Chefs in the Classroom

The CHOW (Cooking Healthy Options in Wisconsin) story:

Chefs Tory Miller and Eva Ringstrom from L'Etoile Restaurant in Madison, WI, wanted to share their passion for preparing fresh, local foods with school children.

In the spring of 2006, they approached WI Homegrown Lunch with their idea and a wonderful collaboration was born!

Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch was excited to expand our food-education programming into the middle school level and providing students hands-on experience with professional chefs seemed a perfect fit. Madison's Sherman Middle School was just kicking off it's USDA Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program at this time which made it a natural starting place to trial what has fondly become known as CHOW (Cooking Healthy Options in Wisconsin).

Tory and Eva taught their first class using fresh, local asparagus to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders in May 2006. Encouraged by the enthusiastic response from teachers and students alike, WHL worked with Tory and Eva to create a series of classes that all of Sherman's 7th graders participated in monthly through the 2006-07 school year. The recipe-based lessons were refined further and for the 2007-08 school year all Sherman 7th graders participated in what has become a regular part of the 7th grade experience at Sherman.

See CHOW on TV and in the newspaper:

Channel 3 visits Sherman Middle School to see what Chef Tory Miller is cooking up with the 7th graders, TV report from April 2008.

"Readin', writin', fricasseein' -- Top Madison chefs teach the children well," by Erika Janik, Isthmus, October 2006.