Cooking classes for kids building skills for healthy living in Mitchell – Mitchell Republic

MITCHELL — The Mitchell Food Pantry serves as an important resource to local residents, providing a wide supply of healthful food and cooking options to over 1,000 patrons in the Mitchell area every month.

Working with partners like Farm Life Creamery, County Fair Food Store Mitchell and Coborn’s, the nonprofit is a vital lifeline to the area’s residents dealing with food insecurity.

But over the course of the last three years, the charity organization has also become a source for food and nutrition education for elementary-age children, thanks to a cooperative effort between the pantry and South Dakota State Extension Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program.

The latest batch of students began moving through the program earlier this week, the most recent group to take part in the growing classes.

“The Mitchell Food Pantry and SDSU Extension EFNEP have partnered to bring summer cooking classes for kids to the pantry the last three years,” said Diane Bechen, a family and community health educator with SDSU Extension who is based out of Mitchell. “We meet once weekly for seven weeks and have two groups — one meeting on Tuesday mornings and one on Thursday afternoons.”

Through the program, Bechen hosts a group of children at the Mitchell Food Pantry twice a week for an hour. There in the back kitchen at the pantry, a group of about 10 youth gather at at time to learn about the five food groups, receive hands-on instruction for preparing healthy recipes as well as study kitchen and food safety.

The group learns about and prepares new recipes every week, gaining knowledge and skills that allow them to prepare simple, nutritious meals on their own when a parent or guardian may be at work or otherwise unavailable to cook for the family. Students are awarded a certificate for six weeks of participation, with the seven-week program allowing students to miss a week and still receive their certificate upon completion.

Karen Pooley, a director at the Mitchell Food Pantry, said the program developed as a natural extension of the pantry’s mission after the organization

moved its headquarters from First Avenue in Mitchell to a larger facility on Rowley Street in 2020.

“This is the third year, and we’re growing every year,” Pooley said. “I always thought it was something that we should do. When we moved here from First Avenue, we were going to have a kitchen, so we could teach kids to cook. I thought the adults probably think they know how, so let’s start with the kids.”

The program is aimed at the standard clientele for the pantry — families that it traditionally serves and those with fewer resources to help them keep their own kitchen cupboards stocked. There is no charge to take part in the cooking class program, and the pantry and the extension service provide the ingredients for the recipe being taught that day.

The recent Tuesday class introduced the students to English muffin pizza, a tasty and filling snack that only requires a handful of ingredients and is relatively quick and easy to make, even for beginners.

The lessons are practical, but also educational. The recipes conform to the

MyPlate standard,

a visual guide developed by the USDA to help people make healthy food choices. It replaced the traditional food pyramid in 2011 and is based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, encouraging individuals to build balanced meals by filling half their plate with fruits and vegetables, making at least half their grains whole grains, and choosing lean protein and low-fat dairy.

When the day’s class is over, students are provided with all the ingredients they would need to make the recipe taught that day at home for themselves, their younger siblings or even the entire family. It allows them to practice what they learned that day while feeling the satisfaction of creating a dish from scratch on their own.

Passing on skills that allow the kids to prepare meals on their own is important along with making sure those meals are nutritious, but so is stressing the importance of regular physical activity and general kitchen safety.

“The youth EFNEP program provides nutritious education through the use of evidence-based curriculums to help children develop healthy eating habits and learn skills needed to prepare nutritious meals and snacks,” Bechen said. “Youth participating in EFNEP classes, like these being held at the Mitchell Food Pantry, learn about making and choosing healthy foods, increasing physical activity, keeping food safe and being safe in the kitchen.”

The program runs for seven weeks, and it has gained more popularity each year it has been held. There are roughly 20 students between the two weekly classes, a significant increase since the first year the program was offered at the Mitchell Food Pantry.

It’s a valuable community educational resource, Pooley said, and judging by the interest and success the program has experienced in its first few years, she expects the classes could become a long-running tradition as it grows.

The kitchen at the Mitchell Food Pantry was alive with student activity earlier this week, an exciting sight for volunteers at the organization who work to make sure residents of the Mitchell area have access to fresh, healthy food for their family meals. Pooley said she hopes that interest continues.

“I’m thinking maybe we need a bigger place,” Pooley said.

Erik Kaufman joined the Mitchell Republic in July of 2019 as an education and features reporter. He grew up in Freeman, S.D., graduating from Freeman High School. He graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1999 with a major in English and a minor in computer science. He can be reached at ekaufman@mitchellrepublic.com.