Whitney Cardosi will be bringing her Bloom Kitchen cooking classes to Peabody this month and next as she introduces elementary-school-aged kids to becoming comfortable in the kitchen and engaging in new, wholesome foods.
Bloom Kitchen and Retreats has been around for about a year and half. But Cardosi has worked in the nutrition sphere for nine years and her first time working with Peabody Recreation.
“I’ve been in the nutrition world for a long time and most of that time I worked with adult women, and men but mostly women, and coached them,” Cardosi said. “In the conversations that I was having with my clients, particularly with moms and women in their 30s and 40s, I was finding that they weren’t necessarily struggling with what to eat, they were struggling with their mindset around food and their relationship with food. Most of that started from their childhood.”
Those conversations motivated Cardosi to begin her Bloom Kitchen business, where she could bring kids into the kitchen and teach them how to have a healthy relationship with food through hands-on experience.
Whether that means working on knife skills, becoming familiarized with kitchen safety, or learning how to cook exciting new recipes, Bloom Kitchen aims to create an environment where children are comfortable around food and nutritional health.
“From my experience after working with hundreds of kids, there’s something about being in a class setting around other peers, and also in a class setting where there’s a teacher as opposed to being with a caretaker or parent at home, they’re so much more willing to try new foods,” Cardosi said.
Her 45-to-90-minute sessions discuss meals that range from more simple recipes, like potato skins, to a more comprehensive foods, like pretzel bites, that allows kids to handle the dough themselves. Ultimately, her goal is to make them excited about the food they’re making and become engaged in working in the kitchen.
Cardosi hopes that these early interactions with food will foster further interest in nutrition and learning about what exactly is fueling the human body.
Also integral to Bloom Kitchen’s programs is helping parents or guardians have nutritional conversations with their young ones and get them interested in eating wholesome meals at home.
That becomes a particular focus of the Bloom Kitchen retreats between teenaged children and their parents. Here conversations delve into topics that focus not merely on the food-body relationship, but also over how to gain confidence, improve self-image, develop friendships, and set goals for the future.
Cultivating a healthy nutritional relationship is especially important considering Americans are leaving the kitchen at higher rates. A Gallup survey from 2022 revealed that Americans eat 8.2 meals–a historic low–at home per week.
“We’re losing that tradition and those roots in families in the kitchen,” Cardosi said. “So, it’s a combination of trying to create that healthy relationship with food for kids at a young age and a love for cooking so we can get back to that.”