The Whole Plate Cookbook
This cookbook grew out of the early days of Youth Initiative High School, when a group
of people guided by Dawn Hundt and Jane Siemon, rolled up their sleeves and built
something meaningful from the ground up. The first Foods and Nutrition class started in
a kitchen that was, by all accounts, a bit of an adventure—21 students, two stoves, one
sink, and just enough chaos to make it all memorable. And somehow, it worked.
Over time, that scrappy beginning turned into a fully functioning teaching kitchen and a
thoughtful, hands-on curriculum. The recipes in this book come straight from those
years of teaching. They start simple, build skill, and reflect the way real learning
happens—by doing, adjusting, and occasionally making a mess.
These weren’t created to impress anyone. They were created to be used. And they
were. Students cooked them, wrote them down, and many of them still return to those
recipes years later, which is probably the best review a cookbook can get.
There’s a gentle theme in all of this: that food matters and learning how to cook for
yourself is part of learning how to take care of yourself. Good food, shared well, has a
way of bringing people back to what’s important.
This is the kind of cookbook that earns its place on the counter.
Every purchase supports Youth Initiative High School and the kind of education that
values curiosity, capability, and real-world skills.
It’s a thoughtful and nostalgic Mother’s Day gift that might just end up being the most
reached-for book in the kitchen.