Over the past 3 years, Mason County FCS has been fulfilling a need of the county for quick, easy, and cost effective cooking classes. As an added bonus, the recipes used in Cooking Through The Calendar are nutritious as well. Mason County FCS uses the recipes in the calendar released yearly by the Kentucky Nutrition Education Program in this program. This program has been offered during the day and at night in an effort to accommodate many people’s schedules. This program is offered at no cost to the participants with the supplies being covered by FCS program support. Door prizes have been offered to participants who attend 10 out of 12 sessions as an extra incentive to promote the program.

            Instead of a traditional food demonstration where the Agent stands up front and prepares the recipe, Cooking Through The Calendar involves all of the participants being hands on. The FCS Agent purchases all of the ingredients before each session. At the beginning of each session, the participants divide up all of the steps from washing spinach to dicing onions and work together to create the recipe for that particular month. While participants are preparing the recipe, the FCS Agent goes over the nutritional benefits of the different ingredients that are used in each recipe. While the participants are sampling what they’ve made, the nutritional values of the recipe as a whole are discussed. One of the best things about using the recipes from the KYNEP calendars is that each recipe is broken down with a price per recipe and price per serving. This allows participants to see the benefit of how much it would cost for them to purchase the ingredients to make this meal compared to meals for their entire family at a restaurant. 

            Participants have thoroughly enjoyed this program over the last 3 years. One participant has a daughter and son-in-law who are vegetarians and this program has given her new recipes to make for them when they visit that everyone enjoys. Another participant’s husband has diabetes and has recently had problems with his heart. This program has given her the knowledge to know what foods are naturally diabetic friendly and heart healthy without having to spend a ton of money on foods marketed as health foods. Participants have stated that they plan their grocery trips around this program so that they can go to the store after the program to pick up the ingredients from that month’s recipe if they enjoyed it.