Move over Rachel Rae!

For the past several months, we have been fundraising to build a kitchen in our 3rd floor space above the library with the hopes and dreams of starting a cooking class with women in our community. Ecuador's produce is something most people in the US would kill to have at their disposal. Many Ecuadorians don't stray from the typical meat, potato, rice, and legume of some sort dish. Very rarely are nutritious vegetables such as zucchini used in their daily diet. Many of the women in our Women's Exercise class have expressed their interest in cooking a more varied diet but that they simple do not know how to cook vegetables like zucchini. Well, Manna Cooking Class 101 to the rescue!!

Thanks to our amazing donors, including my family (thanks mom and pop!), we have raised all the money needed to build our kitchen!! After hours of shopping done by Sonia and hours of scrapping paint off windows and scrubbing down the area on my part, our 3rd floor kitchen is up and running and oh so beautiful!!
And now without further ado, may I present, the Manna Kitchen....

Before (though this picture was taken part way

through the cleaning process, so imagine it

with more paint on the windows and messier)

After...The gorgeous new Manna Kitchen!

(Thanks mom for the stylin' towels and pot holders!)

Brand-spankin' new!

An example of the amazing produce here! Yes, those

are zucchini and that is a normal-size fork! And

we have actually had larger ones since!

A-mazing!

Though our kitchen was first developed with the idea of holding cooking classes for the women in the community (this will still happen hopefully starting in April), the first meal cooked in the new kitchen will be done by my group of 20 rambunctious 6th graders from Aliñambi as part of their Nutrition Education Program! Each week Haley and I will bring a group of 6th graders down to the kitchen to teach them how to cook using a wide variety of nutrient rich vegetables and fruits and how to choose and prepare a well balanced meal. I am soooo excited about this program and teaching kids they have the ability to take control of their nutritional lives and take advantage of the amazing opportunities in food they have here!

Thank you again to all of those who contributed to the kitchen! It will definitely be getting its use this Spring and hopefully not too damaged from a crazy group of 6th graders. :)

peace, love, and nutrition
Krysta