one-hour-a-week, six-week sessions are geared toward specific age groups with those 5 to 7 joining the Lil’Chef classes, while those 8 to 10 and 11 to 14 fall into the more complex Junior and Senior Chef courses. Every session starts off with kitchen safety, skills that are carried throughout the session.
The sessions just scratch the surface of what Mix It Up! offers, however. Most Fridays and Saturdays, April and her family are preparing the place for Mommy and Me classes, birthday parties, holiday camps and Parents’ Night Out, a family outing complete with a menu reflective of a movie to be screened at the end of the night. Once a month, Mix It Up! also hosts Demo and Dine, the newest addition to the class line-up that gives adults an opportunity to sharpen their cooking skills as well.
“They come in and some food items are demonstrated for them and some items they cook themselves,” April explained. “it just depends on the menu. It’s a night of fun and culinary entertainment. It’s a night out where you can actually come in, prepare your meal and you don’t have to worry about cleaning up everything. We do all the work behind the scenes.”
In addition to the post-meal cleanup, everything one might need to prepare the recipes offered, from the cutting board to the ingredients, are included in the price of all classes.
Colette Fick, whose son Brennan has been taking classes at Mix It Up! since September, said she has seen great growth in her son, who was since expanded his list of favorite foods because of the cooking methods he’s learned.
“It’s encouraged him to try foods that he otherwise would not have tried at home,” Fick said. “I think that’s a big part of her program, getting the kids to see foods cooked in different ways and sometimes you learn as a parent that just because your kid didn’t like the broccoli raw, they actually enjoy the broccoli cheese soup. The exposure to different foods is really awesome for parents who have children who are very picky eaters.”
Although April is a registered dietitian, she understands that not-so-healthy, but downright delicious selections are part of keeping kids engaged and excited about cooking. A majority of Mix It Up! classes do utilize healthy options like shrimp, but participants whip up cakes and cookies, too, with the understanding that these items are meant to be enjoyed on occasion and in moderate portions.
“I am a dietitian but we don’t change every recipe. We do use butter and we do use real, whole ingredients,” she said. “It’s important to learn that if you tell a kid, ‘Well, you can only eat one cupcake,’ they’ll ask, ‘Well, why?’ If they see how much sugar is going into the cupcake, what’s in the icing that’s going on top, if they see how much of the things that are going into it, then they can maybe understand a little bit better that, ‘Oh, wow yeah. That does have a lot of sugar in it.’ It kind of answers some why’s about the things we should have more of and the things we should have less of.”
For the novice cook, creating pasta from scratch or decorating a cake may sound a bit daunting, but April assures Mix It Up! is about the experience, not cultivating competition-level chefs. The goal is to impart fundamental skills to encourage cooking at home, while also teaching the basics of nutrition and even table etiquette.
“Everything that we teach is just basic kitchen skills,” she said. “We’re not trying to teach people how to become a professional chef. It’s basic kitchen skills where you can learn something then you can bring it home and do it. We want you to be able to use the things that you learn.”
It’s those lessons learned in the kitchen that make for well-rounded teenagers and adults who can then pass on those skills to the next generation.
They don’t really have much opportunity, per se, in schools. We don’t have home ec classes like they had a long time ago,” April said. “A lot of parents work and they’ve very busy and I can identify with that as well. It’s hard to have the time to teach these things at home but they are important skills to learn. It also helps with their self-esteem to realize, ‘Hey, I can prepare something just like Mom can. I can do it too.’ Just having that confidence in themselves in the kitchen and to see something go from flour or from scratch and make it into something that you can eat and that tastes delicious really builds confidence in the kitchen that they can use throughout their life. They don’t have to want to become a chef to come to Mix It Up! It’s just to learn basic skills and to have fun. It’s a program that will instill some education in them that they can use throughout their life.” •
