Cooking Without The Box Monday
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For the fourth straight year, Tillsonburg and area residents will have an opportunity to learn how to cook healthy, affordable meals for the entire family.
‘Cooking without the box’ has become an annual tradition, building on an inaugural spring event, put together and presented by the Tillsonburg Resource Network (TRN). The one-day seminar teaches affordable ways to source, make and provide nutritious meals.
“We started with one in the fall, last year we did two events – one in the spring and one in the fall, and this year we’re actually doing three,” said Donna Acre, chair of the Tillsonburg Resource Network.
For the last two consecutive years, each event has had a theme associated with it, focusing on a particular aspect of food and cooking. Last year a fall event focussed on canning, freezing and preserving, a fall event bringing in local farmers with their fall produce who worked with guest chefs in making and teaching about local, healthy, sustainable and affordable foods.
“This event’s theme is eating from the box from the food bank,” said Acre. “If you receive a food box from the food bank, what do you make out of it and how do you prepare what’s in it? We will show recipes and how to add some healthy items to it.”
Acre said the event first began to help fill a need in the community.
“Food bank food is really important - we have to have that, but people get sick so much,” she added. “It’s more about just teaching people how to eat healthy and how do we actually purchase a pepper or a tomato – what do you look for? When and where to buy it, (including the farmer’s market) and then how to prepare it?
“We also teach them to walk around the outside of the store, as opposed to going through the middle and buying all the processed foods.”
Cooking without the box, said Acre is geared to people who need a budget and need to stick to a budget when shopping for and cooking food.
“It is actually geared to people that really need this.”
It is a valuable initiative and event for many in the community, Acre noted, and is more than just a free cooking class. It is also an enjoyable way to bring people and resources together to teach an important lesson about food, nutrition and healthy eating.
“The best part of the whole day is that at the end, we all sit down and have a community meal from the food that we’ve prepared,” said Acre. “It’s all about community.”
The Cooking Without The Box spring event takes place Monday, May 13 at the St. Paul’s United Church kitchen in Tillsonburg from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
For more information and to reserve a spot call Chris at (519) 842-9000 Extension 303 or email Karen at khodges3971@hotmail.com.