Cooking up education

Penny Reynolds holds a blender over a bowl of soup and tells her students they should puree as carefully as possible.

"With our nice new ceiling tiles," she says, "we want to keep them clean at least for one week."

One of the students in her second year Carson High School culinary arts class takes over the blender. The rest go back rolling dough, running it to the oven and watching over the soup on the stove.

This is Reynolds' 12th year teaching culinary arts at the school. The students serve a public soup and salad bar on Friday and will start serving meals later this year.

She has 175 students in her three levels of classes, a few of which who will be servers at Taste of Home Cooking School show. The event is hosted by the Nevada

Appeal's parent company, Sierra Nevada Media Group, today and Sunday at the Carson City Community Center.

Tiffany Gehr, a senior, braided three ends of bread to make the sourdough rolls that the class was working on Thursday.

She said she likes the culinary class because she gets to do something she likes and is planning to go to culinary school.

Her favorite things to make are cookies and pies, she said, and she likes to get creative with those foods for almost any reason.

"I love Christmas time because you get to bake a lot," she said.

Brandon Gray, a junior, stirred the soup that day and watched over it to make sure it didn't burn.

"Almost everyone burns something," though, he said, as other students moved other pots of soup around the room yelling "hot pot!" as they got close to other students.

Gray said the favorite food he made so far was a steak salad. The class has made a range of foods, from fettucini to hot cross buns.

When they finish the class, Reynolds said, the students will be certified by the National Restaurant Association, which is valuable for them because every restaurant has to have someone working there who is.

The Taste of Home Cooking School will have two live cooking demonstration on Friday and Saturday with ideas for fall dining and entertaining. It is part of the Women's Fair that includes vendors, a fashion show, make-up artists, other activities and prizes.

- Contact reporter Dave Frank at dfrank@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.