I have been eagerly following the recent adventures of Julie (A Finger in Every Pie) in teaching a cooking elective for 15- and 16-year olds in a small public school in the Bronx. A lot of the things she brings up are symptomatic of the eating habits of today's younger generation.

The 'problematic' things about school lunches I only get to read in the papers, Julie sees first hand.

Our limitations are not only spatial and monetary, however. Our kids, for the most part, are not exactly brave tasters. Many of them eat chips and soda for breakfast, shunning healthier options. Lunch, as I've said, is almost always frozen pizza or hamburgers, tinned fruits and vegetables that the kids don't even bother with -- and many of them don't eat lunch at all, unless it's more junky snack foods that they've brought in on their own. I don't know how many of them actually sit down to a home-cooked family dinner each night, but I doubt the numbers are large.

I love the way she integrates different subject areas in her class!

I took some of our tougher kids, figuring that this might be a place to grab their interest as we learn a bit, just a bit about chemistry, geography, history, foreign languages, math, literature, and all the other domains that are also ingredients in in the culinary world.

Read her recent posts: Like Kids in a Candy Shop, Update: Cooking With Adolescents, Be Still My Beating Heart.