Thanks to a recent grant from Hazon, we are now able to offer cooking demonstrations through Cooking Matters in the Weinberg Food Pantry. With the help of volunteer culinary and nutrition experts, Cooking Matters teaches people how to select nutritious and low-cost ingredients and prepare them in ways that provide the best nourishment possible to their families.
Today was the first day we offered this service to our Pantry clients. Sara from Cooking Matters worked with Shelly Hines, Family Safety Net manager, to come up with recipes using ingredients that people can get in our Pantry. Today's featured recipe, which was also available in Spanish, was:
Tuna Boats
Serves 4, 1/2 cucumber and 6 oz. tuna per serving
Ingredients
2 large cucumbers
1 lemon
2 green onions
1 6 oz. can of low-sodium tuna
1 15.5 oz. can of white beans or dried white beans
2 T olive oil, canola oil, or vegetable oil
1/2 t salt
1/4 t ground black pepper
Directions
1. Wash and cut cucumbers lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds with a small spoon.
2. Cut lemon in half and squeeze juice into a small bowl. Discard seeds and reserve juice.
3. Rinse and chop green onions.
4. Drain the tuna. Drain and rinse the beans.
5. Place beans in a medium bowl and mash lightly with a fork.
6. Add 2 T of the reserved lemon juice, green onions, tuna, oil, salt and pepper to the mashed beans.
7. Cut each cucumber in half.
8. Fill each cucumber with 1/4 of the tuna mixture and serve.
As our clients shopped in the Food Pantry today, they were able to see how the tuna boats were made, taste them, pick up the recipe, and all of the ingredients. This is the first in a series of future cooking demonstrations with Cooking Matters as part of our goal to provide more nutrition education for Family Safety Net program clients.
Even our staff enjoyed sampling the tuna boats!
-Alaina Green and Kari Alpen, JFS Marketing Department
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