This year, Baldwin High School has added Culinary 3 to class electives. Ginny Barnard teaches all of the culinary classes, nutrition and wellness, and human growth and development.

“When I started at Baldwin High School we currently only had 3 years of culinary… so if you took all those classes by the time you reached your senior year, there wasn’t any more culinary options for you to take,” Barnard said.

That was until this year. In this class, the seniors are: Cara Boyd-Reed, Bridan Butell, Kaleigh Griffith, Aaron Gunther, Makayla Hirschmann and Kendall Nichols. These students are the first to be in this class but certainly not the last. On Aug. 23, students in Culinary 3 helped at a catering event in Lawrence.

“As part of our real world experience they’ll be doing catering functions for other businesses or organizations that are interested in having food catered,” Barnard said. “We have another business booked in March… so as people reach out and become more aware I think we’ll have more opportunities to do that.”

This class is very open for the students in it to use their own creativity. Starting from finding their own recipes to modifying it for what they think is best.

“They really are getting to set the pace of their own course and what kind of food they want to prepare, they’re in charge of that, I don’t dictate recipes,” Barnard said. “I’m just here to make sure we’re moving in the right direction.” 

Butell, a seniors enjoys cooking. 

“Stir Fry is my favorite thing to cook,” Butell said.

Butell thinks he will use culinary in the future.

“We get to do our own thing,” Butell said. “It’ll help me make food in my future whether that’s in a career or just at home.”

This class is doing a lot throughout the year, to really show the students different aspects of the cooking industry.

“Each month they will offer what we call take and bakes, they prepare a menu, market that menu, collect orders, and collect the money… then prepare that food and have it delivered or picked up each month,” Barnard said. “What’s going to be exciting for me is just watching them grow.”