FSA’s Healthy eating cooking classes were recently featured online by Jennifer Dean. This article was origionaly posted online at inlandsocal.com
When we get home after a long day of work and school (or summer day camp), we’re starving. I usually have to cook something at lightening speed – with one hand. The other hand is guarding the refrigerator and pantry from foraging children. They think they’ll die if they don’t eat immediately.
I want to cook healthy meals, but they also have to be fast. I’m sure this problem is not uncommon among households all over.
For Riverside families, Family Service Association has a solution. The agency launched the Health Eating Cooking classes pilot program last October and found a huge response. Thanks to funding from First 5 of Riverside and Community Action Partners of Riverside, a whole new slew of classes are beginning in August.
The first round of free 6-week cooking classes will be at Norton Younglove Community Center on Mondays, the Riverside YWCA on Tuesdays, Rubidoux Childcare Center on Wednesdays, and Mead Valley Community Center on Thursdays. Depending on the site, classes will begin between 3 and 4 p.m. and will last for two hours. They begin August 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Participants will learn to prepare easy, economical and healthy meals. Families are welcome and child care is provided. Come ready to eat because families will dine at the class that evening. Space is limited, so enroll early. There will be a Spanish translator at each class.
The classes will be taught by Executive Chef Frank Barilone of Catering for a Cause, a social enterprise branch of Family Services Association.
“We’ve done 30 of these so far,” said Laurie Hawel, social enterprise operations manager at Family Service Association. “Usually we finish cooking in 25 minutes.”
During the classes Chef Barillne will host a demonstration, while six class members cook alongside him at work stations. All class members and their families will eat the meals prepared that evening.
“Then we’ll also have grocery bags with the ingredients from that meal they’ll take home to prepare that week,” Hawel said. “That’s their homework. We’ll ask how it went the next week.”
Teenagers are also welcome to participate in the class. To enroll call Laurie Hawel at Family Service Association at 951-686-1096.
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