For the last 6 years, Anthony has been teaching a free cooking class to St. Louis's youth. Each Monday, roughly 15 kids gather in our workspace to learn new recipes and try new dishes! We make way more food than is necessary so kids can take home leftovers throughout their week, and so that we can feed any kids in the facility who didn't participate. We arrive at The Core Collective at 5pm, with just ingredients. Then we spend the next couple of hours  making magic! Meals usually include a main course, a couple of sides and a dessert! After we are done cooking, our students tend to eat together and brag about their chef skills! This program feels more like a team sport than what I experiences in the Home Economics classes I had growing up. We encourage our students to work together for our common goal, turning simple ingredients into culinary delights! 

The students of this program range in age anywhere from 10 - 20 years old. Some of the kids live in the facility, while others live in the neighborhood and are looking for something to do. We do often have unhoused students. The first thing we do when we start the class is cut up a ton of fruit, in case anyone is too hungry to wait for dinner. I am always amazed at how much fruit our kids eat. The class is laid back and often changes based on how everyone is feeling. Some kids just want to sit back and watch, while others can't wait to discard our recipes and use the one their grandmother taught them! (Luckily our volunteers can fix almost any culinary mistakes that come our way) Most Mondays, there is a group of eager students waiting by the front door, eager to ask me what we are cooking, so they can claim their role in the kitchen. 

For over a year, Table for Lou has been serving hot meals to the families of  hospital patients at the BJC Children's Hospital. Each week, we serve anywhere from 70 to 100 families a new menu of delicious hot foods cooked up by some of St. Louis's hottest upcoming restaurants. The families we serve are often dealing with a lot of stress and financial burden. Our program aims to give parents a nice break and an excuse to enjoy a hot meal that reminds them of home cooking. We often hear that our dinner was the closest thing our families have had to a home cooked meal in a long time. We also have the pleasure of occasionally being a patient's first solid food since months! Once our dinner shift is over, we load up their communal fridge with dozens of left over meals. Many of the families love the opportunity to talk to us about anything unrelated to the hospital. Some families, we talk to for 30 minutes about BBQ or baking! 
In our first year of providing dinners, we served more than 2,500 families (that's roughly 1% of the St. Louis population!)