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Mary Moore, founder and CEO of The Cook’s Warehouse, hosted the fourth half-day Farm-to-School cooking workshop in January for cafeteria workers from the City Schools of Decatur. This class was held in the Decatur High School cafeteria kitchen with about 30 cooks from the eight separate kitchens that feed the city schools’ children.

Moore led hands-on sessions with Megan McCarthy, a healthy lifestyle consultant and chef, on making quick, nutritious recipes, including hummus, whole-wheat pasta, garden salad, broccoli cheese casserole and carrot muffins.

The cafeteria workers divided into groups to chop, slice, peel, mix and create the lunch. They then were served by volunteer kitchen assistants from The Cook’s Warehouse on the high school’s lunchroom line.

The first class in the series, back in November 2009, began with pre-cooking skills, including professional and safe knife-handling, and how to season food properly. The second class, in August 2010, featured four tasty, healthy recipes prepared by the attendees using fresh ingredients and culinary tricks. The third class, in November 2010, involved preparing a complete Thanksgiving feast, accented by low-fat dishes.

The new Decatur kitchen staff-training program is a joint project of The Cook’s Warehouse, Georgia Organics, Matthew Rao of Rao Design Studio and the Atlanta Chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier International. Its mission is to teach easy, efficient and inspired cooking to front-line cafeteria workers.

The Cook’s Warehouse is greater Atlanta’s premier gourmet cookware store and cooking school, with three locations. It offers more than 15,000 products for the kitchen and operates the largest avocational cooking school in the Southeast, conducting more than 600 classes annually.

Source: The Cook’s Warehouse