PACKWOOD – Pekin High School’s Iron Chef class showed its appreciation for the school’s custodians and support staff by cooking them a breakfast Wednesday, Feb. 14.

Members of the class said they wanted to recognize the custodians’ hard work, especially in light of the extra hours they had to put in responding to the blizzards in January. The students were each assigned a task to make a breakfast that included French toast, scrambled eggs, muffins, bacon, hashbrowns and cut fruit with fruit dip.

Pekin custodian Phillip Bleything, who has worked at the school five years, said he appreciated the students’ gesture.

“I feel a lot of times janitors are unrecognized, so this makes me feel really good,” he said. “It’s very nice to get something back.”

Andy Conger, Pekin’s director of maintenance and grounds who has been with the school 10 years, said the blizzards made it difficult for him and his staff to even get to the school, and when they did get here, it took a long time to clear away all the snow.

“There were a few days we couldn’t make it here because our roads were so bad,” Conger said. “We were snowed in at home.”

Conger said receiving a breakfast from the Iron Chef class was “awesome” and that he really appreciated it.

“It’s a good feeling,” Conger said. “Everything was delicious.”

“The kids are awesome cooks,” Bleything added.

The Iron Chef class is taught by Kelly Goudy, who specializes in culinary classes at Pekin and who was in the restaurant business before becoming a teacher. Goudy has taught at Pekin since 2013, and the Iron Chef class began in 2016 as a way for students to prepare for the Iron Chef competition hosted by Indian Hills Community College. Pekin has excelled at the competition, winning its division three of the past four years, where students are asked to prepare a dish and are judged on its taste, texture and theme. The students are also judged on things like their knife skills and their commitment to safety and sanitation.

The class has earned a reputation for producing scrumptious meals, and the students love sharing their creations on special occasions.

“When people know that these guys made it, they’ll eat it,” Goudy said. “When the email goes out that Iron Chef kids are making food, everybody is going through the door.”

In early February, the Iron Chef class catered the district’s School Improvement Advisory Committee (SIAC) meeting. They’ve cooked for the staff and the school board, and they’ve made pies for the teachers to take home on Thanksgiving.

Goudy said that, not only are the students learning valuable and marketable skills in high school, they’re actually becoming ServSafe certified, meaning they have taken a test to prove they know how to handle food safely. This is a big deal because every restaurant in Iowa must employ at least one person who is ServSafe certified.

“That gives them a leg up,” Goudy said. “When I ran my restaurant, if you had come in with work experience and another person had come in without, but they had this certification, I probably would have hired them because I have to have someone on staff with it.”

Pekin senior Kaleigh Adrian said the Iron Chef class makes a different dish every Friday to practice for the upcoming competition at Indian Hills, which will be April 12. In the fall, the class prepared a lamb chop that impressed Pekin Superintendent Derek Philips.

“It was so good,” Philips said. “The head chef at Indian Hills even said, ‘My kids just made lamb and it’s not even close.’ Our kids were way better.”

Adrian said she’s never considered herself a “huge cook,” and that she enrolled in the class this year because she wanted to learn cooking skills.

“My friends were all in here, so I decided ‘why not?’” Adrian said. “And Mrs. Goudy is an amazing teacher.”

Pekin senior Haylea Oostra said she’s enjoying her time in Iron Chef so much that she’s decided to major in culinary arts when she enrolls at DMACC in the fall. She said she wants to concentrate on baking specifically.

“My favorite thing to bake is cupcakes,” she said.

Lexa Nelson is a sophomore who is the only non-senior in the Iron Chef class. She said she’s always enjoyed cooking.

“I like doing it all,” she said. “I’ll do whatever needs to be done.”

Philips said he’s proud of the Iron Chef students for honoring the custodians and knowing that it was “the right thing to do.”

“They’re the type of kids you want your daughters and sons to grow up to be,” he said. “They’re insanely talented. They’re learning more than you can ever imagine.”