ORANGE BEACH — During Orange Beach's Expect Excellence summer program, kids went home with new knowledge on cooking thanks to a week of culinary teachings and activities with local chefs.

For over 10 years, the popular summertime culinary camp teaches kids and teenagers not only how to cook different recipes but also about kitchen etiquette, food handling, knife safety and teamwork. The class of about 30 kids lasted around a week and sold out almost instantly when registration opened up.

It is run by a team of volunteers including local chefs Jonathan Kastner and Krista Williams, with this year's theme being "Something Old to Something New," which saw campers take food that may have been Grandma's recipe and give it their own twist. Dishes included chicken casserole, banana pudding, s'mores cookies and blueberry-strawberry lemonade.

On July 10, families visited to taste the food their children crafted. Each was given a recipe booklet with all the dishes they cooked throughout the week to take home with them.

Though there were kids who started camp not knowing the basics like how to peel a potato or crack an egg, they were impressed with how fast they were able to pick up on things as the week progressed.

"They knocked it out of the park," Williams said. "Really good group of kids. They did great. You give them some instructions, they had it on. We had great assistance that really helped [the kids focus], but the kids themselves, they were awesome. They did amazing."

Along with Kastner, chef and operations manager at the new Tee off at The Wharf, and Williams, who worked as a pastry chef for the now-closed Anchor Bar and Grill in Orange Beach with Kastner and is now the city's Fitness Center manager, other chefs from the Baldwin County food scene also made appearances to give the kids their own expertise, including Kimberly Asbury, pastry chef and general manager of BuzzCatz Coffee & Sweets, Brody Olive, executive chef at Perdido Beach Resort, and Matt Palamara, American Culinary Federation-certified executive chef and director of Coastal Alabama Community College's culinary arts program.

Kastner said he often hears campers say they want to continue cooking when they grow up. Williams said even one of the kids in the program went as far as dressing up as a chef for Halloween one year. Having held the program for years now, they said they are glad with what kids take away from it and enjoy seeing them use their new cooking skills and knowledge in practice as they get older.

"We've been doing it all these years, and we're seeing kids that we taught in fifth and sixth grade now graduating high school, and it's like, 'Where did they go from here?'" Kastner said. "Some of them are going out into restaurants. Some are going to culinary school. Some just know how to cook now [going to college], and they can cook for themselves. They're not eating out every day, so seeing these kids grow up, it's really, really rewarding."