Cooking class gives lessons in healthy eating to those on a budget

Jasmin Villarreal averted disaster with minutes to spare. The gooey yellow mixture bubbled and sizzled as the 13-year-old cast a pleading look at her instructor.

"You flip it for us!" Jasmin said.


		Scott Eklund / Special to the P-I
	Jasmin Villarreal, left, and Angelica Longley, both 13 and students at Sequoia Middle School in Kent, work with varying success on stir-fry dishes during an Operation Frontline class at the Fremont Public Association building in Seattle. The teens are learning to cook and eat healthy, yet inexpensive meals.

Chef Amadeus Amador gave her a look that said, You need to learn to do this, but agreed. After all, it was the first time his students had tried to make omelets.

The result wasn't what Jasmin expected. She frowned at the uneven product on her plate.

"That does not look like an omelet," she said.

But seconds later, she and Sparkle Reese, 12, were clashing plastic forks as they dug into the meat-and-veggie-packed concoction. Sounds of lip-smacking satisfaction followed.

"This is good!" Jasmin declared between bites. "I like it!"

The Food Network it's not. Nor is it a culinary school for junior chefs.

Operation Frontline's purpose is much more practical and serious: to teach people on tight budgets -- and their children -- how to cook and eat healthier, through six-week courses featuring nutrition lessons and hands-on practice.

As they slice, dice, chop and sauté, they learn how to make healthy alternatives to fast food, such as breakfast burritos and stir-fry veggies with tofu. They also learn how to make the most of limited dollars, such as how to take apart a whole chicken, a cheaper alternative than buying by the piece.

The free classes are part of an 11-year-old partnership program of the Fremont Public Association and Share Our Strength, a national hunger-fighting organization.

"Providing food to somebody doesn't provide the solution," said Brooke Phillips, the program's supervisor. She's leading a class of teens from a Kent drop-in program called Lighthouse who traveled 45 minutes to the Fremont Public Association's building in Wallingford to take part; the classes, however, are usually restricted to Seattle city organizations that apply to the program.

The need in Seattle, said Phillips, is such that there are more applicants than classes.

A report issued by King County Public Health officials in 2002 said, "Not surprisingly, concerns about having enough food tend to increase with decreasing income level; 16.3 percent of people making less than $15,000 per year were concerned about having enough food."

"Low incomes come with extra challenges," said Aviva Flowerman, the program's assistant coordinator who is running another class attended by a group of single adult women. "People with limited incomes have to think that much more about what they eat and what they buy."

At any given time throughout the year, Operation Frontline runs two classes, rotating among six curriculums geared toward children, teens, low-income adults, families, people living with HIV and AIDS and young parents.

Groups of as many as 15 participants get together for two hours a week for six weeks.

To make the program menu, all recipes included in the class workbooks have to be low-fat. They also have to cost less than $1.40 a serving.

Program coordinators fan out across town, hauling mobile kitchens, bringing with them all the supplies needed to conduct classes: cutting boards, knives, portable stovetops, fresh vegetables, condiments, a nutritionist, volunteer helpers and volunteer chefs. They also bring a bag of groceries for each participant to take home, which includes fresh vegetables and fruits donated by Charlie's Produce.

"I know good eating habits -- my mother was a nutritionist -- but as I got older, I got more relaxed," said Ernestine Robles, 51, a recent resident of the Jubilee Women's Center, a Capitol Hill long-term facility that houses single adult women. The certified nursing assistant, a victim of domestic violence, came to Seattle from Minneapolis four months ago to start over. "I'm dealing with weight problems, and I want to get back on track."

The women taking the class at Jubilee talk about what they've learned from their lessons and try the recipes in their communal kitchen.

"We compare foods, what we grew up on and how to accept new foods," said Robles, who gave herself high marks in that department as a connoisseur of many types of cuisine. "I have a multicultural tongue," she said.

Unlike younger participants, the women come in well-informed, or eager to ask questions if they aren't.

"Teens are hard. They've definitely formed some pretty set habits," said Emma Goforth, class instructor for Jasmin's group. "But once we engaged them, they have a great capacity to learn. The earlier you start with kids, the easier it is to instill good habits."

"I'm really good to sticking to what I start," said Sparkle, who was determined to take what she learned in class back home.

Helping Goforth is one of the program's repeat volunteers, Amador, a private chef whose clientele and repertoire include celebrities and custom-tailored dinner parties. As the father of a 15-year-old daughter, the Jacksonville, Fla., native has some experience handling teens.

"When I meet a young person and they don't know about certain foods, I find that interesting," Amador said. "I just want to expose them to different foods and educate them. I tell them that healthy foods are in the perimeters of the store. Everything down the aisle is processed. Programs like this help kids realize this."

It also helps to have someone who can keep their attention.

"The meat is cracka lackin', so now we add in vegetables and all that good stuff," Amador said as he bounced to his own internal soundtrack during class. He moved and grooved around the cooking table, shaking a liberal amount of Old Bay seasoning (a standby for Maryland crab lovers) into the omelet mixture. He encouraged his students to use it as an alternative to salt, pepper and other spices, calling it flavoring in one can.

Some of the girls, like self-proclaimed big eater Sparkle, discovered that they like fruits they'd never heard of before, such as kumquats.

"You have to find out what they're eating. If they're eating pizza, they're not gonna give up pizza," Amador said. "But I can show them a healthier way to make it."

Goforth told the class, "Leftover pizza is perfectly OK for breakfast, but meat-lover's pizza's probably not as healthy as a veggie pizza."

"I think it has changed me a lot, because I don't remember ever looking at proteins or carbohydrates before," said Jasmin, who admitted to being a pretty typical teenager who had no prior hesitation in eating at McDonald's or Taco Bell.

"It never really bothered me really. Now it's a big part of my life. I see how people become obese. I never thought it would happen to me, but now I see what it does to people and it's kinda crazy. Now I pay attention to how much I eat and what I eat."