Campers Cook Up Healthy Meals

With whisks and peelers in hand, youngsters become pros in the kitchen as part of the Culinary Kids program at Morry’s Camp, a non-profit, year-round youth development organization. Donned in aprons, Morry’s Campers slice and dice and whip up their own nutritious meals. The Culinary Kids program introduces campers to healthy recipes and provides a fully-outfitted kitchen to teach cooking skills. Through Culinary Kids, children learn discipline and how to maintain a healthy lifestyle. The program helps campers adjust their eating habits, learn to be self-sufficient in the kitchen and discover that nutritious meals can taste great too.

The Culinary Kids program focuses on three basic areas including nutrition, physical education and culinary skills. Campers learn how all three areas work together to allow them to make wise decisions about food and wellness. The program covers proper methods of reading a recipe, measuring ingredients, and understanding cooking terms, as well as table setting and etiquette, sanitary kitchen practices and kitchen safety. Campers have access to over 70 cooking materials such as rolling pins, measuring cups and spoons, peelers, thermometers and whisks. The Culinary Kids program is led by its founder, Sophia Mejia-Taylor, a Home Economics teacher, in partnership with Carrie Doyland.

“The Culinary Kids program is so wonderful in that it helps youngsters take the steps toward becoming healthy adults,” says Dawn Ewing, Executive Director of Morry’s Camp. “We are so lucky to have the program here at Morry’s Camp. Our campers have so much fun learning nutritious recipes, creating them and then enjoying the fruits of their labor.”

Established in 1996 Morry’s Camp continues the vision and values of Morry Stein, an icon in the camp world whose life was taken in the crash of American Eagle Flight 4184 in 1994. Inspired by Morry’s dream to make summer camp available to all children regardless of economic status, Morry’s friends, colleagues and family created Morry’s Camp. Each summer, over 300 children from New York and Connecticut leave their urban homes to enjoy camp adventures free-of-charge. Campers return for four consecutive summers, participate in year-round programs and have the opportunity for an additional five-year commitment to track their development and growth through high school and beyond.