Queen Creek High School culinary arts students participated in the Harvest Moon Feast for the first time on Oct. 20.
Two students, Sara Bohart and Kevin Fackrell, were selected to represent Queen Creek High School. The event benefited C-CAP (Careers Through Culinary Program) a national program for culinary students.
Queen Creek High School has been part of C-CAP for 2 years. Last year they received the impossible meat contest through the program.
The assignment was for students to remake a recipe they enjoyed as children and replace the meat with soy-based impossible meat. Bohart’s group used her recipe, which was based on her family’s spam musubi recipe. It came from her dad, who grew up in Hawaii. Her impossible meat musubi recipe won third in the state. The recipe was featured on the Impossible Foods website and Bohart received a monetary prize.
“My family doesn’t really use beef aside from meatloaf and burgers which were specifically off the list so I had to get creative,” Bohart said. “I decided to switch spam with impossible meat and we came up with that.”
C-CAP invited Queen Creek High School to attend the Harvest Moon Feast, which benefits the program, with Bohart’s recipe.
“It was her recipe, her family, her creativity,” said Sandra Brooks, a culinary arts instructor at Queen Creek High School. She helped with preparation for the feast.
Fackrell was selected to attend because he is a culinary arts student and he is club president of the FCCLA (Family, Career and Community Leaders of America, which culinary students are part of.
The Harvest Moon Feast was at Tarbell’s restaurant in Phoenix under the full moon. Culinary arts students from schools around the state set up tables for the guests to approach.
They chose a Hawaiian theme and offered Hawaiian butter mochi cake in addition to Bohart’s impossible meat musubi recipe.
Queen Creek High School Culinary Arts Instructor Lewis Brown attended the event with the students.
“The students are always nervous when they do events like this, but they took ownership,” Brown said. “They did a really wonderful job in communicating professionally with guests and setting everything up. It was an awesome experience for them, and I was really proud of them pulling something off at that caliber.”
Brown said that Bohart enjoyed sharing the food with attendees.
“Sara’s face really lit up when she started to take center stage and talked to the guests who came up. They were able to step up and describe how they made the food and all the ingredients. You could see the connection with the guests and them. It was just a really awesome situation.”
Local chef Elizabeth Meinz attended the event to help manage the booth and mentor the students.
About 300 people attended the Harvest Moon Feast.
“I’m really proud of the students. I’m glad I was able to be a part of it and allow them to showcase themselves,” Brown said. “It really completes what I do as a chef and an instructor. That’s the feedback I love getting, seeing the students excel, allowing them to take the reins of doing something and I can sit back and watch them shine.”
He added that they did not get back until about 11 p.m. after the Harvest Moon Feast, but the students were still full of energy because they were so excited about what they were able to do.
“Both Sara and Kevin are dedicated, hard-working students and we have been so happy to have them in our culinary program,” Brooks said. “It was such a unique opportunity for them to be able to represent our school and Sara's winning recipe at the C-CAP Harvest Moon Feast –we are very proud of them both."
