A Hollywood Cooking Class for Kids and Their Moms
Posted by Katherine Van Steenburgh on Friday, August 20, 2010
Throughout this summer, my colleague Alice Pennington and I have been on a Summer Meals Tour, visiting partners that we fund and meals sites that are keeping kids fed throughout the summer months. We’ve visited Boys and Girls Clubs in Florida, a food bank in Alabama and dozens of other sites in other states that are connecting kids with food.
The last leg of our Summer Meals tour was sunny Southern California. Last week, Alice and I spent 5 days visiting 9 partner sites in Pasadena, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego.
It might surprise you that…
- California has the lowest number of eligible participants enrolled in Food Stamps in the country, mostly due to red tape, language, and access barriers.
- 1/3 children in Orange County are at risk of hunger. This is far above the national average.
- There is a nutrition education Operation Frontline class held right in the middle of Hollywood at Sunset and Vine.
Last Monday, I walked into the Hollywood Farmer’s Kitchen — a nonprofit organization aligned with the Hollywood Farmers’ Market and dedicated to providing local food sources and food security and nutrition education — to attend an Operation Frontline Class. Share Our Strength funds the class, but it is run by our partner, the Center for Community and Family Services. By 10:00 am the classroom kitchen was packed with helpful volunteers, the class chef, the Operation Frontline team, and a dozen eager participants. It was a side-by-side class for moms and children to take together during the summer.
On the menu? Yogurt with granola and fruits, corn and bean salad with fennel, and tasty vegetable soup. As the dishes were prepared, moms and their kids had the chance to learn about nutrition together while also learning some new recipes, right in the middle of Hollywood.
I was astounded by some of the parents and kids I met in the class. One mother and daughter walked 3 miles to make it to class, since their bus line wasn’t running that day. As soon as they arrived, they jumped in and started cooking with the rest of the group.
Another mother, Sylvia, told me that the Operation Frontline class has drastically improved her ability to cook healthy low cost meals for her family. She even recited her favorite Operation Frontline recipe to me by heart: healthy chicken dipped in yogurt instead of butter.
It was inspiring to meet these families and passionate workers, and see the work that we’re funding in action. Seeing kids and parents cooking and learning together gave a new perspective to the meals programs I’ve seen this summer. It’s important work and I’m glad we’re doing it.
For more information about Operation Frontline is available at http://operationfrontline.org.
August 20, 2010 | 3 comment(s) | Tags: Cooking Matters, event, no kid hungry, Operation Frontline, summer meals
Comments
3 reader comments so far.
What a great blog about our Hollywood class! Thank you Katherine, we really enjoyed having you visit OFL in LA!
www.operationfrontlinela.blogspot
Posted by Catherine on August 23, 2010
I live and work in Pasadena, as you know, and know the overall stats, see the need in families wandering the Pasadena streets (yes, home to the famed Rose Bowl game and parade is also home to many homeless and struggling families), have volunteered in the local food pantry up the street from my home, and was still shocked at the numbers you provided.
I'm not shocked at the results you saw in the Operation Frontline class. It's what that program does--puts some control back into these families' hands, brings smiles to their faces, and new skills to make and keep them healthy the rest of their lives. Thanks for sharing this experience--Hollywood is not all glitz and glam, but there is a lot of good work going on to help struggling families.
Posted by Cate Puzo on August 24, 2010
We can send people into space, spend multiple billions on a single piece of the war machine, but we still can't be bothered to educate everyone (while in grade school) on the value of proper eating.
What Sylvia told you that the Operation Frontline class has drastically improved her ability to cook healthy low cost meals for her family is a clear statement that it is still better to learn cooking skills later in life then never learning them at all.
Posted by Kruzon on August 29, 2010
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