Enjoy Your Food
It Should & Can Enrich Your Life
Smart Choices Texas is here to teach you to plan and cook delicious, hearty meals that are easy to prepare and won’t break your budget. Are you feeling tired all the time, experiencing insomnia, or having trouble focusing? Your energy levels and mental state have a lot of do with the foods you put into your body! Learn to choose and cook foods packed with nutrients to keep your body running at its best.
It’s a busy world, and our busy lives often get reflected through what we do and eat for dinner. Too often we swing by the drive through of fast-food restaurants, order delivery from the Chinese restaurants, and even settle for frozen, microwavable meals. While these seem like convenient options for a busy life, this kind of corner cutting is not conducive to living a healthy – both physically and mentally – and money-saving lifestyle.
Benefits Of Family Cooking
Cooking with your kids provides practical experience with many essential skills such as reading, following directions, and measuring. Getting involved in cooking helps your child to develop fine motor skills, eye hand coordination, and early concepts of math and science.
Make Cooking Special
POSITIVE SIDE EFFECTS OF COOKING AT HOME
Improves Mental health
Cooking at home can be an effective way to bring the family together around a creative bonding activity. In other cases, it can serve as a much-needed meditative time for the mind. Also, reading recipes is a great exercise for the brain. Health & wellness writer Dr. Rashmi Byakodi states "Home cooking cultivates a sense of belonging and even reduces symptoms of depression."
Improves cardiovascular health
When cooking your own food, you're more likely to be mindful of how much salt you're adding, and you'll rarely be able to match restaurant-level saltiness. Reducing your salt intake will most definitely improve your cardiovascular and kidney health by lowering your blood pressure and chances of a stroke or kidney disease.
Improves Monthly grocery bILL
When you cook most of your meals at home, you save on the restaurant mark up costs such as service charges, gratuities, gas, and parking fees. There are so many more ways to save on your grocery bill, like finding deals, meal planning, buying in bulk, and cooking foods like casseroles that can be eaten for two-days in a row.
Featured Classes
Cooking with my dad
Fathers play a key role in childhood development and children seeing their fathers cooking is a vital component. In this class we cover basic cooking techniques and prepare a signature “Dad’s Specialty” dish that you can brag about forever. This will be a great father-child bonding time to remember.
Shhhhh!!! It's vegan
In this class you will learn the art of making vegan food taste delicious. Our plant-based recipes include: BBQ Ribs, buffalo wings, macaroni & “cheese”, Nashville hot “chicken”, southern-style coleslaw, peach cobbler & more.
Kick the salt
So your doctor said it’s time to cut back on salt. Don’t panic! You’re not destined for a lifetime of bland food. In this class we explore a whole tasty world of salt-free recipes. We will season our dishes with fresh herbs, and spices that are smoky, savory, woodsy, sweet, spicy, and earthy.
What Our class attendee's say
While growing up I lived in group foster homes and never learned how to cook. Your cooking classes were a great opportunity to learn new things about food and how it effects my health. Also it was fun cooking in a group setting.
Amaia V.
I was introduced to your program by my Mom who isn't the best cook in the world and at first I didn't want to attend but it was really cool and I met some cool people as well. Thanks alot.
Emma P.
*MORE INFORMATION*
Please note that all in-person cooking classes have been postponed until further notice. We have moved to a virtual learning model paired with socially-distanced food distribution called “Cooking Smart From the Start.” Participants can pickup ingredients before class starts.