Nathan Casillas learns something new every time he visits St. Luke’s in the Meadow Episcopal Church.
Along with scriptures and hymns, the 11-year-old has learned that beans can be a source of protein. He’s learned how to cook vegetables on a stove. He also learned that he doesn’t like mushrooms — but said he’ll put them on his pizza anyway as a way to make the dish more nutritious.
“I don’t like mushrooms. I don’t know why. But they’re good for you. They’re healthy,” Nathan said. “So maybe it would be a good thing if I tried mushrooms.”
Nathan and other Fort Worth children are part of a six-week cooking workshop called Cooking Matters for Families, an initiative to help kids learn about healthy eating through Tarrant Area Food Bank and the nonprofit Cooking Matters.
Lessons cover meal preparation, grocery shopping, food budgeting and nutrition. Participants learn cooking skills, including knife techniques that make chopping vegetables easier or less wasteful, and how to read ingredient labels, according to Tarrant Area Food Bank.
4Saints Episcopal Food Pantry partners with Tarrant Area Food Bank to host classes at St. Luke’s in the Meadow Episcopal Church. Food used in the workshops is provided by the food bank. At the end of each class, participants receive a bag of ingredients to replicate the dishes they learn to make from the workshops back at home.
The food pantry is a ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas and is made up of five churches in Tarrant County that distribute food to people in need.
The church is located in the 76103 ZIP code, which is a low-income area recognized as having low access to fresh, healthy food by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Access Research Atlas. Participants in the cooking classes can reside in other parts of Tarrant County, said Patti Callahan, head of 4Saints Episcopal Food Pantry.
Callahan also coordinates the cooking workshops held at the pantry. Hosting the cooking classes has been another way the nonprofit can serve people who come to the food pantry, she said.
“The kids have been really good, they were all very attentive,” Callahan said. “It’s along the lines of what Jesus told us to do.”
Tatiana Casillas, Nathan Casillas’ mother, signed him up for the cooking classes because she saw his interest in helping her out in the kitchen at home.
The cooking classes are a way for him to learn how to cook healthy meals for himself and his four younger siblings but also to fuel his passion to become a chef when he grows up, she said.
“This is the first thing that we’re doing besides school and going out as a family,” Casillas said. “It’s a skill that he’ll need in life and I really do enjoy my kids in the kitchen because he’s not going to starve, and he’s not going to wait for somebody to cook for him. So definitely a skill in life that he enjoys now.”
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You may contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org or on Twitter @marissaygreene.
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