About this Event
How doe we nourish us with what is available and in season this Spring?.
In this workshop, turn to the classics, and learn from Brandy who makes plant-based and cooking with no oils fun and easy. Together, we'll learn how Spring staples of beans and greens can support our own unique health goals.
Your Facilitator: Brandy Cochrane
Brandy Cochrane is a culinary educator for PPMNY, a licensed Food for Life Instructor through the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and a chef, recipe developer, and author. She is also the co-founder of Plant Candy, a food company committed to getting you just as excited about plants as you are about candy. Her fascination with plant-based living came after reading The China Study and converting one of her grandma’s cake recipes with butter beans and dates. Once she saw that it worked, she went down a rabbit hole exploring ways to leverage the textures of plants and building in familiar flavor profiles to create food that anyone could enjoy. A graduate of Rouxbe’s Plant-Based Culinary Program, Brandy has used her knowledge to introduce this healing lifestyle in a way that’s fun, accessible, and creative. Her cookbook, Plant Candy Gathering, shares simple recipes that can be enjoyed by the plant-committed and plant-curious alike. Her latest book, The Plant-Based Handbook, which simplifies the benefits and resources for sustaining a plant-based lifestyle, was released in 2024. Brandy wants to create a narrative that a splash of creativity, a dash of openness, and a lot of spice can make plant-based living enjoyable and fun!
In these weekly sessions, we invite participants to gather and build community as we share recipes, food stories, and helpful tips for how to cook with the plants that are in season. Each week, participants can expect to be guided by food-workers, culture-bearers, chefs, farmers, elders, or food-system thought visionaries who will lead us in both cooking class and critical conversation that has us consider how we share the foods we grow in community.
During our Summer season, we invite participants to come together in the Greenhouse Education Center around the kitchen table to share in the harvest of our weekly CSA share. In a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, community members and farmers build a reciprocal and mutually-beneficial relationship—community members support farmers by sharing the risk and paying upfront so that farmers can focus on stewarding the land while farmers provide community with healthy, organic, and sustainably grown produce at an affordable price that goes directly into the farm's pockets.
Workshops are rain or shine.
Accessibility: Our kitchen/classroom space is wheelchair accessible. With prior planning, we can add a few small mats onto the pebbled ground of greenhouse to make a small wheel-chair accessible path. Our learning garden has grass paths, and the entrance is through a gate with a small, raised entrance. Our tables can be lowered/raised, and we have several backless benches or stools. Our kitchen is in regular use, and while we try to cook without peanuts, much of our cookware is shared and we cannot guarantee a nut-free environment. We have a first aid kit, and the closest AED is in another building several yards away. Drinking water is made available in refillable pitchers.
Our closest bathrooms are a building away, about a one-minute walk. An all-gender bathroom is also available, and this is accessible by key which you can request from staff. We are not a scent-free zone, and because herbalism classes take place here, cannot guarantee that the site will be clear of any essential oil smells. If you have needs not addressed here, please reach out to [email protected]
When inside the greenhouse and kitchen we will open our double-doors and windows to vent the space and encourage masking and social distancing when in more closed-in spaces.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Greenhouse and Education Center at Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park, 679 Riverside Dr, New York, United States
USD 0.00
