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Chesterfield chef teaches cooking on YouTube

Posted at 8:16 AM, May 20, 2020
and last updated 2020-05-20 08:25:26-04

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. -- Chef Sarah Jurewicz usually has a full kitchen at the Chesterfield Career and Technical Center on Hull Street Road. But the Coronavirus shut the kitchen down.

Now you’ll find her on YouTube.

"Hey everyone. Welcome. I'm Sarah; Chef J as my students call me,” she said in a recent video. “However, today we're going to do something a little different. You're actually in my home."

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School is shut down, but interest in her recipes opened up for a lot of people.

"They all started going, 'Hey do you have a recipe for this? Do you have a recipe for that? I'd love to do some cookies. My grandchildren were kind of fretting; we're a little nervous. We'd love to be able to bake something.,” she said.

Sarah was posting cooking videos on her Google classroom page for her students.

They started watching; others did too.

They were cooking and baking along, and it just blossomed from there.

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She’s now on Facebook and YouTube.

"I got my husband behind my cell phone. And we set up the space of my kitchen just like I would do a demo in my classroom.,” she said. "And after it got viewed a little over 500 times, I thought ‘Okay. Okay. This might actually be what I'm going to do’."

Sarah said the greatest part of her job is using food to teach history through food anthropology. Students are surprised to learn the spice trade literally created countries.

She’ll also tell you baking is about science, physics, chemistry, and especially math.

"We get to teach mathematics. Everyone always says, 'Oh, we're never going to use algebra. When are we going to use algebra?' In bread baking, oddly enough, I get to be one of those teachers who says, 'Well, let me tell ya'."

Building interest in cooking… is Building Better Minds.

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