Cricket Azima 

Founder and Big Cheese of The Creative Kitchen 

Cricket is a graduate of Boston University (BA in Communications), New York University  (MA in Food Studies & Food Management), and Peter Kump’s New York Culinary School  (now, The Institute of Culinary Education; professional culinary degree). Following  graduation, she served as a professor of food studies and an academic advisor at NYU.  Cricket is a member of the Board of the American Heart Association Go Red for Women  Committee, the NYC Autism Charter School and the Children’s Museum of Manhattan Food  & Nutrition Advisory Board.  

Cricket Azima is a dynamic professional chef who specializes in cooking for and with  children. Cricket works with a variety of food companies, offering a range of services,  including spokesperson work, recipe development and testing, freelance writing, teaching,  family outreach, blogging (as part of the Cooking Light Blogger’s Connection), creating  webisodes, special events, and innovation consulting. She has worked with Whole Foods  Market, Foodnetwork.com, Organic Valley, Happy Family, and General Mills, to name a few.  Cricket’s children’s cookbook, Everybody Eats Lunch, was published by Glitterati Inc., in  May, 2008. In 2014, Cricket’s classroom cooking curricula, Everybody Can Cook, was  published by DRL Books. In 2016, Cricket coauthored The Happy Family Organic  Superfoods Cookbook for Baby & Toddler.  

Since 1999, Cricket has been teaching cooking classes to children of all ages at various  locations in New York City. Cricket wrote her master’s thesis on the benefits of teaching  cooking to children, which led her to launch The Creative Kitchen in 2003  (www.thecreativekitchen.com). The Creative Kitchen hosts hands-on children cooking  classes and events at venues such as schools, Whole Foods Market, the Children’s Museum  of Manhattan, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Macy’s. In addition, the  company produces family food events for corporate functions, movie premiers, and other  such large-scale activations.  

Cricket is a one of a kind instructor. She strives to teach more than just a recipe or basic  cooking technique, with a teaching philosophy that is based on the educational benefits of  cooking. Cricket believes that cooking is a multi-faceted learning opportunity. Her method  of food education is designed to inspire children to learn and express themselves creatively  in the kitchen classroom, while reinforcing traditional learning disciplines. With this in  mind, her classes incorporate a wide range of subjects: history, geography, math, reading,  social studies, nutrition, science, foreign language, and art all find a place in her kitchen.  

Drawing on these food education philosophies, Cricket developed Everybody Can Cook, a  comprehensive children’s cooking curricula and teaching program. The book’s unique  format provides turnkey lesson plans, featuring tips and tools to integrate traditional 

school subjects, and includes adaptations for various physical and developmental abilities,  dietary needs, ages, and environments. 

In 2012, Cricket founded the Kids Food Festival (www.kidsfoodfestival.com), a celebration  to educate families on how to make balanced food choices. The annual weekend of events serves as an effort to prevent childhood obesity through fun programming and  entertainment for the whole family. The NYC event hosts approximately 40,000 attendees,  and the Los Angeles event weekend of events hosts approximately 6,000. The Kids Food  Festival partners with the James Beard Foundation, the American Heart Association, the  Alliance for a Healthier Generation, and the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation. In 2017, the  Kids Food Festival partnered with the Association of Children’s Museums to produce the  Kids Food Festival To-Go, a series of mini 1-day Kids Food Festivals hosted in children’s  museums across the country.  

Cricket acted as a contributor to iVillage, an online content-driven community for women.  Cricket advised as the Family and Children’s Editor for The Nibble, an online magazine  about specialty foods. She served as the Food Editor of KIWI Magazine, a family magazine  focused on healthy and organic living, and was also the Director of Kids’ Programs for  Kidfresh, an innovative company in New York City offering all natural, freshly prepared  foods for kids.