Family Strengthening and Health Promotion through teamwork to produce nurturing family meals.
Cooking Time Is Family Time has two overriding goals:
1) Strengthen family relationships
2) Help families to eat more home cooked meals using fresh ingredients
The family meal is a key ingredient to healthy families in mind, body and spirit, and an increasing body of research supports this! Dietetic research has shown that children in families who regularly sit down together for meals eat more portions of fruits and vegetables than others. And research from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has demonstrated the power of the family meal in lowering the incidence of risk behaviors among youth.
This program is a family strengthening tool where food is the ‘glue’ that bonds the family together over a common purpose of preparing a nurturing meal. Because the cooking is collaborative, this program uses our “FamilyCook Mantra”:
1) Don’t worry about the mess;
2) Don’t worry about how long it will take to cook;
3) Enjoy the process and don’t focus on the result.
Like our other programs, Cooking Time Is Family Time is designed for the most basic learning environment (no fancy kitchen necessary!) Through the preparation of simple and delicious recipe concepts from around the globe over 5 weeks, families discover that mealtime can be fun if they collaborate on preparing it – together.
The program goals for families include:
1. Understand relationship between well being, long-term good health and the food we eat
2. Develop an adventurous attitude toward trying new foods, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables
3. Basic culinary skills and concepts
4. Instill the value of meals enjoyed at the table with family and friends
5. Establish an understanding of the seasonality of foods
6. Develop tolerance for other cultures and different ways of living
Additionally, each weekly session builds family relationships, as parents and children practice listening to each other, observing family members’ creativity, and developing new respect for one another through the empowering skill of cooking.
Ideal Audiences for “Cooking Time Is Family Time”
schools
community based organizations
social services organizations for family strengthening and prevention and for reunification programs with birth parents and children who have been in foster care
women’s and homeless shelters that serve families
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