Nancy Martz and her family were sorting produce at a food pantry when they kept pulling out things nobody could name. She pictured the family who would find one in their box. Say they figure out what it is. Say they even find a recipe.
And then the recipe tells you to mince it and sauté it. Well, we're done. So I realized that food without culinary education isn't going to solve food insecurity.
— Nancy Martz, founder, Apples to Zucchini Cooking School
That realization became Apples to Zucchini Cooking School, or A to Z, as the people who work there call it. About ten years later, it's the only nonprofit cooking school in Santa Barbara County. This year it moved into a new teaching kitchen, and Jill Barton, a chef by trade, became its executive director. In September we spent two days in that kitchen with Nancy and Jill. Start with the film, then stay for what they told us.
Start with the kids
Nancy didn't start with adult classes. She started with kids, partly because they're out of school by mid-afternoon, and partly because of something every parent already knows:
If mom or dad comes home from an adult ed cooking class and says, ‘We're going to start eating kale chips, and I'm gonna show you how to make them,’ the kids are like, ‘Out of here. We are not eating kale chips.’ If the kid comes home and says, ‘Mom, why haven't you been making kale chips for me?’ they are in the car on their way to the grocery store before the backpack hits the ground, right?
— Nancy Martz
After-school classes grew into summer camp, family classes, teen internships and adult classes. In 2025 alone, A to Z taught more than 1,900 students. The mission, in Nancy's words, is “to bring people together over shared meals by teaching them how to cook” — cooking, and then actually sitting down to eat together.
Safety third
We kind of jokingly say safety third. If the philosophy here was safety first, we would not have knives and hot stoves. But if that's how you are running your household, your kids are never going to learn how to cook.
— Nancy Martz
It isn't carelessness. Kids at A to Z use real knives at real stoves with adults right beside them. The point is the confidence that only comes from doing the real thing. Nancy put it this way later in our conversation: “We manage our safety, but we are not managed by our idea of safety.”
Behind every behavior
On whiteboards around the school there's a line from Julia Cushing, a licensed clinical social worker who advises A to Z and wrote the children's book Julia's Colorful Day. Nancy shared it with us:
Behind every behavior is a feeling, and behind every feeling is a need. And once we start recognizing that, it really changes the conversation for ourselves and with the other person.
— Nancy Martz, sharing words from A to Z advisor Julia Cushing, LCSW
Nancy turns that lens on herself first. When her own tone gets sharp, she asks what she's actually feeling, and it's often not anger at her child at all. “My feeling is often something else,” she told us — fear of being late, frustration, exhaustion. Name the feeling, and the need gets easier to see: getting out the door on time, or simply a nap.
The teenagers in the room
A to Z's teen culinary internship started as a way for high schoolers to earn their required volunteer hours. The school turned it into real training — how to open a bank account, write a curriculum, write a recipe — and interns who build enough skills can be hired. Some of today's paid staff first took A to Z classes in elementary school. Then the interns started running summer camp, and something shifted.
They started becoming camp counselors … and that's when we really realized that they were connecting with the kids in a totally different way than an adult would. … We realized that those kids were looking up to the teenagers way more than they were looking up to us.
— Jill Barton, Executive Director, Apples to Zucchini Cooking School
Jill knows why. She remembers summer camp as a kid, and finally connecting with someone “older than me but not quite an adult” — someone who talked to her “not like just a child, as a human.”
I truly think that as an adult, we become the adult that we didn't have when we were kids.
— Jill Barton
Three questions for Jill
We asked Jill the questions parents bring to us most often. Watch her answers, or read them, below.
What do adults get wrong about cooking with young children?
A lot. A whole lot. … I don't think it's their fault. … We forget what being a child is. … If you're making a cake with your four or five-year-old kid, there's going to be flour everywhere. The egg, there's going to be eggshell. But that's okay because your kid is still doing things.
And to him, the child, it's going to be delicious. And if it's not, the child's going to be like, ‘Well, no, that's not very good.’ Okay, well, then we'll try it again.
A parent's four-year-old won't eat anything green. What do you tell them?
The first thing I would say is, what else is your child eating? Is your kid eating other healthy foods that are just not green? Is it the color green that's such a problem? … You really have to look at the big picture.
Then, Jill says, take it in stages. Let your child look at a cucumber. Teach them to chop it. “It doesn't sound like a lot. That's already a huge step.” Next time, they can smell it. If they're feeling daring, they can tap a little piece on their tongue. And if the answer is still a firm no:
If the child is just categorically saying, ‘I'm not eating this,’ don't force your child to eat it. … You don't want your child for his whole life to only suck on a little yogurt pouch that has spinach in it. However, if that's the only way you can get your kid to eat green things, it's okay.
Who was one of the first people that ignited your passion for cooking?
My grandma was always in the kitchen. … First thing she taught me how to cook were crêpes. And I remember making the batter with her and how hard it was because she would slowly incorporate the milk. And I couldn't do that because I wasn't strong enough. So the first time she finally allowed me to do it was like the victory. Like, I'm strong enough to mix the batter, you know?
Years later, Jill opened a little crêpe shop of her own. Today, in the last class of every A to Z semester, kids make crêpes from her grandmother's recipe. What she remembers most is the permission: “She constantly allowed me to be curious.”
Where we meet
DWKD gives parents and educators the resources to teach life skills to kids through storytelling, activities, and dialogue. A to Z does it with a whisk and a cutting board. They teach the kids in the kitchen; we try to reach the adults after everyone goes home. Spending time with Nancy and Jill, we kept hearing our own four principles — D.W.K.D. — in a chef's voice:
Do. Kids learn by doing. Real knives, hot stoves, flour everywhere. “Letting kids be kids,” as Jill puts it.
What. What does this moment need? Our pause asks three questions: What am I feeling? What's going on with my child? What does this moment need? Julia Cushing's whiteboard line asks the same thing in one breath.
Kids are people. Talk with them, not at them. Jill's grandmother let her be curious. Jill wanted an adult who talked to her as a human. Now she's that adult for the kids in her kitchen.
Do it again. One skill, many moments. Look at the cucumber, then chop it, then smell it, then taste it. And if the cake flops: “Okay, well, then we'll try it again.”
That's the village we keep talking about: chefs, teen counselors, grandmothers, teachers and parents, each of them confident in their responsibility to help raise all of our children — together. We're not here to tell you how to parent. We're here to help you discover the resources that work best for you, and A to Z is one of the best we've found. Learn more about the school at atozcookingschool.org.
Bring it home
You don't need a teaching kitchen to start. Read a story together tonight, then let them crack the egg tomorrow. Our books, Everyday Adventures and Everyday Emotions, are made for grown-ups to read to kids ages 3–7, each one built around a life skill. Find them at dowhatkidsdo.com/storytime.
