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By Debbie Donehey
Special to the Rappahannock News
When Culinary Institute of America-trained chef Mary Arthur took the helm of Rappahannock County High School’s Culinary Arts program in 2001, a transformation began.
From a traditional “Home Ec”-style classroom, Mary Arthur’s Culinary Arts class has become a state-of-the-art career training program with almost 40 percent of the 10th, 11th and 12th grade classes enrolled. Due largely to Arthur’s passion and dynamism, the students in the high school have fallen in love with food.
Some of Arthur’s students have won medals at district and state competitions, some work at local restaurants such as Four & Twenty Blackbirds and the Inn at Little Washington, and several plan to continue with formal training after graduation. The students also prepare food for local charity events. Future plans include cooking for homebound and low-income senior citizens as part of the High School’s Service Learning initiative.
However, the commercial kitchen in which the students work, although upgraded substantially from the mish-mash of home-style equipment Arthur inherited, lacks a vital - and expensive - piece of equipment. Because the school has been unable to afford a commercial exhaust hood (a nearly $40,000 item when installation is factored in), students cook on butane burners and two home-kitchen style stoves.
“When you get nine groups cooking at the same time, there can be a lot of smoke in the room and we’ve actually had problems with students with asthma,” laments Arthur. “You can’t really cut corners on this equipment
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