Increasing Food Literacy Through Community Cooking
WHAT IS THE KITCHEN LITERACY PROJECT?
Our Mission
The Kitchen Literacy Project fosters a love of healthy cooking, cultural exchange, and community connection. We offer a diverse range of programs – free activations at libraries and community centers, and in-depth, ticketed classes, dinners, and tastings – all led by Syracuse's passionate health and food community: chefs, home cooks, farmers, food artisans, and healthcare professionals. Revenue from our paid events fuels our core mission – providing free cooking education to Syracuse City School District teens. By empowering young people with kitchen skills and a love of good food, we cultivate a healthier future for generations of Syracusans.
What is Kitchen Literacy and why are we so pumped about it?
- It's basic cooking skills: This includes knife skills, understanding cooking methods (like sautéing, roasting, and baking), and basic recipe comprehension.
- It's food knowledge: This includes knowing the different types of foods and their nutritional properties, how to select fresh ingredients, and how to store food safely.
- It's budgeting and meal planning: This includes being able to create a budget for groceries, plan meals for the week, and shop for groceries efficiently.
- It's culinary creativity: This includes experimenting with new recipes, flavors, ingredients and foods from different cultures.
Cooking is a life skill, increasing kitchen literacy empowers us to make informed choices about the food we purchase and prepare. There is a real desire for education based around its core tenets across the city of Syracuse.
The Group, the Themes, the Vibe
We have tapped the community for local chefs, bakers, health care professionals, farmers, educators and parents to create classes and food based experiences.
We hope that in casting a wide net for contributors we have created, and will continue to create a diverse teaching crew, and an exciting variety of programming.
The themes are sustainability, seasonality, working with humble, inexpensive ingredients, community connections, empowerment, the foundations of what makes things taste good, and health.
The vibe is safe, welcoming, inclusive, playful, social, and educational!