Partner Projects

Cooking With Our Grandfriends: “Grandfriends Sharing a Cooking Lesson With Our Volunteers”

One of the greatest blessings in our lives is our Grandparents. They are always willing to lend a helping hand, show you how much you’re loved, and even guide you by offering to share all of the knowledge and experience that they have acquired during their life time.

However, some children do not have Grandparents, or their Grandparents live far away. Therefore, when the BBU Dream Ranch children and youth volunteers were given an opportunity to “Adopt-A-Grandfriend” for the day, and share our fresh garden vegetables with the seniors at the Horizon Bay Retirement Center, everyone became very excited about all of the unique and expert cooking advice and skills that our Grandfriends would be able to share and pass down to them. This event was sure to bring joy to both children and Grandfriends alike.

On the day of the big cooking event, our Grandfriends and adult and youth volunteers, all gathered together for a morning of joyful cooking, fun learning, and friendship building. Our Grandfriends and children began their cooking lesson by discussing some very helpful kitchen safety reminders in order to make sure that younger children would always remember how to stay safe in the kitchen while preparing a tasty dish. Soon everyone was measuring ingredients, sharing vegetable nutrition facts, and slicing and dicing the fresh cucumbers, onions, tomatoes and squash that were grown at the BBU Dream Ranch Giving Garden in preparation for the delicious dishes that were on their menu.

“When it comes to cooking, experience is the best teacher,” stated one of our Grandfriends, “so don’t be afraid to dive right in.” and that’s exactly what everyone did! It wasn’t long before our Grandfriends’ taught our youth and younger volunteers the difference between slicing, dicing, and peeling, as well as how to measure, hold a cutting utensil, and of course, incorporate their “top secret cooking tips” into their future culinary classes.

Soon their meal was ready to be served. The meal started with a cool cucumber salad that was spiced just right. While our BBU Dream Ranch volunteers served the delicious salad, BBU’s volunteer “Project Chef” demonstrated how he was going to use all of the perfectly sliced squash that our Grandfriends and children had prepared to create a scrumptious squash casserole for their main entree. While the casserole was baking, our youth and adult mentors, along with our volunteers visited with our Grandfriends who told stories of various food items were prepared when they were children. Everyone was very amazed and entertained as they listened to our Grandfriends’ childhood stories and cooking memories.

As the squash casserole was being enjoyed by all, the “BBU’s Project Chef” described how to prepare his final menu item, Baked Apples. Our Grandfriends and volunteers all agreed that their apple dessert the perfect ending to a perfect meal.

Project “Cooking with Our Grandfriends” was a success. Sweet friendships were formed between our loving Grandfriends, children, youth and adult volunteers as everyone ended the day enjoying their delightful dessert as they posed for pictures so that this special day would never be forgotten.