New to Tulane: Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine 9/26/19

Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine

9/26/19

Hours: + 4 hours

Cumulative Hours: 10.25 hours

Community Service Activities

The student chefs present their dishes at the end of the cooking session. They describe the techniques and ingredients used.

Rite of Passage

Finally, I arrived at the unofficial rite of passage held for the master’s students of the Tulane Pharmacology Department: the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine.

I heard about this opportunity at the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine from reading the blogs from last year’s cohort members. The organization teaches community members how to cook healthy meals. Most of us living in the post-industrial revolution have to resort to fast food, which has led to chronic diseases and high health insurance premiums. Cooking has become an exotic, vestigial tradition because of our hectic lives. Therefore, the Center addresses how affordable, healthy meals can be made even with our work and life schedules. More healthy people are needed to reduce the cost of healthcare. I participated in supporting the cooking classes held for community members. I was supposed to perform regular kitchen rounds, pick up used utensils and drop them off at the dish washing station, and help with the washing and cleaning. Whenever there was a question about the recipe, I relayed the question to the Chef/Registered Dietitian to the specific station.

I was to support the cooking students’ activities. I stood near their stations. Sometimes they asked me questions about the recipe. I honestly didn’t know. I am not a culinary expert at all.

“Am I supposed to chop this chicken before seasoning?”

I don’t know. I went to the Chef.

Ms. J held up a piece of leftover celery, “Compost or Treasure?”

“Treasure,” I answered, feeling so proud to be useful.

Compost or Treasure?

I watched Station 7 make chicken salad sandwich. The Station next to it made hummus sandwiches. This station browned the chicken which added a nice umami flavor to the chicken. The student added chopped almonds not to the green bean salad but to the chicken, so I had to look for more chopped almonds. I searched in the pantry. But I found nothing. So I went to S, who is a student at the Tulane SOM, who told me that they were in the fridge.

At the end of the evening, the students presented their dishes, explaining the techniques and read out loud the ingredients. The Chef explained how the mayo was reduced by using Greek yogurt. This reminded me of a feature story of how a dietitian went to a pediatric patient’s home to teach the family how to cook Cuban food in a healthy way by substituting ground beef for ground turkey.

Goldring runs on a grassroots style. No one will tell you what to do. You look around to make yourself to be useful. I swept the floors. I wiped the counters. I took the dirty dishes to the dishwasher. I would like to learn and observe how to make healthy versions of steamed vegetable buns or kimchi fried rice, because I long for the dishes of my hometown.

I learned:

Green beans are delicious. Chicken salad with raisins and sliced green apples are delicious.

The yogurt salad dressing was so good that I wanted to drink it.