Food Skills for Families students at our local ELSA program.ESTHER HSIEH
VANCOUVER— From Thursday's Globe and Mail
View the original article here.The smell of fresh baking hangs in the air as Lyn Brooks bends over to open the oven. His students are jockeying for the best vantage point behind him. As he pulls the hot tray out, there is an explosion of “oohs and ahs”. Mr. Brooks is teaching a cooking class for new immigrants and the mystery of the muffin has been unravelled.
Student Mihret Bahta, who emigrated from Eritrea, is delighted with the muffins. She is impressed to learn that buttermilk is one of the ingredients and explains, “In my country we make cheese with buttermilk.” She is equally impressed with bran. From her experience back home grain husks (bran) are fed to animals or thrown away. “I didn’t know that’s where all the nutrients are,” she says.
However, she is hesitant to try the muffin recipe at home due to previous baking failures. She, like many immigrants, is not used to using an oven in her homeland and finds baking a difficult part of Canadian cuisine.
Today’s class is the second module of Food Skills for Families, a cooking program developed to educate vulnerable populations about healthy eating, shopping and cooking. Mr. Brooks is a facilitator for the program and feels that teaching new immigrants in a community kitchen environment has been a brilliant application of the class.
Diane Collis, the manager of
Fresh Choice Kitchens, (formerly the Vancouver Community Kitchen Project) explains that increasing nutritional intake, developing social wellness and financial savings are the main benefits of participating in a community kitchen. In addition, for new immigrants she says, “It’s a space for them to learn about Canadian foods, kitchen tools and equipment in a social and fun way while still honouring their own culture. It’s been a successful tool in supporting people who are integrating into their new home, and it provides a safe and neutral place to meet other people.”
She cites the program at
Strathcona Community Centre as an excellent example of how a community kitchen can be used to positively influence a neighbourhood with a high immigrant population.
The program at Strathcona is unique because it combines a community kitchen with its two neighbouring elementary schools. The schools are a good vehicle to break down barriers to food and to engage children and parents new to Canada in learning about what good food is, where to find it and how to prepare it in an affordable way.
Jane Newton-Moss is the co-ordinator of the
Cooking Fun for Families program at the centre and understands that new immigrants face many challenges adapting to Canadian food culture.
Language is an obvious barrier and Ms. Newton-Moss credits a lot of the success of her program to her translator Molly Fong, who is a Neighbourhood Assistant. Although sometimes a translation is not enough: Ms. Fong recalls a class where one of the students read the Chinese translation on the butter label and then asked her if it really was “cow oil.” A 45-minute discussion then ensued about cheese, butter and where they come from.
Navigating a Canadian supermarket for a newcomer is also challenging. The products are unfamiliar, the store layout is foreign and the choice overwhelming. Discerning refrigerators of milk for someone who is unfamiliar with dairy products is daunting, to say the least. So Ms. Newton-Moss has integrated a trip to the supermarket as part of the program’s curriculum to help break down the complexity of a grocery store.
She also knows you can never underestimate how culture influences our use and understanding of food. She laughs when she remembers teaching her first class 12 years ago. “I was making minestrone soup because, well, who doesn’t like minestrone soup?” she says. But she was in for a surprise when the soup was almost ready and her students started removing all the vegetables and beans. As she later learned, they came from a region of China where soup is only eaten in the form of broth.
The class has come a long way since then, but the surprises haven’t stopped. The week before Thanksgiving, she asked her class how many people were going to cook a turkey and no one put up their hand. Naturally, they were intimidated by the task, but she was also surprised when some of her Buddhist students were concerned about the religious aspect of the holiday.
She explained that Thanksgiving is mostly celebrated in a secular manner in Canada, and went on to give a brief history of the holiday (harvest, the changing of the season, first nations’ tradition). When she suggested they could cook a chicken instead, her students agreed enthusiastically. She’s hoping that by Christmas the students who will celebrate the occasion will feel confident enough to try a turkey.
Food Skills for Families students show off their oven skills with freshly baked homemade pizzas (April 2009).
