Big Food on a Small Budget

This class is a mix of hands-on cooking and demonstration; it culminates in dinner served with wine and beer.

When you have a small budget for both money and time, you can still create food that is big on both flavor and nutrition. Michelle McKenzie is excited to show you how to start with a big batch of something delicious -- a pot of lentils, a roasted chicken, a pan of steamed beets -- and stretch it across the week's meals. 

MENU

a pan of roasted cabbage

Cabbage pancakes with chickpea flour, coconut oil, fried mustard seeds
Chicken with cabbage and herb jam, preserved lemon, chile
Baked farro pasta 
Pork fat fried rice, cabbage, quick-pickled cucumber

Michelle McKenzie is the program director and chef at 18 Reasons. She teaches cooking classes, curates the course calendar, and prepares the food for wine dinners and special events. She has a knack for making simple food seem special and is full of amazing tips for making every meal memorable. Michelle’s food seems at once healthy and hedonistic, elegant and effortless, and always attainable. 

Michelle graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in nutrition and a minor in biochemistry, giving her a deep understanding of food properties and their complex implications within the human body. She later graduated from The Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts, where she immersed herself in health-supportive cuisine prepared from whole, organic and seasonal foods. Michelle has worked at some of the best restaurants in the country, has been featured on the Cooking Channel, and has been a contributor for publications such as Sunset Magazine. 

Her first cookbook, Dandelion and Quince: Exploring the Wide World of Unusual Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs, will be published by Roost Books in 2016.