Jeannine Canales remembers the hot plate of curry chicken with rice they served her at the all-girls center where she lived 10 years ago. The aroma. The flavor. The warmth of the food.
It all enticed the 9-year-old Canales.
“I just fell in love with food,” she said. “I just wanted to know how to make lifebook s7110 battery . It was the taste, I think.”
Canales was at living at the lifebook s7010 battery Gladstone Center for Girls in South Miami after the state removed her from her mother’s care, deeming her mother unfit to care for her. The two had come from Havana to South Florida in 2001.
“I just felt like, ‘A mother losing her daughter, it’s hp 482186-003 battery kind of hard.’ I got emotional,” Canales said. “Now, I get to see her whenever I want to see her. I am happy about that.”
Canales grew up in several foster-care and fujitsu t900 battery group homes: The Gladstone Center, an all-girls foster home in Kendall, another South Miami group home. She now lives in a scarcely furnished group home in Cutler Bay.
Despite her challenges, Canales has not lost sight of what warmed her as a hp 432306-001 battery little girl, and hopes for a career in the culinary world. Today, she is a first-semester student at the Robert Morgan hp 432974-001 battery Educational Center, a vocational school near Cutler Ridge, where she is learning how to cook and the history behind different dishes.
“I want to become a famous chef,” Canales said. “I want to have the lifebook e8110 battery education on all kinds of food. I want to know about the spices and the herbs. They are the basics for all food.”
“She is an expert at making breads,” said Janet Moreno, Canales’ caregiver at the Cutler Bay group home.
From making Thanksgiving breadbaskets to hp 440704-001 battery whipping up Italian breads, pastelitos, fruit pies, sweet-potato pies and even a sweet-potato-pie cheesecake, Canales has become adept with dough.
She is eager for cooking classes to begin in the next hp 441132-003 battery semester. “I am a little tired of baking. I prefer to hp 440772-001 battery s cook because you get to add your own ingredients.” (On the list of foods she wants to learn how to make: rice with black beans, noodles, shrimp, crab, oysters, scallops and turkey with rice.)
There is one thing, however, that Canales can use hp 446507-001 battery immediately — a laptop computer.
“It’s going to be one of the tools that will help me achieve everything I want to do,” she said. “Right now, it is not hard, but it would be easier if I had a laptop.”
Without a laptop, Canales types recipes, does research on hp 535753-001 battery different dishes, writes school papers and does extra-credit assignments at the South Dade Regional Library in Cutler Bay.
The library is a half-mile walk from her home to the lifebook e8420 battery bus stop, then at least a 15-minute wait for the bus and a short ride on Lenovo T61 Battery either bus No. 1 or No. 52.
The 19-year-old, however, does not succumb to self-pity.
“It’s kind of hot out,” she said recently, “but hey, ‘It’s my education.’ ”
Aside from a laptop, Canales also hopes that for herhp 462853-001 battery first Christmas away from a foster home she will get culinary items, cookbooks and new clothes.
For the first time in her life, she also asked for something that is hp 485041-003 battery not necessary for her survival or for her education: an iPod Touch. Music is her third love, after cooking and playing basketball.
In her spare time, Canales likes to cook for the caregivers — Janet and Klay Moreno — at her lifebook e8210 battery Cutler Bay group home. On a recent afternoon, she made banana pudding for them.
After Canales sliced the bananas, crushed the vanilla wafers, mixed them with amilo l7300 battery condensed milk and put the pudding into the oven for seven minutes, she served the warm dessert.
“It’s the taste and the love behind the food when you make it that attracts me to cooking,” she said. “You feel so proud when you make something yourself. And you learn, too.”
