Healthy Food Promotions Coordinator Kate Tecku also contributed to this story.
When the Capital Area Food Bank threw open its doors on October 11, many visitors opted to enjoy the hands-on parts of the tour.
After a beautiful reception and program, guests were welcomed into in the food bank’s new education spaces: the kitchen and the garden.
The Mildred J Brooks Learning Center and the Urban Demonstration Garden teach the community how to stretch food dollars through cooking and growing their own healthy food.
Open House guests learned a lot during the Iron Chef-style cook-off, where D.C. area chefs were challenged to create healthy meals using food bank staples. Participants in the cook-off included:
- Gregory Webb, Executive Chef of Tortilla Coast
- Jeffrey Buben, Executive Chef of Bistro Bis and Vidalia
- Noriyuki Kudo, Executive Chef of YO! Sushi
- George Carlos Henderson, Kitchen Manager and Chef of CAFB partner agency Second Genesis, Inc.
The chefs had 15 minutes to prepare a dish using items such as peanut butter, canned black beans and ground turkey, plus at least one item from a “Fresh Produce Mystery Box.”
It’s a challenge our clients experience every day – how to provide quick, inexpensive and nutritious meals for their families.
Outside, guests joined Casey Trees in planting 20 trees on the site of our future Urban Demonstration Garden. The trees will provide fruit and shade in the garden for years to come. The garden is the food bank’s hands-on learning laboratory for food growing education.
Both the kitchen and the garden enable the food bank to lead classes on cooking, meal planning and food growing to empower our partner agencies to promote healthy food like never before.
To learn more about how the food bank’s Healthy Eating Department will use these spaces to promote healthy food in the community, contact us at healthyeatinginfo@capitalareafoodbank.org.