Killingly – On Wednesday, March 4th, NOW partnered with the Ellis Tech Culinary Arts department to host a Free Family Healthy Cooking Dinner & Demo. Families were treated to a dinner and demonstration by Chef David Grzych. Culinary Arts students offered a demonstration on bread making and a fun activity with fruit.

NOW has hosted similar healthy cooking events in the past, with support from local chefs and community partners. The goal of these events is to provide instruction on how to prepare simple, healthy recipes, involving the whole family in the cooking process. NOW Executive Director Sarah Wolfburg commented on the event, “Part of NOW’s mission is to educate children on the importance of eating a healthy diet. We know that the key to making a lasting impression on a child’s relationship with food is ensuring that parents and caregivers are making healthy choices on behalf of their children and modeling good eating habits. Our hope is that by offering family healthy cooking events, we can engage the entire family with fun, easy and healthy recipes.”

For the March 2020 event, Chef David Grzych, head of the Culinary Department at Ellis Tech, prepared a meal of chicken cacciatore for families. Following the dinner, Chef Grzych demonstrated how to prepare the meal at home. All participating families were then given the ingredients for the meal.

Children at the event were invited to watch the demonstration with their parents and also given an opportunity to work with Ellis Tech Culinary students on braiding and baking bread. A healthy fruit and dip snack was also offered to families – including pineapples, melon, bananas.

Sarah Wolfburg expressed her appreciation to Chef Grzych and his students, “This was the first time we have had the opportunity to work with the Ellis Tech Culinary Department and we were very impressed with the time, care and talent they put into preparing, serving, and demonstrating the meal for participating families. We have received wonderful feedback from families on the quality of the food and professionalism displayed by the students.”

NOW plans to offer additional healthy cooking events at a variety of locations in the region throughout 2020, with an early summer grill-themed meal and demonstration to take place at Jessica Tuesday’s in Putnam. More information on a date and time to come, with registration on NOW’s website at, www.nowinmotion.org.