Local cooking classes make health a high priority

Whole Hearted: Cooking classes abound in central Ohio, offering a vast assortment of cuisines for different priorities and levels of experience

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Cooking classes abound in central Ohio, offering a vast assortment of cuisines for different priorities and levels of experience.

Many such classes offer healthful tips. But the number focused specifically on health as it pertains to cooking is far smaller.

Here’s a look at some of the most health-centric cooking classes in town.

Philip Heit Center for Healthy New Albany

When Healthy New Albany was putting together plans for its community health center, a demonstration kitchen was one of the top priorities.

It was critical that the Philip Heit Center for Healthy New Albany, which opened in 2015, have a component to equip the community with interesting ways to improve their nutrition, diet and meal choices.

“That’s one of the reasons we put a kitchen here at the center – because food is such an integral part,” says Kristina Isenhour, program manager for Healthy New Albany. “How can we … help people improve and keep interest in the food in their lives?”

Chef Eileen Pewitt teaches a monthly Community Open Kitchen cooking class, focusing on multiple angles to improve community health and encourage exploration in the kitchen. Proceeds from the classes benefit New Albany’s food pantry, the Village Coalition Against Hunger.

Past classes have focused on general subjects, such as healthful holiday cooking or meatless Mondays, as well as on specific types of food, including soup and honey. There’s even been a class inspired by Downton Abbey.

“It’s not for people who are cooking experts,” Isenhour says. “It’s for helping people learn something new and different in an environment that’s close enough and intimate enough that it’s not intimidating.”

A different audience is the target of the center’s new Kids in the Kitchen series, aimed at ages 5-12. The classes give children practice in the kitchen, and help them have fun with food on their own. The center is also working on a class for children ages 2-5 to take with their parents.

Franklin Park Conservatory

Health is a key consideration in Franklin Park Conservatory’s cooking classes, which fixate primarily on local foods, whole ingredients and cooking procedures.

Not all of the conservatory’s cooking offerings are healthful – scan its calendar, and you’re likely to spot the occasional class on chocolates or cookies – but the vast majority are.

“I like to frame our culinary line-up (as) about 80 percent healthy, 20 percent indulgent or just fun,” says Allison Hendricks, culinary educator at the conservatory.

In 2018, the classes will place a big focus on back-to-basics cooking. That means using ingredients with names participants can pronounce and origins participants can trace. When people do that, they can become empowered to take control of their health, Hendricks says.

“I think that when you learn basic skills and learn how to cook with whole ingredients … you find that you eat healthy without even trying to,” she says.

Among the conservatory’s most popular classes are its monthly courses focused on knife skills. About 90 percent of cooking is preparation, Hendricks says, and most of preparation is breaking down ingredients, usually with a knife. That means proper knife usage plays a key role in breaking down foods in the best possible way, and the two-hour classes consist of about 90 minutes of knife work and 30 minutes of eating.

“All of the ingredients that you’re working with are whole – fruits and vegetables and proteins,” she says.

Another good example: classes focused on preservation, taught by Jeannie Seabrook of Sunbury-based sustainable farm Glass Rooster Cannery. Seabrook often covers the healthiest ways to preserve foods – using lemon peel rather than sugar to allow a jam to set, for example.

Classes take place in the conservatory’s demonstration kitchen, which sits on the Franklin Park garden, and participants sometimes walk out and directly harvest the food they’ll be using.

Local Matters

Though the Local Matters organization stretches back to the late 2000s, its cooking class schedule has amped up significantly since the opening of its south Columbus community kitchen two years ago.

Local Matters’ mission is, per its website, to “create healthy communities through food education, access and advocacy,” and the health-focused cooking classes are a significant part of it.

“Local Matters works with more than 100 different sites every year with in excess of 14,000 people,” says Adam Fazio, director of development. “About 800 will come to the kitchen in a year.”

The organization works with people from a variety of backgrounds and a variety of budgets, so all classes are offered on a “pay what you can” basis.

“Everything that we do focuses on healthy eating on a budget,” Fazio says. “So (that means) cooking with whole foods and using lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and doing so in a way that’s really accessible, both in terms of the kinds of foods we’re using and … cost.”

Cooking is also supposed to be fun, Fazio says, and that principle is reflected in themed classes such as Taco Tuesday and Breakfast for Dinner. Other classes center less on specific foods than on strategies, such as preparing a meal for a family of four for less than $10 using a mock price list.

The lion’s share of classes are accessible to ages 6 and up. Outside of its community kitchen, Local Matters conducts a lot of classes at schools, festivals and other sites, working to advance the principle that it’s possible for people to eat healthfully under almost any circumstance.

“People get a lot of messaging about food and they get a lot of messaging about health, but the problem is they’re not always connected,” Fazio says.

Upcoming Classes

Philip Heit Center for Healthy New Albany

www.heitcenter.com

Kids in the Kitchen – Pizza Party: Jan. 11

Kids in the Kitchen – Heart Healthy Valentine’s Day: Feb. 8

Take the Pressure Out of the Kitchen: Jan. 25

Franklin Park Conservatory

www.fpconservatory.org

Homemade Pasta Date Night: Jan. 19

Flavors of India: Jan. 29

Restorative Bone Broth: Feb. 8

Knife Skills: Feb. 12

Local Matters

www.local-matters.org

Tofu Four Ways: Jan. 10

Have a Healthy Snack: Jan. 22

Healthy Comfort Foods for the Winter Months: Jan. 24

A Very Veggie Valentine's: Feb. 7

Garth Bishop is managing editor. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.

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