Cooking, Cultures, and Gathering to Eat Together in Charming Picture Book

Felicita Sala's What's Cooking At 10 Garden Street? is a charming story and picture book that will delight children who might be interested in cooking. Recipes for each dish are featured side-by-side the illustration of the person who is preparing the dish. Large and colorful illustrations of each recipe with complete instructions for preparing the dish are a special part of this book.

Pilar, Mister Ping, Maria, and Mister Melville are just a few of the characters who love to cook and prepare a special dish from their culture. They all share the love of food and live in the apartments on Garden Street. Italian, Chinese, Indian, and American dishes are all shared by the residents of 10 Garden Street. The residents show that food brings everyone together as friends when they gather together with their dishes to eat and share the delicious food from all of their different cultures.

Pilar prepares an interesting dish called Salmorejo. the healthy ingredients include tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and ham. Healthy broccoli is the featured ingredient for Mr. Ping's stir-fry dish called Little Trees. Senora Flores prepares delicious black bean soup as her contribution to the community meal. Miss Ishida contributes a Japanese dish called Oyakodon with rice, eggs, and chicken stock. Desserts are also part of the meal with banana and blueberry bread, and a delicious recipe for strawberry crumble. All gather at the end to eat together and share in a community meal.

What's Cooking At 10 Garden Street? is a great tool to get your kids into the kitchen to prepare each dish. It was published by Prestel Publishing Ltd and is recommended for ages 7-12. It has an ISBN of 978-3-7913-7397-3.

I cooked regularly with my students when I taught pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. I learned that cooking activities were a great way to encourage children to read because they were required to read the recipes. What's Cooking At 10 Garden Street? also teaches children that food brings people together along with the fun of preparing the dishes and sharing a meal.

The story features easy-to-follow recipes. I always prepared rebus recipes with both words and pictures for the recipes that I prepared with my students and this picture book follows the same idea with each recipe featured with both pictures and words. This offers an excellent reading activity in addition to the fun of cooking. most of the recipes are class-room-friendly and can even be prepared with a microwave or electric skillet in the classroom. I found the use of an electric skillet to be convenient tool for cooking in the classroom.

*Read What's Cooking At 10 Garden Street? in a story time session. Call attention to all of the different cultures that are featured in the story. Take a class poll of the different cultures that students come from.

*Call attention to the healthy ingredients for each dish. Vegetables and fruits are featured for the recipes. Make a display of samples of some of the ingredients that students may not be familiar with. Prepare a display of olive oils, cheeses, and some of the seasonings that are featured in the recipes. Have a tasting party to taste some of the separate ingredients for each to study each recipe and offer the students the opportunity choose a recipe for a weekly or monthly cooking activity. Students might like to invite parents for a meal in the classroom.