Cooking lessons for nanny?

[Anonymous]

we are blessed with an amazing nanny, who takes great care of children, keeps house, etc.
Our children are now all at school from 8-3:30, so she has much more free time.

i'd like for her to take much more initiative in cooking (planning meals, shopping, etc.)--but she doesn't have much culinary background.

Are there cooking classes (preferably offered in Spanish) that anyone can recommend?

(I know this is a 1-per center problem)

[Anonymous]

Where are you?

[Anonymous]

Have you asked her if she is interested in doing tnis? Nexy, do you want her to paint your house?

[Anonymous]

We are in DC.
To be clear, she's been cooking for us for seven years. Just not the greatest, and if we ever want something new, we need to organize the recipe, etc. She dines with us, and we pay her for that time as well.
She's happy to do this, depending on cuisine.
House-painting, she might be game, but it doesn't seem a good match with her interests.

[Anonymous]

Then I'd ask her what kind of cooking class she might like, American or some other sort. There's tons out there in DC. Do you know what kind of food she seems to like? And would you like it to?

[Anonymous]

Wow, this is a great idea.

Very similar to our situation and an idea I hadn't thought of at all. Will absolutely talk with our nanny to see if she thinks this would be fun.

[Anonymous]

Just do blue apron for a few weeks and she'll find several recipes she likes. Then lster get the stuff yourself.

[Anonymous]

Spanish and can't cook? Hate to say it but very unlikely she can learn to cook. Teaching your daughter to cook is a tradition is every single Spanish family, so if she couldn't learn it from her mother she won't get it now. Have you even asked her if she WANTS to cook? Can you communicate with her?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Spanish and can't cook? Hate to say it but very unlikely she can learn to cook. Teaching your daughter to cook is a tradition is every single Spanish family, so if she couldn't learn it from her mother she won't get it now. Have you even asked her if she WANTS to cook? Can you communicate with her?

WHAT?!?! Was this an exercise in seeing how many offensive generalizations you could make in one comment?
Older people can't learn new things! All "Spanish" women learn to cook! People who speak Spanish certainly don't speak English! Sheesh.

[Anonymous]

Try sur la table. I've taken several cooking classes from them and it's a lot of fun. They periodically have classes 50% off which is typically when I go unless there's something I REALLY want to take (like croissant making for example.) I don't believe they have classes in spanish however.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just do blue apron for a few weeks and she'll find several recipes she likes. Then lster get the stuff yourself.

I do Blue Apron, but those dishes are pretty involved, and buying the ingredients would be a PITA in my opinion. You want her to learn to cook some of the basic dishes she could alter herself over time.

Sur la Table, or the community college continuing ed program, or (in MoCo at least), parks and rec.

[Anonymous]

OP here--we speak spanish, our nanny has limited english. So I think a class in spanish would be most effective.

Community college seems like a good idea, but they seem to offer in English.

Maybe we can get videos in Spanish.

[Anonymous]

If she is not assigned a ton of duties during the day, it would be an excellent suggestion that she should take you up on.

However if she has more domestic duties due to the kids being in school, I wouldn't do so unless I compensated her more.