Cooking with Que: Detroit foodie to launch school program out of new food incubator and kitchen

Entertaining children might seem like a surprising audience choice for the energetic figure behind Cooking with Que, but she is brimming with ideas of how to involve young people in healthy eating programs. Broden was recently awarded a $60,000 Motor City Match grant to establish a brick-and-mortar kitchen at Woodward Avenue just south of Grand Boulevard, and she is busy launching a new foundation called Eat To Live, which will work with Detroit Public Schools to host students for free courses.

The new culinary hub, simply called The Kitchen, will open this summer and form a space for her fans to visit and learn about food. A 16-foot live-demonstration kitchen at the front will host classes and meals, while the back portion of the building will be a shared-space kitchen for Broden and other chefs interested in catering or events.

Her enthusiasm really shines, though, when she explains the school project she's organizing. Already a founder of The Brown Bag Movement, an initiative to feed the homeless in metro Detroit, Broden's new foundation officially launched on April 6 and will work with 10 pilot schools to provide free courses on food purchasing, cooking, and kitchen skills.

"When I was small we didn't get to go to the places in downtown Detroit, and hang out in the fancy-shmancy places, so I want to bring the kids to the kitchen," Broden explains. "They need to see what it's like, and learn how to eat better, and teach them while they are young because if you start them while they are young they will keep doing it forever."

In a nutshell, Broden wants people—especially youth—to get smarter about the way they eat. Her vegan blog encourages plant-based cooking, although she openly declares that her domain is a place where "vegans and meat-lovers can co-exist."

"I feel like we get so stuck on what the titles are going to be. 'I'm a vegan, you're a meat-eater,'" Broden says. "My mission is to teach people to have a more plant-based lifestyle—just eat more plant-based foods. I'm not saying you have to give up every piece of meat."

Broden encourages her audiences to live on "70/30," which means eating 70 percent fruits and vegetables, and 30 percent everything else. When her fans do want to include meat in their diet, she encourages some tips for that too, such as knowing where it's coming from and pairing it with helpful herbs and spices.

"If you want to eat beef or steak, I'm rubbing it down with ginger because it's going to help your body digest it better," she says. "If I'm feeding you chicken, I'm going to get Amish chicken. It's ok for [vegans and meat-eaters] to get along, we just have to figure out what you like, what I like, and how we make it work together."

Broden's drive comes from her own personal experiences. After being diagnosed with the autoimmune disease sarcoidosis and dairy allergies, she searched for holistic methods and recipes as an alternative to taking steroids. The busy mother of three said she was shocked to find about what was going into her family's food.

"You start researching things and once you do you find out so much stuff that you don't know, it's crazy, you don't want to give it to your kids,"  Broden explains. "Everything I researched pushed me towards plant-based. I literally had to cold-turkey everything—I don't push that on anybody but I didn't have a choice."

Broden changed her entire diet and became a vegan, but she didn't stop there. When people started asking her about what she was doing, and why, she decided to share what she had found. "I needed to create a place where people could learn this stuff together," she says.

Establishing a permanent kitchen is a natural next step in Broden's multi-platform approach to sharing her philosophy, in which she aims to "meet people where they eat."

Broden wants her contribution to the foodie movement in Detroit to help shape a new identity for the city. "For so long we were known for just cars: auto, auto, auto," she says "And my brain says, why can't we be known to be a health spot, too?"

"We have to get out of our culture of instant gratification, which has taught us to go grab a $2 sandwich, go grab a burger. … Why can't we have a fresh food market on every corner, as opposed to a liquor store?"

Broden argues that the variety of food movements in Detroit that have flourished in just the last few years is an indication of people trying to recreate and reinvent the city, and that food has been at the center of changes.

"That's why I didn't necessarily want to do a restaurant—I wanted to make it like a food museum," says Broden.

The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC) facilitates the Motor City Match grant, and they are thrilled to be supporting Broden's plans to activate the vacant retail block in New Center. 

"[Broden] has an excellent vision," says Kyla Carlsen, DEGC Small Business manager. "We know there is a need for more access to fresh and healthy foods across the city, and Cooking with Que will provide substantial community benefit."

Broden agrees it's serendipitous that her kitchen will be at the end of the QLine streetcar route ("Que in front of the Q") and the interest from the community certainly suggests she is on the right track.

"I have people who are booking it already for events, it's awesome," she beams. "It's gone so far. I just thought I was making a blog!"

How you cook your meat could raise risk of high blood pressure

Backyard barbecues come with a new caution: Grilled beef, chicken and fish may boost your risk for high blood pressure.

The same goes for roasting or broiling these foods, because high-temperature cooking is what's key, according to a new study presented Wednesday at an American Heart Association meeting.

"Our findings suggest that it may help reduce the risk of high blood pressure if you don't eat these foods cooked well done and avoid the use of open-flame and/or high-temperature cooking methods," lead researcher Gang Liu of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a release.

Her team's conclusion is based on surveys of more than 100,000 U.S. adults in health fields revealed that the odds of hypertension are slightly higher for people who prefer meats cooked at high heat compared to ones partial to lower temperature cooking methods.

 In addition, people who regularly ate meats cooked well-done, such as President Trump, were 15% more likely to develop high blood pressure over 12 to 16 years, the study also showed.

Findings don't prove cause and effect, researchers noted. Results are limited because they don't account for all types of meat and cooking methods, as well as the narrow study population.

But they do add to studies showing that compounds created when meat, poultry and seafood are charred are carcinogenic.

 "The chemicals produced by cooking meats at high temperatures induce oxidative stress, inflammation and insulin resistance in animal studies, and these pathways may also lead to an elevated risk of developing high blood pressure," said Liu.

Bottom line: As you try to limit the amount of meat in your diet, also pay attention to how — and how long — you cook it.

Albany Med students cook with refugee kids to engage, inspire

ALBANY — The basement cafeteria and kitchen of the Refugee and Immigrant Support Services of Emmaus building slowly started filling up with middle and high school-aged kids on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. The volume of their excited chatter and laughter increased as they waited for the older students of Albany Medical College to empty out and organize the contents of their plastic grocery bags.

"OK guys, today we're doing breakfast for dinner!" said second-year AMC student Tania Rodriguez.

The kids filed into the kitchen to wash their hands and dispersed to different areas for each recipe: Four boys washed potatoes at the sink for the breakfast casserole, other kids took turns cracking eggs into a large bowl, and a young boy cooked sausages in a frying pan.

This is the scene at RISSE twice a month at the Cooks for a Cause program, where first- and second-year AMC students gather with middle and high school-aged kids to cook and eat a meal together. Past meal themes were Italian (with baked ziti and garlic bread) and Mexican (chicken fajitas and très leches cake).

"We had a family mentor program before where AMC students helped vulnerable families to do paperwork and medical-related issues, and it was so successful," said Francis Sengabo, operations director for RISSE. "When they came to request it with youth, I said maybe that will be successful because we need that integration for the whole community in general."

Sengabo, who was a Rwandan refugee himself, said the program is a great way to keep the kids stay busy and engaged after school. But the main result he hopes to see from Cooks for a Cause is a more motivated youth inspired to stay in school and pursue higher education.

"Many people from my country like to go to school because they see people that do change the family and life of the community," he said. "I think students from AMC can little by little talk to them and change their mind to do this and that."

The passion is apparent: while most of the kids disperse near the end of the cooking to play games, one boy, Rodriguez said, chooses not to play with his friends and instead continues cooking in the kitchen.

AMC students have many volunteer options they can pursue (the school requires 40 hours of service learning to graduate). Shruthi Perati, a first-year student, said she chose Cooks for a Cause to connect with the community.

"Food is a great platform to connect with people of all backgrounds," she said. "And I think doctors really need to know their patients and community, so this is a great way to do that."

Rodriguez, who is one of the head organizers of this year's program, loves cooking. But her personal interest in RISSE stems from her background: Her father and grandfather were refugees from Cuba.

"They came from having a job and a home to living in a one-bedroom apartment with six other families," she said. "Now I'm able to go to high school, college, and now medical school because of that opportunity they gave me. I see these kids and that kind of track and want to give back."

While many of the kids are still too young to know what they want to do with their lives, many of them are passionate about soccer, so Rodriguez tells them they can join soccer teams in high school and college. Her main goal, though, is to give them something to look forward to outside of school.

The kids were timid and shy during their first gathering with the medical students in October, carefully paying attention to the chopping, mixing and frying instructions. In November, they were quick to line up to confidently cut peppers and onions. And by January, the excitement and comfort level had increased exponentially.

"I can see how interested they are to come," Sengabo said. "Like today, it was raining and some of them didn't have a ride so they walked here in the rain — they are so enthusiastic."

Etha, who is from Thailand, was flipping pancakes for the first time in his life. He instinctually timed the flip for a perfect, golden color.

"Maybe I can be a chef one day," he said.