4 minute read
Yes we can! Learning through Cooking Improv
It’s certainly not the first time Chef Mona Bronson-Fuqua has heard those words. A culinary educator by trade -- and with diplomas from Cincinnati COOKS! and Cincinnati State’s culinary management program on her resume – she knows a thing or two about how to cook a mushroom. She persists.
“You’ve just never had them prepared like this,” Bronson-Fuqua says, as she scoops a steaming spoonful of mushroom stew into a cup and offers it to a neighbor to sample.
This is Chef Mona’s first visit to St. Vincent de Paul’s Neyer Outreach Center working as an educator for La Soupe Cincinnati. Through a new partnership, she and other La Soupe chefs have begun offering free Cooking Improv classes to neighbors in SVDP’s Ruth Jung Conway Teaching Kitchen.
La Soupe, a nonprofit dedicated to bridging the gap between food waste and hunger, has been hosting Cooking Improv classes at its Walnut Hills headquarters for a year. The organization’s goal is simple: to encourage people to create healthy meals with what they have on hand.
Now, by partnering with St. Vincent de Paul, these classes will go one step further: encourage neighbors to create healthy meals -- and demonstrate how they can be created with ingredients on hand at the Becky & Ted Catino Choice Food Pantry.
“This is my kind of cooking. You can make some really beautiful dishes from fruits and vegetables,” says Chef Halichea Edwards, La Soupe Education Coordinator. She leads a demo showing how apples and pears can be sauteed and mixed with quick oats and cinnamon to make an apple-and-pear crisp. At another station, mushrooms and peppers are mixed with rice, braised turkey necks, and garlic powder to create a savory and nutritious mushroom stew.
Beyond creativity and nutrition, another emphasis of the Cooking Improv sessions is reducing food waste. “This partnership utilizes the pantry, but also familiarizes the community with some of the foods that may not be flying off the shelves,” explains Chef Halichea. She shows how a dragon fruit – donated with other surplus produce from a local grocery store – can be diced and mixed with red pepper, lemon and honey to create a sweet and zesty salsa. Chicken sausage is sautéed and sandwiched between two boiled eggs to make low-glycemic, gluten-free sliders.
Cooking Improv with La Soupe, now offered the first Wednesday of each month, is the first recurring program to launch in the Ruth Jung Conway Teaching Kitchen. The kitchen bears the name of longtime supporter and special friend of SVDP, Ruth Jung Conway. Ruth was fondly known for her heart for serving others – often by preparing and sharing meals. This programming builds on a continued effort to promote holistic wellbeing for neighbors seeking help through St. Vincent de Paul, and empowering neighbors through resources and tools to make healthy choices.
Dr. Rusty Curington, Director of the SVDP Charitable Pharmacy, was instrumental in the creation of a PHARMers Market program in 2018. The program empowered pharmacy staff to write “prescriptions” for healthy food – and then distribute boxes of that fresh food, along with recipe cards, to patients with diabetes through the pharmacy window. “That pilot program made a big impact,” says Curington. “Seventy-four percent of patients who completed it experienced a decrease in hemoglobin A1C, marking significant improvement in diabetes control.” The next phase of the program, called the PHARMers Kitchen, was slated to kick off in May of 2020, but was put on hold due to the coronavirus. Curington is ready to relaunch later this year with cooking classes for neighbors with diabetes.
SVDP Outreach Center Program Director Erin Nowak says she anticipates more programming to return to the Teaching Kitchen later this year through the Pantry to Plate initiative, a partnership with the UC Open School Clinic. The program invites students studying Community Nutrition to create healthy dishes for neighbors to sample. Neighbors who are interested can then take home ingredients for the recipe from the Choice Food Pantry.
“When life throws us challenges, like those facing many of the neighbors who are visiting our Outreach Center, you’re not always reaching for the healthiest options when it comes to food. You’re looking to feed yourself and your family in the best way you can,” says Nowak. “It’s important that we’re not only providing our neighbors access to food, but also equipping them with the tools to positively impact their health.”
