Month: February 2016

KCKCC team receives silver medal in metro culinary competition

by Kelly Rogge, KCKCC

Kansas City Kansas Community College culinary students recently had the chance to shine in a Team Culinary Competition designed for high school students.

The KCKCC Culinary Team included Jenna Crum, junior at Basehor-Linwood High School; Evelyn Lawson and Destiny Turner, seniors at Leavenworth High School; Daniel Tapio, senior at Turner High School and Abby Lee, senior at Basehor-Linwood. The group attends KCKCC-TEC and the Pioneer Career Center in Leavenworth through the college’s high school programs and participated in the competition at Johnson County Community College earlier this month.

Fourteen high schools from around the Kansas City metropolitan area participated in the first-year competition. The KCKCC team received a silver medal placing behind only Olathe North and Staley High School, which both received gold medals.

“It was nerve-wracking, but a great experience to challenge ourselves against other people,” Crum said of the experience. “We wanted gold and to get a trophy. That was our goal. I think we were all happy with how we did though.”

Each four-person team was responsible for preparing a three-course meal in 60 minutes. In addition, they had 15 minutes to demonstrate knife skills. Teams were not competing against each other, but against a set of standards established by the American Culinary Federation. Teams started with 100 points and received deductions based on errors made.

“The team really pulled together and did an amazing job,” said chef Kelly Jenkins, culinary arts instructor at the Pioneer Career Center. “Before this competition team, they did not know each other at all and most were not even in the same classes. We have since seen them work together and grow together to become one big family.”

Students had the opportunity to try out for the competition team in December and started working with each other in January. The culinary team created the menu and included an appetizer of roasted stuffed mushrooms with two aioli sauces; a main entrée of rack of lamb, vegetable medley, parsnip and potato puree, blackberry gastric and fried leeks and a dessert of mixed berry tarts with chocolate ganache and strawberry coulis. Coached by chef Kelly Jenkins and chef Justin Mitchell, culinary arts instructors at KCKCC-TEC and LV KCKCC Pioneer Career Center, the team practiced four days a week to perfect their menu and improve their culinary skills.

“This group of students really put in a lot of work together,” Mitchell said. “They really worked hard. We even got comments from the judges on their excellent teamwork. They just meshed together in a great way.”

Lawson, who plans to continue her culinary education after high school, said the experience of participating in the culinary competition only furthered her desire to do something within the culinary arts field. She said the education she has received from KCKCC will be beneficial as she moves onto college.

“Because of this program, we get to go to college already knowing how to cook. We are getting training and earning high school and college credit at the same time,” she said. “I definitely want to continue with my culinary training. I think this has also been a fun process for our instructors because they have gotten to watch us grow up culinary style.”

For more information about the KCKCC culinary arts program, visit www.kckcc.edu or call 913-288-7800 or for Leavenworth students, 913-288-7750.

Kelly Rogge is the public information supervisor at Kansas City Kansas Community College.

Roasted stuffed mushrooms, seared lamb pops, and mixed berry tartlet were winning foods by KCKCC chefs. (Photo from KCKCC)
Roasted stuffed mushrooms, seared lamb pops, and mixed berry tartlet were winning foods by KCKCC chefs. (Photo from KCKCC)

KCK student named to dean’s list at Rochester Institute

Carol Singleton of Kansas City, Kan., was named to the Dean’s List at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, N.Y., for the fall semester 2015-2016. Singleton is studying in the design and imaging technology program.

Degree-seeking undergraduate students are eligible for Dean’s List if their term GPA is greater than or equal to 3.400; they do not have any grades of “Incomplete”, “D” or “F” and they have registered for, and completed, at least 12 credit hours.

Governor touts poverty reduction, but 80 percent removed from food stamps still below line

More than half of Kansans who found jobs after losing assistance remain in poverty

by Megan Hart, KHI News Services

Gov. Sam Brownback made his case Thursday for why Kansas food stamp reforms should be a national welfare-to-work model, even though the study he used to support his claim showed almost 80 percent of Kansans affected remained in poverty.

The governor touted his administration’s policies — including reinstating a work requirement for food stamp recipients — as an alternative to what he described as a series of failed welfare programs dating back to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty” in the mid-1960s.

Data from the Kansas Department for Children and Families and the Kansas Department of Labor, which the right-leaning Foundation for Government Accountability analyzed for a report, showed incomes rose 127 percent, on average, for the roughly 41,000 Kansans who no longer receive food stamps, Brownback said.

“This is success,” he said. “The objective here is to get people out of poverty.”

As of the fourth quarter of 2014, about 79 percent of Kansans who had lost food stamps remained in poverty, however, and 71 percent were in “severe poverty,” meaning they had annual income below $5,885, which is half of the poverty line for a single adult. The report didn’t track poverty data in 2015.

Incomes among those Kansans did rise 127 percent by the end of 2014, on average, increasing from $2,453 per year to $5,562 per year. The federal poverty line for a single adult is $11,770 a year.

The report tracked adults, without disabilities or dependents, who no longer received food stamps after Kansas reinstated a requirement that they work at least 20 hours per week or participate in certain job training programs.

Generally, the people tracked for the study left the food stamp program for one of three reasons:

• They obtained a job and earned too much to remain eligible.
• They were disqualified because they failed to get a job.
• They consistently worked less than 20 hours a week.

Those who found jobs did better, with average incomes of $13,304. Still, 51 percent of those who landed jobs remained below the poverty line and 30 percent remained in “severe poverty.”

Shannon Cotsoradis, president and CEO of Kansas Action for Children, said she is concerned that more Kansans are being disqualified from food stamps because they aren’t working enough hours than because they are earning too much.

“A true measure of success would be the number of Kansans leaving public assistance programs because they earn too much to qualify. Instead, the data presented today shows that Kansas adults are losing food assistance because they aren’t able to find enough work and earn too little,” Cotsoradis said in a written statement. “These policy changes do not promote self-sufficiency — they only force some of the state’s poorest Kansans to go hungry.”

The report showed 59 percent of the 12,859 Kansans in the first group removed from food stamps found jobs within one year — meaning about 5,272 still were unemployed a year after their last food stamp payment.

Some former recipients reported earning $40,000 or more per year, but a larger percentage found work in traditionally low-wage industries. About 19 percent had jobs in food service, 16 percent were working in retail and 7 percent worked in nursing and residential care facilities.

Brownback said reinstating the work requirement has succeeded because it has moved more people out of poverty than the “big government” policies that it replaced. It wasn’t clear what data he used for comparison.

He said that although he won’t be satisfied until all Kansans are living above the poverty line, “this is something that has worked and is working.”

Brownback suggested U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan might consider the Kansas program as a model for federal reforms. Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer also recently visited Ohio to tout Kansas’ changes to public assistance.

“People who used to be dependent on government are finding more than just a way out of poverty,” Brownback said. “They find dignity and self-worth.”

The nonprofit KHI News Service is an editorially independent initiative of the Kansas Health Institute and a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor reporting collaboration. All stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to KHI.org when a story is reposted online.

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