"Watch Kids Eat Their Veggies with a Smile!" At FamilyCook Productions, we support the family with culinary/nutrition education programs because we know it takes a holistic approach to develop healthy family meals.

• Mission
  To bring families together around delicious, fresh food while positively impacting their health and well-being.
• Core Values
  Respect: We approach the meal with respect for the opinions, likes and dislikes of each family member  or participant.
  
  Harmony: Our programs help parents and community leaders take the lead to find creative ways of balancing time, financial and other constraints that create barriers to healthy eating and bonding at the table with family and friends.
  
  Creativity: We encourage self-expression by all  participants through the creative activity of cooking and exploring the foodways of cultures around the globe.
  
  
• What We Do
  FamilyCook Productions offers schools, community-based groups, and other organizations  field-tested, evidence-based curricula for K-12 that teach nutrition through cooking. We inspire parents and children, teens and other individuals to approach meals as a cultural adventure and special time for coming together at the table, using recipes bursting with fresh ingredients.  In addition to adults and young children, we also empower youth to prepare healthful meals and to value sharing seasonal meals with friends, family and their community as peer educators. In collaboration with our partners, we embed these programs in schools and communities via our unique professional development offerings. These training sessions provide educators, para-professionals, and parents with the necessary skills to conduct our programs and make them available and sustainable.  Educators enjoy using cooking to make math, science, social studies come alive in the classroom! Our seasonal recipe burst with the vibrant flavors of farm-fresh ingredients. Additionally, we connect families to local gardens and farmers' markets, as well as provide curricula and how-to support for establishing edible school gardens.  Since the late 90s, FamilyCook efforts have reached over 10,000 families across the US.  Come fall 2009, our partnership with HealthCorps, adds our “Teen Iron Chef” program to 50 new schools for a grand total of 70 programs  in 11 states!

• How We Do It
  The FamilyCook team has developed successful, replicated strategies and curricula for nutrition/culinary education used in schools, community based organizations, farmers' markets, health departments, early childhood and WIC centers across the US.  We develop sustainable solutions that build on each other over time, to serve a growing number of community members of all ages. FamilyCook's elementary curriculum was recently selected by the Connecticut State Department of Public Health for testing in that state over the 2008-09 school year. This project is yielding new Connecticut communities to come on board and strategize with us to implement our programs in a staged sequence with different ages over the coming years, beginning fall 2009. FamilyCook’s work linking public health and food systems has taken traction in NYC, with development of an interactive farmers’ market nutrition/culinary education program that empowers community residents to become community chefs, instilling new skills around healthy eating in their community. In 2008, the project, managed by Just Food, has developed a youth leadership component that employs teens from our Teen Iron Chef program to teach cooking at Farmers’ Markets. This youth development component has blossomed in 2009 to include over a dozen teens conducting more than 50 farmers market demonstrations, workshops and presentations for a host of partner organizations: HealthCorps, Brooklyn Food Conference, Greenmarket, Youthmarket, NYC Food & Fitness Partnership, United Nations Committee on Sustainable Development, and more!  Now in 2009, with 70 Teen Iron Chef programs operating, and in partnership with Healthcorps, most of these youth will be participate in Teen Iron Chef internships to help  teach healthy eating in their community by supporting elementary schools, garden initiatives and community events.
• Learn more about our most recent projects!