As a half-dozen teens circled the ovens, the pots and pans were sizzling with everything from sauteed zucchini to halibut to a vegetable borscht soup.
They were stirring and measuring in the light-filled kitchen at Roquette America’s new Innovation Center in Geneva, the current home of Fox Valley Food for Health, a new nonprofit that aims to link teens with area patients who depend on the meals the group delivers each week.
Fox Valley Food for Health is the brainchild of Susan Leigh and Mary Fremgen, who are passionate about the role that healthy food can play during treatment for cancer. The group’s aim is two-fold: Provide organic, nutritious food to patients fighting a life-threatening illness and teach teens to cook in a way they hope will stick with them for life.
“We want them to learn to cook well, and then when they go off to university, they can know how beneficial a big pot of soup can be,” Leigh said. “We’re trying to teach them to cook consciously.”
Leigh, a former sales and marketing professional who switched gears and trained as a chef four years ago, told Fremgen, a dietitian, about the California-based Ceres project, a nonprofit that uses teens to create organic, healthy meals for area patients.
“Why not replicate that here?” they thought.
They began a pilot program last fall with a handful of teens from Geneva High School, some adult volunteer mentor chefs, and a small group of patients. Seven months later, they’ve cooked 3,000 meals in the donated space, Leigh said.
They pore over cookbooks such as “The Longevity Project,” which details ingredients that help battle specific kinds of cancers. They use organic foods, and no white flour or white sugar, to develop a week’s worth of meals for patients and their families. On Mondays, the prep work on more than a dozen dishes begins as soon as the teens are done with school. On Tuesdays, the finishing touches are completed, and the meals are packaged neatly in special containers.
Then, on Wednesdays, “delivery angels” take the food to families, stopping for a little to chat if the patient feels up to it. There is enough food for everyone in the household, so that the whole family can reap the benefits and begin healthy habits.
The teens, meanwhile, are learning new skills. Three of the volunteer cooks on a recent day — Jessica Prainito, 17, Nila Kannankeril, 17, and Lindsay Whitted, 16 — were members of Geneva High School’s culinary club when Leigh and Fremgen visited late last year and made the pitch to join. All three have become regulars and say they are replicating the healthy recipes — everything from beet burgers to apple crisp — at home.
“At first, I was like, ‘do I really want to put that in my cookies?'” Prainito said. “But the dishes are really good.”
Pam Strenk, 58, of St. Charles, battled breast cancer this year and was one of the first to receive meals.
“I felt really good (during chemotherapy and radiation) and I think it was because I was eating really good,” Strenk said. “My body was dealing with it the best as it could, and a huge percentage was because of the nutrition.”
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She ate healthily before her diagnosis, but the group’s meals exposed her to more vegetable-based dishes and soups, she said. She described the program as “brilliant” and said that anybody in need who is willing to try new foods would benefit.
Her treatment is complete and Strenk no longer receives the meals. But having received all the recipes by email, she is replicating them at home for herself and her husband.
“Since I understand now how important nutrition is, you bet I am,” she said.
In the future, Leigh dreams of the group having its own kitchen, where the adult volunteer chefs also can teach cooking classes for the patients so they continue eating healthily.
As the group grows, the founders must now prioritize whom they can help. They started in part with a $10,000 grant from Cadence Health, and now host fundraisers. Leigh said she spends about $600 weekly on food.
For more information about Fox Valley Food For Health, go to foxvalleyforhealth.com.