Alba Galindo stood at a stovetop Thursday evening, two sauté pans on the burners with enough sizzling tofu and onions to feed a dozen people.
The West Side mother wasn’t cooking for her family, but participants in a class where she hopes to learn skills to flex at home.
“We’re like an Uber Eats family, but we’re hoping to change that,” Galindo said. Her kids are ages 3, 4 and 5.
“Hopefully if I get vegetables to them when they’re young, it’ll be a part of their life,” she said.
The participants are engaged in what they hope will be a transformational eight-week health challenge sponsored by the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative. In addition to the cooking class, every week includes two fitness classes and small-group mental health sessions.
“It’s all about Garfield Park and Chicago residents figuring out how to live healthy lifestyles, Seobia Rivers, one of the program leaders, told the Chicago Sun-Times at the outset in September.
The program costs $5 for all eight weeks. All 20 slots have been filled.
At the start, the participants had several health indicators measured such as blood pressure and body circumference.
Jeannine Wise, program director for Good Food is Good Medicine and a chef with stints in Michelin-star kitchens, leads the cooking class at The Hatchery, 135 N. Kedzie Ave.
She begins by exhibiting the menu — on Thursday it included wings, okra and quinoa — then the class cooks and enjoys a meal where participants can ask questions of a physician.
“We should all eat foods that make us happy, but I’ll be teaching you alternatives so you can switch it up a bit,” Wise said, explaining how baking wings can be healthier than frying.
Not all 20 participants were there, but the energy in the room was good, with the chatter rising above Beyoncé playing on a speaker.
Dr. Edwin McDonald, a gastroenterologist at the University of Chicago who helped design the program and attended cooking school with Wise, joined the group for the meal afterward.
“Food is one of the biggest predictors of our overall health and longevity that we can control,” he said.
Korinne Carr listened closely to McDonald. Diagnosed with hypertension two years ago at age 39, she has been on a serious path to find alternatives and worked on a low-sodium creole rub for the wings Thursday evening.
”The class helps me stay focused, but now I have to apply it when I get home,” she said.
Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides.
