Tim Harty, The Business Times 

So, it’s about time your 12-year-old learns how to fend for himself or herself in the kitchen.

Or your 9-year-old could stand to learn how to make a healthier macaroni and cheese.

Or your 5-year-old doesn’t know the proper, correct, safe way to hold a kitchen knife.

Kalyn Lapidus can help you in each of those instances and a whole lot more. Send your kid to her new Cooking School Kids Camp.

Lapidus, who has been teaching adults to cook in evening classes at Cafe Sol, 420 Main St. in Grand Junction, the past two-and-a-half years, is ready to tackle teaching kids to cook. The indication she has gotten from “a lot of people” is they want their kids to take some cooking classes from someone who knows what they’re doing.

Lapidus, a chef who co-owns Blooming Palate and specializes in cooking clean, healthy foods, said she isn’t aware of anyone else offering cooking classes for kids in Grand Junction, so she’s hoping to see a good turnout for the four weeks of classes she’s offering from late May to late June.

“I just wanted to put on a fun kids camp,” she said. “I know there’s nothing like it around here, and I just want to instill some good cooking skills in kids and just teach them some really fun ways of cooking, homemade cooking.”

There will be three age groups: Ages 4-7; Ages 8-11; and Age 12-plus.

Ages 8-11 have four weeks to choose from to go to camp for four days, three hours each day. Cost for the week is $299.

The youngest group has three weeks it can choose with four days of two-hour classes, and the week costs $179.

The Ages 12-plus group has just one week available, and it’s four days of three-hour classes for $299.

Class sizes are deliberately small, limited to eight kids.

“It’s very like one-on-one with a chef,” Lapidus said. “I know a lot of summer camps are like you show up, and there’s like a hundred kids there and a couple camp directors. This is very specialized, only eight kids per chef, for me. So it’ll be one-on-one the whole time.”

Actually Lapidus will have help from some adults and one special assistant: her 8-year-old daughter, Belle, who learned kitchen-knife skills at age 4 and appears to have inherited a love for cooking from her parents. Dad, Taylor Lapidus, is co-owner and head baker for Blooming Palate and makes its organic sourdough bread.

Kalyn said Belle already “is a little chef herself.”

Classes for the Ages 4-7 group are kept simple and include a lot of kitchen-safety lessons. So, she really does teach them about handling a kitchen knife, just not with a real knife. They’ll learn the proper way to hold a knife, how to carry it and how to set it down when not using it.

For the non-knife hand, they’ll be taught to use the claw, curling in the fingers, for controlling the item that’s being cut. And then the rule of thumb – pun intended – is keep that thumb tucked in, because it’s the easiest finger to cut.

“It just sticks out there, looking like a parrot or something,” Lapidus said.

And while the cooking camp classes are supposed to be fun, there’s a particular time that requires total seriousness from every age group.

“There’s absolutely zero horse play when you have a knife in your hand,” Lapidus said.

The Ages 8-11 group starts getting a little more technical for an obvious reason.

“They can read,” Lapidus said, “so they’ll just be able to do things on their own in the kitchen.”

That means doing more recipes, and it will include making a four-course meal. And the last day of their week will bring a cooking competition: a cupcake war.

“They actually get to bake cupcakes, decorate them, and then they’ll be judged on the look and the taste of everything,” Lapidus said. “So, they’ll be learning a lot, and then the end, it’s really fun.

“I have a friend who does this in Arizona, and she says the cupcake war is quite intense, but she thinks that’s why a lot of kids come back is it’s just so much fun.”

The ages 12-plus group gets a similar experience to the Ages 8-11 group, but for the difference, Lapidus said, “Usually their palate is just more refined and more open to the different types of food, so I’ll be teaching them just more intense recipes and stuff. … There’ll just be more complex recipes, just will be able to do higher-end stuff with them.”

The students in that group may be more mature, but they still get to do their own cupcake war.

Ultimately Lapidus wants the camp attendees to leave inspired to do more cooking and to eat healthier, “maybe even do it with their family and just instill a love in them for cooking and how much fun it can be and how much more delicious fresh, homemade food can taste.

“And then the nutrition aspect of how it is so much better for our bodies and our minds and stuff.”

That begs the question: Can Lapidus actually inspire the kids to cook and eat vegetables?

“We’ll cook up lots of vegetables and talk about them,” she said. “It’s interesting when you get kids out of their home and around other kids and in this playful environment. A lot of parents are shocked at what their kids will actually eat when they’re not around. They’re just in a fun environment. Kids usually are a lot more explorative in cooking classes.”