New FCS lab has new culinary look

by Mary Le Arneal
Published 10/30/24

The old Home Ec room still had asbestos flooring and doors were falling off the hinges from the time the school was built in the late 1960s. It was time for an update and update they did. With the help of a $100,000 Perkins grant from the state, the room, renamed the Family and Consumer Science Lab, was ready to take students into their future.

Teaher Alyssa Nelson helps a student arrange a dish in the new family and consumer science lab kitchen.

The emphasis has changed from preparing students for home duties to preparing students for a profession in the food service industry.
Teacher Alyssa Nelson is in her fourth year at North Bend Central. Last year, when they did the remodeling, was also the year for curriculum update.

“So yes, I was flipping all of my curriculum,” Nelson said. “I am using a little from last year because it would be a lot to get used to all the new equipment and curriculum.”

Nelson has never been in a kitchen such as she has now for her classroom.

In the tour around the kitchen she showed the ADA kitchen area where cook stoves and counters are at a lower level should they have wheelchair bound students.

The stoves are all gas which Nelson finds amazing.

“They are very responsive,” Nelson said. “They heat up very fast”

Two new Combi ovens are connected to water to shorten the cooking time, so the students can do bread with the help of the Combi oven to raise it in a short time.

The hoods over the stoves are special in that they communicate with the ranges and turn on more vents if more burners are turned on. There is also a special fire suppression system that will turn the gas off and put out flames with a special fire retardant.

There are all stainless steel appliances as well as the work areas with a commercial type field.

“My thought on that is if you can cook in an industrial type field, you can cook at home,” Nelson said. “Not necessarily the other way around.”

There are special, smaller sinks just for hand washing, bigger sinks for food preparation.

“It may be a challenge for the students to remember to go to the hand washing sink,” Nelson said.

There is a commercial refrigerator and freezer with the hopes of doing small catering jobs in the future.

There is a row of stainless steel tables that Nelson says will be used with the sixth grade class so she can watch them all.

Some of the pots and pans from the old room are retained, but many were replaced.

There is a room for the washer and dryer, but they are not in yet.
The dish washing station hasn’t been used yet, but there are two dishwashers that wash dishes in 90 seconds.

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