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n The Osthoff Resort
www.osthoff.com
To me, going on vacation means never having to say I cooked. For my daughter, a future gourmet chef, it’s quite another story.
So she was thrilled with our family’s return visit to the serene and wonderful Osthoff Resort on the shores of Elkhart Lake, Wis., about an hour north of Milwaukee. There, we were able to partake of the Osthoff’s newest offering: Jill Prescott’s Ecole de Cuisine cooking school.
Run by former PBS chef and cookbook author Jill Prescott, a warm and charming woman who made even me believe that cooking could be fun, the school is mostly geared toward adults (who have options ranging from one-hour wine tasting courses to five-day cooking extravaganzas). She also offers daily kids’ classes, though, at per person.
Prescott has a way with kids—she doesn’t talk down to them and she expects them to do their share of cleaning as well as cooking and eating.
She isn’t always available to work with the kids—she sometimes is immersed in those adults-only classes. When that happens, the kids’ classes are taught by young women who run the children’s programming using Prescott’s healthy recipes.
For the non-chefs, there’s plenty to do at the Osthoff. The condo-style resort offers one-, two- and three-room accommodations (parents can have their own room with a door that locks) and the Summer Pleasures programming has a host of things for kids ages 6-12, from fishing to hay rides, most for per person per activity.
The Osthoff isn’t cheap—two-night summer packages start at 5. But we have always found it to be worth every penny.
