Culinary camp teaches teens to garden, cook, make recipes and plan a business — all in a week

Jesus Landros, 16, wants to become a contractor, in part so he can build his own house off the grid. And he wants to learn to garden to grow his own food.

When he tried to grow lettuce once before, it didn’t go as well as he’d hoped — the pot he planted it in was too small. And he didn’t appreciate the importance of timing.

“I thought you could plant it whenever you want, just do it — but, no, you got to have a specific time, wind, water and all that,” he said.

This week, the high school student learned some of the basics of gardening at a week-long camp hosted by the San Diego County Office of Education at its Linda Vista Innovation Center, part of a culinary pre-apprenticeship program for teens from its juvenile court and community schools program.

The camp aims to help teens from that program — typically students who are incarcerated, homeless, pregnant, in foster care or drug treatment or otherwise at risk — become ready to work in the culinary field, including by equipping them with money for transportation and a set of kitchen knives.

They’re student populations who tend to deal with trauma, said Roberto Carrillo, the program’s executive director.

While some of that trauma may be associated with their home school, the goal is to help them return there. And collaborations with the county office’s Linda Vista Innovation Center help expose the students to skill sets they might not have otherwise sought to develop, Carrillo added.

“They might not go down the restaurant pathway — but at least now they have the idea and the mentality that they can take something on, from beginning to end,” he said.

In addition to learning the basics of gardening, camp students created their own signature sandwiches, and developed business plans for their their own restaurants. Landros’s is called the Slider Garage.

On Wednesday, the students worked on selecting a recipe to go with their restaurant concept and learned how to build a grocery list, said Carrie Lane, an educational technology project specialist. As they worked on their dish, Landros and his group of classmates were trying to decide on a sauce to serve with it.

To help learn about the business of running a food business, the students also worked through a game inspired by board games like “Life” and “Monopoly” — starting with either a food truck or culinary school and progressing through possible futures, with a mix of decision-making and chance.

As they advanced through the game, the students would write down how much money they had, as they spent it to get the total.

But chance was key: One chance card they drew led to food spilled from hitting a pothole — but only for the food truck. There were no potholes in fine dining, said Nathan Shelby, a teacher in the program.

Shelby said he tries to strike a balance between making the experience of the food industry realistic and enjoyable for his students.

“Trying to engage their interest is one of the first challenges we try to overcome, so the guest speakers and food and things like that,” he said.

For fellow teacher Kat Loyd, one of her favorite moments of the week was watching a student peruse a cookbook and realize that he had the ingredients to make the recipes at home — “so excited to show off that he can do this,” she said.

As the camp wrapped up on Friday, each team put out its recipe and its food business plan, and made one dish for staff to taste.

Landros’ team, naturally, made sliders — beef seasoned with soy sauce, garlic and onion and topped with bacon, American cheese and lettuce on a Hawaiian roll.

For a sauce, they landed on Thousand Island dressing.