When the evening cooking class began in the kitchen at PS 28, the students put on plastic aprons handed out by Rosanna Campitiello, the class instructor. Soon the students, many of them mothers with their children, began chopping and dicing onions and squash. Their goal was to cook a healthy plate of vegetables.
With supermarkets lacking in fresh, healthy produce in some Bronx neighborhoods, residents often go to the nearest fast food place on the corner for their meals.
And the consequences are clear. According to a study by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, more than six in 10 adults living in the central Bronx are either obese or overweight, putting them at greater risk of developing diabetes.
But United Tremont Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), in partnership with City Harvest, is working to change eating habits in the Bronx.
Since 1996, over 40 CSAs have been launched in New York City, including seven in the Bronx.
For a fee of $ 17 a week, this past fall members of the United Tremont CSA received healthy organic vegetables from the Windflower Farm in upstate New York, along with fresh fruit from City Harvest. The United Tremont CSA also gave free cooking classes to CSA members and other local residents, on Tuesday evenings, at PS 28 on Anthony Avenue.
During one class in November, Zoraima Rodriguez, 49, who lives near the public school and was with her two children, cooked a batch of roasted squash, seasoned with cinnamon.
Like many of the students in class, Rodriguez initially did not know how to cook with many of the vegetables she was introduced to, nor had she seen vegetables like beets before joining. “You don’t find this around the neighborhood,” she said of the beetroots, as she opened a booklet, provided by the class, detailing the different recipes and nutritional information for the vegetables used throughout the class.
“I had lost like 28 pounds in the last year,” she added. “I don’t go to Chinese places; I don’t go to McDonalds. I go home and I cook.”
Rodriguez wasn’t the only one happy that night. At the end of the class, Campitiello blurted out, “Time’s up!” and all the students eagerly tasted their healthy food.
