At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a Red Deer woman launched an online cooking career that’s still growing with young clients in six countries.
Cooking With Meg offers Zoom classes that teach kids their way around the kitchen by making fun recipes that have included Picky Eater Sheet Pan Pancakes, Freaky Friday Fried Rice and That’s a Lotsa Pizza D’oh.
The business was started in March of 2020 by Meg Tucker, a former local radio personality who has also developed recipes for the Egg Farmers of Alberta. Cooking With Meg started out catering to 27 families and now has served over 5,000.
Seven-to-16-year-olds, mostly across Canada, the U.S. — with a few also the U.K., New Zealand, Costa Rica and Mexico — are making everything from a pineapple upside-down cake to turkey tetrazzini.
By learning to follow recipes, kids can pick up big life lessons, said Tucker, who previously created the kids’ cooking show Just One Bite on Shaw TV.
Children will learn to measure, do fractions and other math skills, she explained. They will also learn science by seeing what happens by mixing ingredients together.
Not only will family bonds grow when kids can cook along with their parents, she said, but children will also learn confidence, patience, cooperation, resilience and resourcefulness by learning to substitute ingredients “and still make it work.”
Tucker’s cooking classes run the gamut from desserts, mains, appies and sides, but she said they are really about having fun and not aiming for perfection.
“At the end of every class, we yell, ’We are awesome!’… I don’t think we celebrate our successes enough.”
The former contestant on MasterChef Canada, who ended up as a top 25 finalist on Season 2, has always loved to experiment with her own recipes.
When the pandemic shifted some of her content creation work contacts, Tucker said she consulted with a strategy consultant who suggested she marry her performance skills — besides hosting on radio, she also has a theatre/improvisation background — and her life-long love of cooking.
Before each Zoom class, Tucker researches and crafts her own recipes that she then taste-tests on her family.
Since Tucker’s clients live across various time zones, she said they can cook along with taped versions of the class when they can’t participate in the live Zoom sessions.
Tucker enjoys coming up with theme classes — from making holiday treats to reviving “retro-recipes,” to making her own versions of Tik Tok trends — including cloud bread and cinnamon buns.
Summer cooking camps are coming up, with registration from May 1.
For more information, please visit the website, Cookwithmeg.com or @cookwithmegtoday on Instagram.
lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
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