The Expanded Food and Nutrition program assistant partnered with our local Library this spring. I started a seven week nutrition and cooking class. The class was to get parents and children to cook and eat together. If the parents were working with the child this was more bonding time for them. 

During the seven week program, we always had a game to play before our lesson. I taught each required lesson from Healthy Choices for Everybody. With each lesson we always cooked or made one of our recipes from our curriculum. Along with all the cooking, I was teaching cooking skills, food safety and portion sizes. 

The families were able to learn about new skills such as cooking without frying and not using a lot of heavy oils. They were very surprised that the food tasted very good when eliminating oils and not frying them.

The families were able to learn healthy cooking skills throughout this course. In teaching these classes, I would hear comments such as “I don’t like black beans” and after trying them for the first time, they in turn actually liked them. I also heard, “I am learning new techniques that I didn’t know I could do. I had ten families and they all came to each of the sessions. 

This class was so popular and was so in demand that we have a waiting list for the next session over the following seven weeks.