Cooking Up A Recipe For Success

Ten-year-old Tulsan Remmi Smith’s cooking show and nutrition project, Cooktime with Remmi, is cooking up some national notoriety. Remmi was recently featured on Amazing Kids, a nonprofit website devoted to recognizing the work of children and young people throughout the nation. And, in May, Remmi was one of only six young people invited to Dallas, Texas to participate in the Apple Education Leadership Summit.

Remmi’s journey started in her mom’s kitchen. Nancy Smith said that Remmi liked to watch her cook, and they began to cook together.

“I like cooking and I love to eat,” Remmi said. “I love healthy food. My mom always cooked and I was always in the kitchen, and I really wanted to help her so we could spend more time together.”
Nancy believes that cooking helps children learn about nutrition and healthy eating. She said that cooking is a good way to not only teach children about healthful foods, but also to teach them ways to prepare the food so that they will be more likely to eat it.

As a result of their combined passion for cooking, Remmi and her mom launched “Cooktime with Remmi,” a cooking show that has appeared on the Tulsa Public Schools cable television station and on Remmi’s website.

Remmi has also made many personal appearances, including doing cooking demonstrations at local schools, at Whole Foods Market, the Cherry Street Farmer’s Market and Metro Appliances and More. She was recently invited to present at the Oklahoma Creativity Institute conference, “Feasting on Creativity: Unconventional Ingredients, Innovative Teachers, Inspired Students,” in Oklahoma City.

That invitation resulted from an educator seeing Remmi at the Apple Leadership Conference. Remmi was the youngest of the six students selected for the honor. Each of the six was filmed by Apple Production Company, and the videos were shown at the conference. Among them was a Stanford student who had invented an app called “iStanford” and a girl who had started her own hair company. The purpose of the conference was to encourage educators and school superintendents to think outside the box about education.

“I thought it was amazing when I saw my show,” Remmi said. “A lot of people congratulated me. Some offered me business cards.”

Nancy said that some of the educators at the conference were planning to set up presentations or conference calls with Remmi for their classrooms.

“The biggest thing I learned,” Remmi said, “was that kids are not only just kids who learn inside school, but outside school, too. I can be a role model to my family and friends. Kids are capable of doing more things, they can open doors to new ideas and they can have dreams of their own.”

Remmi said that Rachel Ray is her role model, and in the future she hopes to go to culinary school, have her own restaurant, write cookbooks and be a food critic.

“I’ve learned that showbiz is not as easy as it looks. I used to be all nervous, but now I’m not,” Remmi said. “When I’m doing my cooking show, it’s not really just a cooking show – I want to connect and encourage families to have fun and cook more.”