Cooking with class: Harvest Kitchen in Shelton teaches secret to eating well
By Patricia Villers, Register Staff
pvillers@newhavenregister.com
SHELTON — The Harvest Kitchen is open. But don’t expect to be served.
The idea behind the cooking studio and farm education center at Jones Family Farms is to teach people how to prepare nutritious meals using locally grown ingredients.
A schedule of hands-on summer cooking classes runs the gamut from making a meal that consists of all things strawberry to grilling hamburgers, vegetables and fruit.
Jones Family Farms introduced The Harvest Kitchen at an event Thursday.
Jean Jones, one of the farm owners and a registered dietitian, said she and the family “are trying to get people aware of the foods available in Connecticut.”
“The secret to eating well is learning to cook,” she said, and for years she taught cooking in a variety of venues with what she called her “traveling electric fry pan.”
Jones and Sherry Swanson of Southbury, a chef, started teaching cooking classes last year. “We’re extremely ingredient-driven,” Jones said. “We’re trying to reawaken people’s taste buds.”
The goal is to teach people how to make memorable meals, and to demonstrate that a delicious dinner doesn’t have to be difficult to create.
Swanson demonstrates how to cook part of the meal, while the other parts are taught by Jones and Allyson Angelini, assistant director of The Harvest Kitchen and a farmer with a degree in agriculture education, Jones said.
“Everybody prepares their own meals and they go to the table,” Jones said.
Part of the experience of being a cooking student in The Harvest Kitchen is enjoying a shared meal at a long table. Classes are limited to 12 people. “We hope we can inspire people to eat together,” Jones said, despite everyone’s busy lives.
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