Cooking Together

Food insecurity and access to basic needs

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

CA produces nearly half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, yet 30% of households in Los Angeles county experience food insecurity. In recent years, efforts to recover edible food have grown. Bruised peaches and wilted—but still delicious—broccoli that once would have gone to the landfill are being delivered to Angelenos in need. But families struggling with food access often don’t have the skills or energy to turn rough raw materials into a nutritious meal. When it comes to kids eating vegetables, physical access isn't the only factor. A recent CDC survey found 49% of children did not eat a daily vegetable. While progress is being made to provide physical access, psychological barriers and gaps in skills remain. Gleaned produce is getting to families in need, and still being wasted. This has tragic health implications. Unhealthy eating is a leading cause of death in the U.S. Food-insecure children, just beginning to develop eating habits, face especially worrisome risks.

Using gleaned and recovered food, our program teaches hands-on, kid-friendly cooking classes designed to help families make the most of food donations. Our classes teach cooking skills–not recipes. Developed in collaboration with Julia Rhoton, chef-instructor of the UCLA teaching kitchen, our curriculum emphasizes improvisation and ingredient substitution. The classes also highlight simple food preservation methods, like freezing, jamming, and making stocks. We help families incorporate more vegetables into their everyday meals and to use food before it goes to waste. Our classes are taught and staffed by volunteer chef-educators. Each class begins with a thorough safety demonstration and a cooking demo. Then, using portable butane stove-tops and cutting with kid-safe plastic knives, participants prepare their own meals. Classes have a maximum of three children cooking with one adult. Volunteers are on hand to assist families with multiple kids. Each class ends with participants and volunteers eating together.
Over the course of this 12-month program period, we will establish three sites for weekly cooking classes and ten sites for quarterly classes—prioritizing spaces that serve children transitioning out of homelessness—and receive donations of recovered food. We will also continue to teach cooking classes at the Westwood Transitional Village, where a beta version of this pilot program has been tested and proven to be effective.

The Cooking Together pilot program will reduce food insecurity in Los Angeles county, improve nutrition among food insecure populations, and curb food waste. Designed to be replicated, this program will create a playbook for efficient utilization of gleaned foods. The program will produce a training manual, a food recovery cookbook, and twelve food-recovery cooking reels. All materials will be available for download, for free, on goodhabits.org. At the end of the program cycle we will host a training session in which we will report on our pilot program, present our training manual, and offer recommendations for the successful replication of this program. The training will be free and open to the public. We intended for sites providing weekly cooking classes during this first program year to continue holding weekly classes in future years, and for quarterly class-sites to begin holding weekly classes in years two and three of the program.

A beta version of Cooking Together has proven successful at the Salvation Army's Westwood Transitional Village. Those classes demonstrated that when children cook with whole, uncut vegetables, the vegetables are demystified and children eat them! Monthly classes over a 2-year period saw an average of 14 class-attendees with 87% of participants attending multiple classes. Staff observed increased vegetable consumption among children.
Program success will be measured by the following achievements:
100 classes taught
3 weekly-class sites / 10 quarterly sites established
350 unique participants
50% of participants will attend multiple classes 60% of participants will report an increase in veg consumption
30 volunteers trained
Curriculum, cookbook, training session & 12 reels produced and made public
Additional Impacts:
350 trained cooks will impact the nutrition of 1,000 household members. Training session and reel impact 5,000
5 quarterly class sites will host weekly classes in Year 2

Homelight Family Living will lead program expansion and track program success.
Homelight will serve as Site 2 for Cooking Together classes, making it the first new site to be established during this program cycle. Homelight will prepare Site 2 to host classes, recruit participants among its formerly unhoused residents, and take the lead on identifying and recruiting additional sites for Cooking Together classes. Homelight will survey class participants on eating habits and household edible-food waste.
A program of The Midnight Mission, Homelight is well connected among organizations that serve unhoused and transitional communities in Los Angeles.