Community Connections at Pinckney-Cooking Club

Michelle Thacker
SNAP-Ed Nutrition Education

I never thought I would have the fortune to get to combine three of my passions into a job that positively impacts young people! Teaching, exercise and food are interests and talents I have been able to share the past eighteen weeks with the students enrolled in Cooking Club with Community Connections at Pinckney. Two, separate nine-week sessions were held with students that had an interest in learning about nutrition and cooking skills. Always receiving a warm welcome when the students would enter the classroom was one of the great rewards I earned throughout the programming!

So many topics and skills were discussed and practiced by the Cooking Club students. Using the Create Better Health SNAP-Ed curriculum, some of the topics covered were MyPlate and the five food groups. Meal planning, grocery shopping and goal setting were discussed. Understanding nutrition facts was part of the instruction. Aerobic activity, food safety and resistance training were covered, finishing up with a review of healthy eating patterns. Students used a variety of fruits and vegetables to create delicious meals.

Each student was able to experience hands on cooking instruction and culinary skill building as part of Cooking Club and the Create Better Health curriculum through SNAP Education. A highlight for me was being able to provide the students with a variety of fruits, vegetables and whole grains, along with low fat dairy and protein options that they might not have had a chance to experience eating before. Each class, I would hear comments on how they did not like a certain fruit or vegetable, but after learning how to prepare it and pair it with other foods, the students would comment on how they really liked what they had made!

Enriching the lives of the Cooking Club students through Nutrition Education has been a very fulfilling experience for me. Seeing the smiles on the students faces and the culinary skill building that happened along the way reminds me of the importance of Nutrition Education in the classroom setting. What a wonderful way to spend a work day!