- Life's Kitchen culinary program helps young adults between the ages of 16-24 with workforce development along with providing G.E.D's
- Life's Kitchen is taking Thanksgiving Holiday Dessert orders, offering pumpkin pies, apple hand pies, and pecan pie bars.
- Last day to order a Thanksgiving Holiday Dessert is Friday Afternoon November 17th.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story.)
I’m your neighborhood reporter Jessica Davis and Thanksgiving is literally around the corner and after you eat your mac and cheese and your turkey, you're going to want some dessert. Life’s Kitchen here in Boise is helping you feed your hunger while also helping people in their program learn valuable life skills.
"At the beginning, you kind of see everyone just like doing their own thing, so you're just kind of like, uh oh what am I doing here," says Life's Kitchen alumna Niomy Perez.
17-year-old Niomy Perez is poppin' pumpkin pies in the oven heading out to Thanksgiving tables across the Treasure Valley.
Perez recently graduated from Life's Kitchen, a culinary program focused on workforce development.
For 16 weeks young adults work on their culinary and life skills, all while studying for their G.E.D.
Executive director for Life’s Kitchen Tammy Johnson says, “We all need for workforce no matter where we go or whatever area in life is soft skills, how do we communicate with each other, how do we work with our peers, how do we take instructions how do we be on time.”
Perez initially got involved to get her G.E.D. but fell in love with the process of cooking.
Now as an alumnus, she's back in the kitchen, preparing dishes and learning from head chefs.
She says, “It was pretty easy besides learning their specialties because you know the specialties of cutting and stuff like that but once you get into different cultures and culinary types you learn a lot.”
This month Life’s Kitchen is taking Thanksgiving holiday dessert orders, serving pumpkin pie, apple hand pies, and pecan pie bars.
“We have salt, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon that's your base spices,” says Perez.
She continues, “From here they get baked and then they get cooled and packaged, and then from there they're kind of ready for pick up.”
The program is for 16 to 24-year-olds, helping them tackle life's challenges in and out of the kitchen.
“I was so reserved I didn't want to try anything new I just wasn't to do my own thing and here you get pushed out of your comfort zone which to some people may sound bad but it is good for you and you and you learn a lot from the chefs here,” says Perez.
The last day to put in your Thanksgiving holiday orders is Friday afternoon November 17th, and watch out they'll also be having some Christmas desserts coming soon.
