Healthful Cooking for Body, Mind and Spirit in the New Year

Posted January 20, 2021 | By ale_bellot

Digital Education Programming Presented by the
Center for Health & Wellbeing

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The New Year is always a time for transition, and this year more than ever, many of us are thinking about how to achieve balance. As we devote more time to cooking at home, we also striving to find ways to build immunity and prevent sickness. While food plays a critical role in helping us feel good both physically and mentally, there’s no reason it can’t also be fun, easy and tasty! During this cooking presentation, culinary nutritionist and Chef Jenny Breen discussed the important role that whole foods play in building immunity and in keeping you physically and mentally balanced while demonstrating these three recipes:

  • Simple frittata with assorted vegetables and feta cheese
  • Sauteed hearty greens (kale, collards, or chard) with miso dressing and toasted almonds
  • Whole grain salad with sweet potatoes, apricots and chickpeas

Find the recipes for these featured dishes by clicking here.

This program was presented by Chef Jenny Breen and was hosted by the Winter Park Health Foundation.

About Your Program Presenter
Jenny Breen has been a professional chef and advocate for sustainable food systems and food justice, and has worked directly with farmers and producers in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota since the mid-1980’s. She was co-owner of Good Life Cafe and Catering, a sustainable food business from 1996 to 2013. She is a 2009 Archibald Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow and completed her Master of Public Health degree in Nutrition at the University of Minnesota in 2011 while working to build strong networks within health and food systems for greater access to food, support for sustainable farming, and understanding of cooking as a health strategy. Her first cookbook, Cooking up the Good Life, emphasizes local, seasonal whole foods cooking for families and was released in April of 2011 from the University of Minnesota Press.

Chef Breen currently teaches three courses at the University of Minnesota, including an online undergraduate course called “Food Choices: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves” and a graduate level cooking course for health professional students called “Food Matters: Cook Like Your Life Depends on It,” both through the Bakken Center. She also teaches an undergraduate nutrition cooking class, “A Food Systems Approach to Cooking” through the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Institute in College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS). She contracts as a Public Health culinary nutrition educator with local health departments, school districts and nonprofit food and farming organizations.