Bellerose’s top chefs will fire up the pizza oven next week to teach some Kids With Cancer how to cook.
The Bellerose Business Venture is giving about 20 Edmonton-area teenaged cancer patients and survivors a free lesson in gourmet cooking next Feb. 26.
The business venture is a student-run business at Bellerose where students practise their cooking skills by putting on real for-profit community dinners.
Last year’s students wanted to give back to the community like most businesses do, so they decided to host a free cooking lesson for teens with the Edmonton-area Kids With Cancer Society, says Evan Harris, student spokesperson for the business venture.
It was the most popular thing the society’s kids did all year, says Jeff Beaton, Bellerose councillor and Kids With Cancer volunteer.
“They were incredibly excited they were able to cook what they did and show their parents what they could make.”
Kids With Cancer takes young cancer patients and survivors aged 13 to 19 on fun, non-competitive activities about six times a year to give them some positive life experiences, says Beaton, who survived cancer himself as a kid.
Cancer can rock a kid’s life and drastically set back their athletic and scholastic careers, Beaton says.
“To me, one of the most important things is making them realize they’re still very much able, and (that) the disease can only take so much from them.”
Last year’s lesson was such a hit with the Bellerose students that they’ve decided to make it an annual event, Harris says.
This year’s event will see about six members of the business venture teach the kids how to make avfull-course gourmet meal, Harris says. They’ll use the group’s outdoor oven to make margherita pizzas, mix custom ice cream in the ice-cream maker and formulate their own salad dressings.
It’ll be a great chance for the Bellerose students to teach what they’ve learned and for the kids with cancer to gain some self-esteem, Beaton says.
The event runs from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. next Thursday.
J.J. Nearing students should have a vertical garden this next week thanks to some help from the city and the Enjoy Centre.
About 12 members of the J.J. Nearing Catholic elementary school went to the Enjoy Centre Friday afternoon to build some of the first modules of the school’s new green wall.
The school’s Greenilicious Environment Club received a $3,000 Environmental Initiatives Grant last year to create a living wall in their school, says teacher co-ordinator Phyllis Kelly.
“We have such a short growing season,” she says, and she wanted to give students a way to get hands-on experience with plant life.
Enjoy Centre co-owner Jim Hole says the kids will make their wall out of about 12 two-by-one-foot Wallflower units, which are picture frames filled with about three inches of dirt sealed in by cloth. Similar units can be seen at the city’s economic development office near Grandin Mall.
Unlike the giant wall at the Edmonton International Airport, these units have their own individual water tanks, obviating the need for a complex irrigation system, and can be shuffled around to make new patterns, Hole says. It’s pretty dark in the school’s lobby, so they’ve also added an LED grow-lamp to each frame.
These particular units will feature a variety of tropical, trailing foliage plants as well as some harvestable herbs, Hole says.
“People want to have something that’s living art,” Hole says, and research suggests that having plants around can improve your mood and health.
The units should cover a wall in the school’s foyer, with the plants growing to fill any gaps, Kelly says. Students will get to touch, harvest, and, in some cases, taste the plants, and use them to learn about plant life as part of the Grade 4 science curriculum.
“It’ll really brighten up that one part of our foyer.”
The wall should be in place later this week, Kelly says.
