OSHER LIFELONG LEARNING INSTITUTE

Course Outline

Title: COOKING VEGETABLES RIGHT: WHOLE FOODS TECHNIQUES FOR OVERCOMING PROCESSED FOODS DEPENDENCE

Instructor: Nancy Johnson Wirsing

When to be offered: Spring 2017
Where to be offered: Sioux Falls

Number/length/time of classes: Three 90-minute classes, mid-morning or early afternoon, offered once weekly for three weeks

Number of students: 12 maximum

Description of course:
This course will be a practical, hands-on, workshop-formatted course designed to furnish those who enroll with fundamental knowledge and skills needed to put them on the road to cooking nourishing whole foods meals. It draws upon the instructor’s cookbook – Cooked Alive! Life Savoring Whole Food Recipes to End Processed Food Dependence – slated for publication in summer 2017.

This course focuses on vegetables–to those too often lowly regarded foods that governmental and private food authorities have been exhorting us for years to eat in much greater quantity. Its approach is neither vegetarian nor vegan, but it shares with these schools of cooking a lofty esteem for vegetables. It starts from the premise that vegetables, along with fruits and nuts, have stood at the core of humankind’s diet from its earliest beginnings and that these foods are now an inescapably integral element in the maintenance of human health and well-being.

Learning to prepare vegetables right, in other words, provides a means for making a smooth and effective transition to whole foods cooking and liberation from processed food dependence, dependence that almost invariably undermines health. The course will be found useful not only by relatively novice cooks but also by experienced cooks desirous of knowing more about whole or unprocessed foods cooking techniques. The course will supply methodical, detailed, clearly-worded step-by-step guidance. How to prepare vegetable-based dishes will be demonstrated. Those who enroll will be encouraged to visit and use the instructor’s blog site and to communicate with the instructor as questions arise. Practice recipes will be distributed.

Structure of course:

First session: VEGETABLE STIR-FRY

How to prepare and cook a successful vegetable-centered stir-fry dish.

1 Tools/utensils required
2 Selection of food ingredients
3 Cooking the stir-fry

Second session: VEGETABLE STEW

How to prepare and cook a successful vegetable-centered stew.

1 Tools/utensils required
2 Selection of food ingredients
3 Cooking the soup and stew

Third session: VEGETABLE SALAD       

How to prepare a successful vegetable-centered salad.

1 Tools/utensils required
2 Selection of food ingredients
3 Assembling the salad