Farmers Against Hunger Culinary and Nutrition Program

In 2014 Farmers Against Hunger received a grant from the USDA which allowed us to create a cooking and nutrition program. Produce Coordinator, Brian Strumfels, who has a culinary background, and Gleaning Coordinator, Elyse Yerrapathruni, who has a nutrition background, were ideal candidates to create this program. That year we partnered with several of our recipient churches and conducted five cooking and nutrition seminars. We had anywhere from 15 to 30 people attend, where we cooked three meals, discussed nutrition and handed out our own cookbooks focused on NJ produce. In 2015 we conducted several more seminars, including follow-up classes to measure results from the previous year. 2016 saw us holding "food tastings" at Arm in Arm, one of Mercer County's food pantries. "Tasters" who liked the prepared food could then take a bag of ingredients home to cook their own healthy, produce centered meals. We also created several "high speed" cooking videos, which are available to view. In 2017, we partnered with our sister program, Learning Through Gardening, teaching nutrition and culinary education classes targeted toward elementary school children. In 2018 we brought the same program to Camden, NJ, working with several charter schools Last year we created sets of 10, cool season vegetable recipe cards. These were incorporated into LTG's school curriculum. Hundreds of the cards went out to schools across NJ to teach children how to cook the veggies they grew in their own school gardens. 
Our presenters shared excellent information on various fruits and vegetables. This encouraged me to utilize them more frequently. Kudos to our presenters!
-attendee at Burlington class

Cookbook and Nutrition Information

In order to help encourage people to cook more often using New Jersey produce, we put together this cookbook. It contains roughly 50 recipes: soups, salads, sides, mains, and desserts, They all incorporate NJ produce and are all fairly quick and easy to prepare.. If you have a recipe using NJ produce that you would like to submit, follow the link below as well. In addition to the cookbook, we put together a wealth of nutrition information and general cooking guidelines for your meal planning. Happy Cooking!

Fruit and Vegetable Fact Sheets