TuttoToscana at CUNY Queens College: Event 1 Recap
The first event of the TuttoToscana program has officially come and gone this past Tuesday. After a quick train and bus ride, the group arrived onto the Queens College campus meeting up with the Meal Planning and Management students about eating light and cooking healthy Tuscan cuisine. The goal of this particular event was to transform ourselves from students into gastronomic educators as we shared with Queens students the Tuscan food knowledge we gained during our studies in Florence, Italy.
The first hour began with our front of house team who explained FUA, the Mediterranean cuisine, Tuscan cuisine, and the health benefits of wine as the kitchen brigade began working on preparing each station for the hands on demonstration of cooking light. As the day continued on, all the students were highly engaged in the tasks and interacting with the cuisine, culture, and the recipes represented by the workshop. The day was finished with a “family style” sit down tasting to enjoy the tasty results of our hard work.
Upon demo completion, Queens professor Clare Consiglio announced that she would like to incorporate one of the day’s recipes, stuffed zucchini, into the end of semester buffet event that will be also attended by diabetic outpatients from The New York Hospital Queens Cardiac Health Center. The Queens students will prepare a series healthy dishes including the zucchini dish, and in Prof. Consiglio’s words “…they learned much about modifying recipes from the team at Apicius” during the workshop demo that experimented with healthy and creative alternatives to traditional Tuscan recipes.
The TuttoToscana team was hosted by the Family, Nutrition and Exercise Sciences division of CUNY Queens College. For more information, please visit the dedicated page of the Queens College website.