I N D I A N A S TAT E M U S E U M A N D H I S T O R I C S I T E S
CROSSROADS EMPLOYEE NEWSLETTER JULY 2022
Earlier this summer it was Culinary Camp week at the museum and egg drop soup was on the menu. Nicole Rife, the director of education engagement, and her helper, Allie Commons, are busy corralling 19 campers who are going to make this recipe. The goal is twofold: Get the kids – who will be going into first, second and third grade later this summer – to learn to cook something and to try a new food. They’d prepared an orzo salad the day before; the rest of the week would be bread and desserts. “That is the biggest carry-through for all of our camps: We just want them to try,” Rife says. “We don’t expect perfection. They might learn that they like something a lot; they might learn that they don’t like something.” To get started, she gathers the children in a circle. When they sit, she speaks to them in clear, precise language, using and explaining words like “ratio” that they might not know as she tells them things like why they put cornstarch in a recipe. “You’ll taste the soup and take a little home,” she tells them. “If you taste it and don’t like it, you’re not going to hurt my feelings.”
Before they do anything, each camper gets a hairnet and washes his or her hands. The campers are divided by tables and while Commons keeps an eye on the room, Rife calls the groups one by one to the supply table to work through the recipe – measure cornstarch, pepper, sugar and so on, crack and beat the eggs and mix everything together. (When one camper accidentally drops an egg on the floor, she shows them how to use salt to absorb a spill.) “The hardest thing at Culinary Camp is the amount of waiting because they have to come up to the supply table to get the ingredients,” Rife says. “We want to make sure we’re teaching them the proper ways to measure ingredients and talk about why we’re using the ingredients.” After they combine the ingredients in a large pot, the campers bring it back to each table, where there’s a hot plate. They stir and, when the time is right, add the beaten eggs. When all five tables have finished making their soup, Rife asks, “Hey, campers, you want to taste a little bit for a snack?” “Yay!” They come up and get a spoon and a small cup, and she goes around to each table and ladles some soup into each cup. A few campers are reluctant to try the soup, but ultimately everyone does.
Before they go home for the day, Rife pulls the campers together and they reflect on the recipe they made and what they thought. They generally liked the soup – some wanted less cornstarch, some wanted more. Some wanted thicker pieces of egg. Others didn’t. Many wanted more salt and pepper. One said, “I loved it. It tasted just like the restaurant’s.” “Then we talk about what we can add and change and how we can adapt a recipe for cooking,” Rife said. “Hearing them reflect on what they like and don’t like is so cool.” Culinary Camp is one of 18 weeklong camps, in addition to nine different day camps, the Indiana State Museum offers over seven weeks of summer. Throughout the week, campers get to take home food to share with their family, and one beamed as she told the group that her mother “wouldn’t stop eating” the orzo salad they had made at camp the day before. “There’s a sense of accomplishment,” Rife says, “because they made the food, and now they get to show off to their families.”