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NDIS Cooking Classes at Blue Tongue Adventure: Building Independence, Confidence and Life Skills in the Kitchen

Cooking is about so much more than preparing a meal. Knowing how to cook nutritious meals, follow safe food practices, and make choices about what we eat is an important part of living a full and independent life.  

At Blue Tongue Adventure, our weekly cooking program gives participants the opportunity to build valuable life skills in a fun, supportive, and hands-on environment at Blue Tongue Kitchen. 

Every Monday, our BTA crew step into our professional bayside kitchen, learn new recipes, work together, and develop skills that support greater independence both inside and outside the kitchen. 

A cooking program designed to build confidence and independence 

Our NDIS cooking classes are designed to help participants develop practical skills that they can use every day. 

Through our cooking program, participants learn how to: 

  • Follow recipes and cooking instructions 
  • Prepare healthy and nutritious meals 
  • Understand food choices and nutrition 
  • Practice kitchen hygiene and food safety 
  • Safely use kitchen equipment 
  • Build confidence trying new skills 
  • Work as part of a team 
  • Develop greater independence at home 

Cooking can sometimes feel overwhelming, especially when someone has never had the opportunity to learn in a supportive environment. 

Our program creates a space where participants can learn at their own pace, celebrate their achievements, and gain confidence with every new recipe. 

A unique learning experience at Blue Tongue Kitchen 

One of the things that makes our cooking program so special is the environment where it takes place. 

Participants don’t cook in a traditional classroom setting. They get to experience Blue Tongue Kitchen, our modern bayside commercial kitchen equipped with professional cooking equipment and everything needed to create amazing meals. 

The change of environment helps participants feel like they are part of something exciting and meaningful. It creates a real cooking experience where they can learn, explore, and enjoy being in a professional kitchen. 

Blue Tongue Kitchen provides a unique opportunity for our BTA crew to develop skills in a space that feels authentic, welcoming, and inspiring. 

10-week cooking programs with a new theme every block 

Our cooking programs run in 10-week blocks, with each block exploring a different theme. 

This gives participants the opportunity to continuously learn new skills, discover new cuisines, and keep building their confidence in the kitchen. 

Our current 10-week block has an Around the World theme, where participants explore the food and culture of different countries through cooking. 

So far, the group has travelled through: 

🌏 Australia – creating a classic Aussie Meat Pie from scratch, complete with a rich savoury filling and golden flaky pastry. 

🇮🇹 Italy – learning how to make Homemade Pasta Primavera, including fresh pasta and a colourful, flavour-packed primavera sauce. 

🇲🇽 Mexico – building a delicious Nachos Bake, layered with seasoned beef, crunchy corn chips and melted cheese. 

There’s still plenty more to come, with participants set to explore: 

🇻🇳 Vietnam – Rice Paper Rolls 

🇺🇸 United States – Mini Cheeseburgers 

🇹🇭 Thailand – Thai Fried Rice 

🇮🇳 India – Butter Chicken with Rice 

🇧🇷 Brazil – Pão de Queijo (Brazilian Cheese Bread) 

🇪🇸 Spain – Spanish Frittata 

🇯🇵 Japan – Sushi 

…with every session introducing new flavours, cooking techniques and cultural experiences from around the world. 

Each week brings a new opportunity to learn, taste, create, and share experiences together. 

Meet Chef Claudio: Bringing passion and experience to every class 

Leading the cooking program is our amazing Chef and Program Coordinator, Claudio, who brings nearly 10 years of culinary experience to Blue Tongue Kitchen. 

Claudio began his culinary career in Brazil before continuing his journey through a wide range of kitchens across Australia, including resorts and remote hospitality environments. 

His cooking style is inspired by his Brazilian heritage and Mediterranean influences, focusing on simple, honest flavours that bring people together. 

However, what makes Claudio such a valued part of the program is not just his culinary expertise. It is his ability to create a calm, welcoming environment where participants feel comfortable learning, experimenting, and building confidence. 

Claudio believes cooking is about much more than recipes. It is about connection, skill development, and creating experiences that help people feel capable and proud of what they can achieve. 

From handmade pasta and focaccia to seasonal comfort dishes, Claudio’s cooking celebrates flavour, creativity, and the joy of sharing food together. 

Supporting NDIS participants to develop real-life skills 

Cooking is a key life skill that supports independence. 

While it can be easy to overlook, knowing how to prepare meals, understand nutrition, and safely use kitchen appliances plays an important role in helping people live more independently. 

At Blue Tongue Adventure, our goal is to support our crew to live their lives to the fullest. 

That means creating opportunities where participants can: 

  • Learn new skills 
  • Build confidence 
  • Try new experiences 
  • Make choices for themselves 
  • Become more independent 

Our cooking program is a fun and practical way to develop these skills while being surrounded by a supportive community. 

How can participants use their NDIS funding for cooking classes? 

Blue Tongue Adventure cooking programs may be accessed using NDIS funding under several categories, depending on a participant’s individual plan and goals. 

Funding options may include: 

CAPACITY BUILDING
Skills Development And Training 09_009_0117_6_3

COMMUNITY ACCESS
Innovative Community Participation 09_008_0116_6_3
Centre Capital Cost 04_599_0136_6_1

CORE
Group Activities – Standard – Weekday Daytime 04_102_0136_6_1
Centre Capital Cost 04_599_0136_6_1

Funding eligibility depends on each participant’s individual NDIS plan, goals, and available funding. 

If you are unsure whether the program is suitable for you, our team can help answer your questions. 

Want to join the Blue Tongue Adventure cooking program? 

If you’re part of the Blue Tongue Adventure crew and would like to take part in our cooking program, we’d love to have you join us! 

If you’re not currently part of Blue Tongue Adventure but would like to become a participant and explore our programs, we’d love to hear from you too. 

Speak with your Blue Tongue Adventure Coordinator or contact our team: 

📧 hello@bluetongueadventure.com.au
📞 1800 949 249 

If you’re interested in joining NDIS cooking classes at Blue Tongue Kitchen but aren’t currently part of the Blue Tongue Adventure crew, you can submit an enquiry through Blue Tongue Kitchen to register your interest. Our team will be happy to discuss your options and help you understand how you can get involved. 

Our coordinators are here to answer your questions and support you through every step of the process. 

FAQs

The program is available for members of the Blue Tongue Adventure community who want to build cooking skills, confidence, and independence. 

Not at all! Our program is designed for all skill levels. Whether you are new to cooking or already enjoy spending time in the kitchen, everyone can learn something new. 

Participants learn practical skills including meal preparation, nutrition, food hygiene, kitchen safety, teamwork, and following recipes,  designed to provide a fun and engaging cooking experience. 

Cooking classes are held at Blue Tongue Kitchen, our modern bayside kitchen in Thorneside. 

Each cooking program runs for 10 weeks, with every block featuring a new theme and new recipes to explore. 

Many participants access the program using their NDIS funding. Funding depends on individual plans, goals, and available supports. 

Speak with your Blue Tongue Adventure Coordinator or email hello@bluetongueadventure.com.au, and our team will help you get started. 

 

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Check out our cover stars!

Read all about it – we’re front-page news!

Christian and Amanda from our Wynnum Blue Tongue Crew, along with Chef Allan from Blue Tongue Kitchen cooking school, are featured on the front page of the March edition of The Community Leader newspaper, as well as in their digital edition.

Thanks to The Community Leader for their wonderful article, which we’re sharing here.

Food brings people together.

Blue Tongue’s inclusive kitchen/café initiative serves up amazing gourmet goodies to appreciative locals from their Thorneside kitchen, uniting the community in the name of good food!

Each week, under the expert guidance of legendary Chef Allan, participants in Blue Tongue’s disability programs are learning culinary skills that are practical and confidence-boosting. On the weekends, the kitchen is abuzz with cooking workshops open to anyone willing to put on an apron and learn new skills. This month, children are invited to book an Easter cupcake-making class – more about that here.

Blue Tongue Kitchen (where cooking classes are held), alongside the organisation’s café Blue Tongue Pantry, serves up hearty helpings of community spirit and delicious food and is an asset to our vibrant local food scene.

We’re fortunate to be able to indulge in just about any type of cuisine we’re craving any day of the week, thanks to the creativity and talent of our local menu-makers. So, cheers to all the wonderful, hardworking cooks, chefs, and their teams who drive the diverse food scene that continues to grow throughout our suburbs and bring us together. Bon appétit!

Pictured: Christian Occhipinti, Chef Allan Groat and Amanda Whittle at Blue Tongue Kitchen, Thorneside.

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Our Ties to Blue Tongue Pantry in Thorneside

Have you ever heard of Blue Tongue Pantry cafe, overlooking the water in Thorneside on Brisbane’s bayside, and thought, “hmm, that name sounds familiar…”? Yep, you’d be right – we started that, and we’re still closely linked to the Pantry to this day!

Our thanks to Blue Tongue Pantry for sharing their origin story online – which we’re reposting right here:

Blue Tongue Pantry’s Origins in Disability Support

If you’ve dined with us before, you know Blue Tongue Pantry as a great cafè by the bay in Thorneside, for hearty breakfasts, leisurely lunches, and of course excellent coffee! But you may not know how we started, where we got our name, and what continues to fuel our values and goals each day.

Our roots, in fact, lay in the disability support sector!

A Cafe with a Cause

Blue Tongue Pantry began as a social venture to support Blue Tongue Adventure’s disability support day programs for young adults. Back in 2018, the growing ‘Blue Tongue Crew’ needed a space where they could gather as a group, develop friendships, and enjoy programs that would support them to learn new skills: whether for day-to-day confidence and growth, or to explore potential employment opportunities.  Opening the Blue Tongue Pantry cafè was the perfect solution.

A woman working in the kitchen space of a cafè. She has made a pie that is in a tin ready to bake.

The cafè became a favourite dining spot with the local community, and a space to embrace inclusion and accessibility. With our chefs and waitstaff on hand to guide the Blue Tongue Crew, they enjoyed immersive cooking workshops and learning cafè skills. For some of our participants, these opportunities opened their eyes to employment pathways. They went on to do work experience with the cafè, then study hospitality or barista courses, and now have jobs of their own in the hospitality sector. We couldn’t be prouder!

A quiet area at the back of the cafè also became a cosy, familiar space for the Blue Tongue Crew and their support team to gather each day and engage in their growing range of capacity-building programs, all designed with their goals and interests in mind.

Growing and Thriving

As a few years passed, Blue Tongue Adventure expanded its range of programs, and the Blue Tongue Crew grew in numbers. It became clear they were outgrowing the cafè space. Plus, with plans and goals for many more exciting hands-on programs, they needed facilities to make their dreams a reality! A solution was found with another social venture: the Blue Tongue Collectables showroom and centre, just a few minutes away on Tingal Road in Wynnum.

Three young men sit on the floor of a woodwork workshop, building a garden bed from wooden pallets. Two are smiling and giving the thumbs-up sign.

The new premises feature a wide range of spacious facilities including an art studio, a woodwork workshop, and room to store all the resources and supplies that help to make the hands-on disability support programs so successful. It also features a gallery space, where artworks and giftware items created by the Blue Tongue Crew in their programs are on display and available for sale.

Continued Connections

However, the move to a new centre hasn’t spelled the end of our connection with the Blue Tongue Crew! They’ve continued to join us at the Pantry for weekly cooking workshops, and this has been a main driver for the opening of our Blue Tongue Kitchen cooking school, right next door to us at Mooroondu Road Thorneside. With our expert pastry chef Allan at the helm, Blue Tongue Kitchen hosts the Blue Tongue Crew’s weekly workshops, as well as 10-week terms of capacity-building classes open to all NDIS participants. A select range of mainstream classes are also open to the general public on weekends.

So, both our cafè and the Blue Tongue Adventure crew have grown, but our core goals remain the same as they were back in 2018: to open opportunities for people with disabilities, to embrace our local community, and always to deliver uncompromised experiences.

Browse the range of Blue Tongue Industries giftware on the shelves at Blue Tongue Pantry on your next visit!

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Unique Gifts For The Festive Season

If you’re looking for unique and socially conscious gift ideas this festive season, the crew at Blue Tongue Adventure Wynnum has been working on a range of artisan creations, perfect for placing under your tree for someone special. 

A young man wearing an apron stands at a kitchen bench, tying labels onto jars of pickled preserves.

Nathan puts the finishing touches on delicious preserves at Blue Tongue Kitchen.

The Blue Tongue Crew has whipped up a range of delicious pickles, chutneys and relishes, as part of their capacity-building cooking workshops at the award-winning Blue Tongue Kitchen cooking school, under the expert guidance of Chef Allan. These preserves are ideal for festive season charcuterie platters, thoughtful gifts – or even to add some extra flavour to those post-Christmas leftovers! 

If you’re shopping for someone who deserves a luxurious treat, browse the Blue Tongue Industries range of home, bath and body products. The range includes candles, soaps, scrubs, body washes and lotions, all crafted and packaged by the Blue Tongue Crew. 

The Cooking and Industries workshops are just some of the activities on offer at Blue Tongue Adventure’s disability support day programs for young adults.  These workshops help to hone skills such as reading recipes and following procedures. Proceeds from the sale of the products are re-invested back into the programs.  

Check out the range on the shelves at Blue Tongue Pantry cafe, 100 Mooroondu Road Thorneside, opposite Beth Boyd Park. 

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Building Life Skills in our Day Programs

One of the many great things about our day programs is the chance to develop life skills.  

The Blue Tongue Crew is a young-adult age group – from school leavers to age 30. And like many young adults, they want to learn to do things for themselves, and be more independent!  

But sitting through a booorrring lesson on how to do something like use a washing machine? No one wants to do that! (Press this, click that … no thanks!) 

So, we make sure that we build life skills into all of our programs. It’s learning, but it’s fun!  

Take, for example, a day in our ‘Plot to Plate’ cooking program.  The Crew isn’t simply given ingredients and a recipe. Take about 10 steps back, to see how we really start building some skills! Here are just some of the learning experiences and problem-solving opportunities we’ll work through as a small group: 

  • What are we going to make today? Is it nutritious? Does everyone agree on today’s meal plan? 
  • What ingredients do we need? What can we use from our garden? Let’s make a grocery list. 
  • How much money do we have to spend to buy those ingredients? 
  • How are we going to get to the shops? Can we take the car today, or do we need to find another way to get there? Could we walk to the shops? Could we catch a bus? 
  • Now that we’ve made it to the shops – where in this giant grocery store will we find the ingredients we need? 
  • What can we afford with our budget? Let’s compare prices.  
  • Great, got everything – now we need to pay. Where are the registers?  Shall we self-serve, or chat to the checkout operator at the big checkout? Cash or card? How much should it cost? How much money do we have left over? 
  • Now we have to get our shopping back to the kitchen, the way we came. 
  • Back at the kitchen, we can work as a team to get started on cooking up our feast! 

Once we’re in the kitchen, we’re learning everything we can about meal preparation.  

  • We learn and practice hygiene: having clean hands, wearing gloves, and not mixing utensils.  
  • We also learn about knife skills: how to chop, dice and slice ingredients safely, and in neat, consistent sizes. (They’ll cook better AND it looks better too!)  
  • We learn about working safely in the kitchen with others around hot appliances, or things that could spill.   

And of course, we’re following a recipe, paying attention to the procedure, step by step.  

Everyone’s favourite part comes when lunch is ready, and we can take the time to sit down with our friends and enjoy the meal we prepared together! Socialising over lunch helps us to build genuine relationships. 

Importantly, we learn to clean up after ourselves, keeping the kitchen clean and tidy! Everything must be washed properly, and put back where it belongs. Surfaces get wiped down, and we leave the place spick-and-span. 

So, in one fun and engaging day at the Plot to Plate program, we work on skills such as: 

  • working with others, and respecting others’ feelings 
  • planning 
  • budgeting 
  • problem solving 
  • grocery shopping 
  • money handling 
  • kitchen safety and hygiene 
  • meal prep and cooking skills 
  • team work 
  • following procedures 
  • cleaning up after ourselves and respecting our space
     

Plus, there are days when we need to maintain our herb and vegetable gardens, so we’re learning about sustainability, as well as the value of growing our own food. 

AND we do it all while hanging out with friends, sharing fun experiences and building genuine friendships! 

Hmm, isn’t it funny …  with all these skills under our belt, using the washing machine doesn’t seem so overwhelming anymore! 

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Blue Tongue Cooking School – Always a Hit!

Here at Blue Tongue Adventure, we offer a variety of disability support programs, targeted to our Blue Tongue Crew’s goals and interests.

And without a doubt, one of the most popular is our Cooking School! (And let’s be honest, the eating part is just as much fun as the cooking part!)

Recently lasagne was on the menu for our Gold Coast Crew.  They made a list and went to the grocery store, independently finding the ingredients they needed to buy. Then the crew headed back to our Helensvale kitchen to put their chef skills to work.

Demonstrating a wide range of skills, they carefully chopped and prepared ingredients, cooked the sauce, assembled the lasagne ready for the oven … and lunch was served!

A man frying mince in a pan, smiling as he stirs with a spatula.Two people build a lasagne in a tray, layering sauce and lasagne sheets.A person holds out a plate of lasagne with garlic bread on the side.

Meanwhile our Brisbane crew tried their hands at making sushi bowls.  Working as a team to prepare and cook the ingredients, they assembled a delicious and healthy meal, sitting down to enjoy it together.

A young man in a kitchen chops chicken on a chopping board, wearing blue rubber gloves. A young man chops vegetables on a chopping board. He is looking up at the camera and smiling.A man frying diced chicken in a frypan on a gas stove. He is smiling and concentrating on stirring the chicken with tongs.

Cooking School supports our Blue Tongue Crew to learn and develop independence and confidence in meal preparation, from sourcing ingredients through to preparing, cooking, and cleaning up afterward. It’s a chance to learn all about food hygiene and knife skills, and follow recipes they can replicate at home.  It’s also pretty cool having access to commercial kitchen facilities at Blue Tongue Pantry – our Crew gets a taste of what working in hospitality might be like!

Can’t wait to see what’s on the menu next week …