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This weekend, my family and I went to our second Hoe’s Down Festival in the Capay Valley, east of Davis, California. It was the 21st annual Hoe’s Down Festival at Full Belly Farm – and my cooking with kids workshop was just one of over 60 fun activities and presentations to choose from.

People laugh when I tell them that my cooking school for children is “mobile.” Instead of being tied to paying rent for a specialized retail and cooking space, I find it easier to travel to my customers. We do classes in people’s homes, at their schools (sometimes in classrooms without a kitchen!), and as is demonstrated here – at farms…with hay bales for counters! Why not – it is fun, gets kids and their families excited about cooking and eating foods together! Who cares if you get a little hay in your food?

Last year, we made zucchini orzo salad. This year, we made a couscous, yellow squash and cucumber salad served in a bell pepper cup! The best part was that all of the produce we used was all grown at Full Belly Farm, where the festival was taking place.

The children safely grated squash in a rotary cheese grater and chopped cucumber with my favorite kid’s cooking tool – the food chopper. A man from an olive oil company near my demonstration gave us a small bottle of finishing oil for the children to pour over their finished product. Yum!

I wonder what we will make next year…