The Slow Food USA Blog

Tools for Transforming the Kitchen into the Classroom

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by Sasha Hippard, SFUSA intern

The recent donation of cookware from Anolon to Slow Food Skagit Salish Sea means the families of Lincoln Elementary can keep on cookin’!

The Lincoln Elementary Family Cooking Classes, started in 2009 by the Slow Food Skagit chapter in Washington state has been providing 1st through 6th graders and their extended families with inspiring opportunities to make and enjoy home-cooked meals together. Since the program’s establishment, Slow Food Skagit has served 30-40 students and families annually, teaching approximately four cooking sessions a year. These fun, educational, hands-on sessions incorporate seasonal produce from Lincoln Elementary own school garden whenever possible and teaches students and parents alike how to make their food good, clean, and fair.

Along with high quality cooking pans of a variety of types, Anolon’s donation also included cookie sheets and a number of different kitchen tools like spatulas and garlic presses. This new cookware has changed what volunteers have been able to cook with the students and families at Lincoln Elementary.

Cooking classes like the ones at Lincoln Elementary are a great way to not only bring families together, but promote healthy and responsible eating habits. It’s so much easier to incorporate simple, yet powerful change into your everyday life when the whole family gets on board and has fun while doing it!

There are endless dishes to try that are healthy, delicious, and responsible, but only if you know where and how to look for the recipes and inspiration. The addition of the Anolon supplies means that the Lincoln Elementary cooking classes don’t have to be limited to a few simply dishes. The sky’s the limit for these families and they are free to explore, experiment and sample all kinds of healthy and delicious meals.

Children and families have gone from cooking big pots of homemade soup on family night to an ever-expanding assortment of dishes from a seasonal vegetable stir-fry to pizza with homemade sauce. This coming year, Lincoln Elementary even plans to expand into baking!

Perhaps the best part about this new resource is that it is a shared one. The cooking sets are available for checkout by different schools and organizations that wish to incorporate cooking classes like the one at Lincoln Elementary. Slow Food Skagit has shared the love by loaning out equipment to schools like Little Mountain Elementary in Mount Vernon and Conway School in Conway, WA. Now, Slow Food Skagit is helping to make a big impact not only within its own community, but others as well.

Anolon’s generous support has made all these fantastic changes possible. This new equipment means more food fun for more people!

To learn more about how your Slow Food USA chapter project can receive a cookware donation, please contact Julia Landau, Associate Manager of Chapter Support at.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).