Learn to cook, eat healthy through Metro Parks program. Here are the details
The fragrant smell of onions and garlic cooking in olive oil permeated the block outside Bay Terrace apartments in Hilltop on Wednesday afternoon as a chef hired by Metro Parks taught a cooking class from a truck fitted with a full kitchen.
Sitting in chairs on the sidewalk, a captive audience watched the demonstration through the truck windows, sampling each course he prepared along the way.
Metro Park’s Mobile Teaching Kitchen — a green truck with cartoon fruits and vegetables smiling against a backdrop of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge — is midway through its second iteration of free cooking classes. Its mission? To empower Tacoma residents to eat healthier, teaching them new cooking techniques and easy recipes they can replicate for little cost in their own kitchens.
Many of the places the mobile kitchen stops by are in food deserts, geographic areas with limited access to affordable and healthy foods, said Molly Barnett, a Metro Parks recreation supervisor who was part of the team that made the initiative a reality. In bringing free healthy meals directly to residents, the mobile kitchen reduces transportation barriers and facilitates healthy eating habits, Barnett said via email.
People who register for an event online get a swag bag with an apron, a copy of the recipe demonstrated and occasionally a $50 gift card to Safeway, with the thought that attendees could use the gift card to recreate those meals at home, said Stacia Glenn, Metro Parks public information officer.
On the menu Wednesday was pan-fried Brussels sprouts and Korean spicy chicken tenders with sweet apples. Friday the truck will be stopping at the Fern Hill Library from 2-3:30 p.m.
Next week is the last week the truck will be making rounds this summer, Barnett said. Those dates are Wednesday, Sept. 27, at the Asia Pacific Cultural Center from 10-11:30 a.m. and Friday, Sept. 29, at the People’s Community Center from 2-3:30 p.m.
You might have seen the truck making its rounds in May. The plan was to have the truck start touring in March 2020, but the pandemic delayed that effort, Barnett said. Instead Metro Parks offered free online culinary classes live from the mobile kitchen, and later used the truck in youth culinary camps.
In 2022 Metro Parks partnered with the Summit Olympus charter school to offer high school culinary classes, leaving students with their food handlers’ card, “so they can be ready to enter the culinary world,” Barnett said. May was the first time the mobile kitchen toured the community before it returned to tour in September, she said.
After next week, the truck likely won’t be out again until next year. In the future Metro Parks wants to offer more demos and hands-on cooking classes, as well as expand on programming to improve the culinary skills of youth and adults alike, Barnett said.
Funding for the initiative was made possible from partnerships with Regence Blue Shield, America Healthy Heart and Safeway. Donations can also be made to the Tacoma Parks Foundation, Barnett said.
Finding new recipes
Chef Jason Coleman is one of two other chefs who cook in the mobile kitchen. He taught virtual cooking classes when the program pivoted online, as well as several kids culinary camps and now teaches senior cooking classes at the Center at Norpoint.
Coleman worked as a chef for about 30 years but now considers himself semi-retired and does this work for fun, he said.
“I like to cook because I like to eat,” Coleman said. “I like cooking because when I’m teaching somebody, it’s fun for me to see the light-bulb moment when they get it, and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I can do this.’”
Carniyah Israel said she doesn’t live in the neighborhood, but she’s been to about six or seven of the mobile-kitchen events and loves to cook and find new recipes online.
“It’s a good idea, there’s a lot of older people here, and [it’s good to] learn different ways to cook your food than the way you’ve always been taught to,” said Brenda Jones, a Bay Terrace resident watching the demonstration.
Jones said her children eat vegan, and “a lot of the stuff they use for their vegan stuff, he’s using today, … so now I know I can take what I’ve gotten from his recipes, and the stuff they’ve got in the refrigerator, and put those together.”
This story was originally published September 21, 2023 at 12:56 PM.
