Category — Educational Outreach

This fall I am teaming up with a colleague of mine, Amanda Graves of Amanda Cooks Catering, to teach a course called “Montessori Masterchefs” at a local Montessori School.

We’re joining up with 4th, 5th and 6th graders in a food adventure that involves meal planning, food preparation, food safety and, of course, lots of nutrition fun.

We can’t wait to teach these young chefs all about high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and how to hide nutritious ingredients in their favorite dishes!

Breast cancer is a very real and frightening experience for many many people.  Tonight is the first annual “My Girl’s Gala Fashion Fundraiser for Breast Cancer Research”.  This fantastic event is co-sponsored by My Girl’s Radiation Cream by radiantLIFE, CVS Caremark/CarePlus and Masona Grill and is hosted by Shreve, Crump & Lowe in Boston.  All proceeds go to the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center for breast cancer research.

Good nutrition is critical in the fight against cancer.  For this reason, Indigo Rabbit has been invited to support the effort by presenting an estimated 500 guests with delicious and healthful Indigo Rabbit cookies, all-natural, chock-full of phytonutrients, and free from High Fructose Corn Syrup and hydrogenated oils.  Visit radiationcream.com/events.html to learn more.

I had a wonderful opportunity tonight. 

The Junior League of Worcester, MA sponsors an annual event called “Kids in the Kitchen”.  We invite girls from this urban area to Girls Inc. where we cook together and learn how to care for ourselves and our environment.  My partner (Amanda Graves of “Amanda Cooks”) and I teamed up to introduce new foods and food preparation techniques while discussing healthful alternatives to unhealthy foods the girls encounter every day. 

When making chicken enchiladas, as we did tonight, we discovered the best tortillas to include based on the data we discerned from comparable nutrition panels.  We discussed whether frozen or canned corn was better to include in our salad.  We wondered about whether fruit juice or “fruit flavored drink” was a wiser selection.  We talked about how many foods are marketed to kids by way of brightly colored commercial images on packaging and how devastating the health effects can be, especially when we noted how much sugar and trans fats were in these items.

I commend the girls at Girls Inc. for their eagerness to learn and their appetite for new things – especially the young woman who claimed she would never touch a vegetable and then devoured her salad and asked for seconds.  Thank you for your poise – and for thinking I was 25 years old!