AUSTIN — If you’re looking for quick, easy and healthy meals to serve your family, a Dinner Tonight! Healthy Cooking School will be held March 18 at Austin Community College’s Eastview Campus, said Sonia Coyle, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Travis County.
The program will be at 3401 Webberville Road, Bldg. 8000, Room 8500, Austin.
Doors open at 5:30 p.m., with the cooking school beginning at 6 p.m and concluding at 8 p.m., Coyle said.
The program will feature demonstrations of two easy and nutritious menus that can be prepared in 30 minutes or less. Participants receive a cookbook with additional menus and 25 recipes, goodie bags, recipe samples and door prizes.
“While there are many groups that conduct cooking schools, we believe our Dinner Tonight! Healthy Cooking School has a unique niche,” said Coyle, an AgriLife Extension family and consumer sciences county agent and an event presenter. “Our recipes are cost effective, easy to prepare and fit into a healthy meal plan.”
She said the Dinner Tonight! program targets “busy people who still want to make time for meal preparation and feel good about what they are serving their families as well as themselves.”
“Our goals are to promote family meal time and teach families healthy meal planning and food preparation techniques,” Coyle said.
Other cooking school participants include the 4-H Military Youth Program, Student Life at Austin Community College’s Eastview Campus, Texas Beef Council, personal chef Carlos Crusco and the Cooperative Extension Program of Prairie View A&M University.
“We will choose three people from the audience to serve on the tasting panel during the program,” Coyle noted. “These cooking schools provide an opportunity for people to get together in a fun environment and have experts show them how to plan and prepare good meals for themselves and their families.”
There is limited seating for the event. For more information and to reserve a seat, contact Coyle by 5 p.m. March 7 at 512-854-9605 or sonia.coyle@ag.tamu.edu .
AgriLife Extension in Travis County has a website updated every Wednesday with a new Dinner Tonight! recipe and video demonstration webcast showing how to prepare that recipe. The recipes are available to the public at no cost through these weekly video webcasts. Families in Travis County can sign up to receive weekly emails providing information on the program and announcing new webcast recipes by contacting her at 512-854-9600 or by email to angela.reyes@co.travis.tx.us.
There are currently more than 200 free video webcasts of easy-to-prepare nutritious recipes under the Dinner Tonight! tab on the Healthy Living website, http://healthyliving.tamu.edu, she said. The videos can also be viewed by watching Travis County Television, TCTV-Channel 17, on Time Warner Cable.
For information on these and other AgriLife Extension health and wellness topics and programs for Travis County, go to http://www.facebook.com/traviscofcs or the AgriLife Extension family and consumer sciences website at http://fcs.tamu.edu/.
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