Hello all food, farm, and fun lovers. This past Tuesday, August 2nd, Grow Appalachia and the Green Grocer partnered with Hinton’s wonderful Chestnut Revival to put on a public workshop nothing short of Awesome! Roughly fifteen to twenty people attended the Healthy Cooking Workshop and every single attendee brought along some of their own, delicious produce worked so hard on over the past few months.

The colors, the smells, and the imagination from all  created an exciting workshop and a tasty experience! Though it was a two- team cook-off, there was endless teamwork from both sides. The dishes were absolutely, amazingly, wondrously, and perfectly delicious and of course healthy. What was so great about the healthy cooking workshop was to truly learn what healthy cooking and eating is. Eating healthy, according to modern day American society, usually consists of calorie restrictions, calorie counting, low-carb, no sugar, gluten free, and countless other diet fads that manipulate and distort the natural balance of the human body. In this workshop we stressed how vital it is to understand that being healthy means eating produce local and in season, and as a result, eating produce at its peak in regards to nutrients. The stress on eating local, in-season produce really helped engage the participants with the food in front of them. This understanding of the food really helped them relate and connect to their food in a way that most of society has abandoned. This connection was blatantly seen in the food made by all!

Who won the cook-off you ask? Well, the decision was unanimous….a tie of course. And at the end of the night much laughter, knowledge, advice, tastes, and fun was had, leaving everyone hungry for more! After this healthy cook-off minds started racing and countless ideas were discussed over delicious food. The ideas ultimately revolved around having as many of these season-friendly cook-offs as possible and I think that is all the Alderson Grow Appalachia could ask for. It was a workshop that brought many friends and strangers together and achieved the goal of passing on the importance of local and organic food in everyones lives.