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Cooking Workshops to Encourage Healthy Living for Bed-Stuy Residents

By Camille Bautista | October 30, 2014 8:19am | Updated on October 31, 2014 3:58pm
 A new series of cooking classes at Bed-Stuy's Demonstration Kitchen on Throop Avenue encourage locals to eat healthy and develop leadership skills. 
A new series of cooking classes at Bed-Stuy's Demonstration Kitchen on Throop Avenue encourage locals to eat healthy and develop leadership skills. 
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Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Corporation

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — A Brooklyn food pantry is hosting workshops to help Bed-Stuy residents make healthy eating choices.

Starting next week, the “Team Chef Challenge” and “Cooking Time is Family Time” programs offered by the Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Corporation will educate adults and children on nutrition, seasonal ingredients and self-sufficiency in the kitchen.

The free classes span from five to eight weeks at 376 Throop Ave.’s Demonstration Kitchen. The latest installments join previous workshops focusing on teen health and cooking lessons for seniors.

NEBHDCo.’s Community Healthy Food Advocate Bianca Bockman wants the family program to help participants overcome the “fear of cooking together” by tackling issues such as time-management, while “imparting the value of sitting around the table together.”

Community chefs, local residents who received free training over the summer, will head the lessons.

“Our intention is to bring local leadership,” Bockman said. “There’s so much good food knowledge right here. In the long term, it’s really about building community power and changing the landscape, starting with food.”

In past years, some have considered the neighborhood a food desert — a sentiment Bockman disagrees with.

“There’s plenty of good food in Bed-Stuy, but people can’t afford it,” she said.

“It’s not really that people don’t like healthy food or that they don’t know about it. Many low-income folks don’t have jobs or just can’t afford it.”

NEBHDCo.’s workshops aim to address the matter by empowering residents with skills to improve the economy from the ground up. Locals who completed chef-training programs have been hired for catering events and demonstrations.

Classes meet every Tuesday and Wednesday, starting on Nov. 4. For more information, contact Anise Hines at shines@nebhdco.org.