Cooking is an art, but all art requires knowing something about
the techniques and materials.
- Nathan Myhrvold

Who We Are

Master Cook Corps is comprised of the most passionate adult and youth chefs who draw from the diversity of the neighborhoods in which they serve because they are the citizens of those communities. Master Cooks Corps is active on the front lines of a critical nationwide effort to address our country’s relationship with healthy food, wellness, cooking, and using food as a communal building asset.

Partnering  and collaborating with food justice, culinary, education, scholastic, medical, and helping organizations to stir up solutions to the nation’s food issues while cooking itself well, makes this work even more enriching and far reaching. Master Cooks Corps seeks to create communities of wellness by increasing knowledge of, engagement with, and access to healthy food.

We believe that food is the cornerstone of health, happiness, and well-being. We want to provide you with the tools you need to create a healthier lifestyle that will last long after your class ends. We don't just want you to come away with some new skills—we want you to improve your LIFE!

How Did We Get Here?

Created to fulfill the overwhelming requests for cooking education, Master Cooks Corps is a scalable solution to the national obesity, diabetes, and preventative disease epidemic. In America where wealth disparities compound widening health gaps, citizens are at an elevated risk for chronic diseases and many negative health outcomes when compared to other nations. Master Cooks Corps addresses the root cause of both: lack of culinary education, tools for supporting wellness lifestyle change, access, and knowledge on how to purchase healthy food within one’s budget. The Master Cooks Corps curriculum is based on Mark Bittman’s essay “Chop, Fry, Boil: Eating for One or 6 Billion”.


Master Cooks Corps members are trained to facilitate teaching about healthy, culturally relevant diets, and how to make wholesome food accessible to everyone that is easy to make yet can be prepared on a limited budget. They learn to meet participants where they are in terms of their food preferences, skills, knowledge, and resources available in the communities in which they live and serve.

Our Team

NADINE NELSON
Founder
CATHY POOLE
Massaro Farms Exceutive Director
LORI MARTIN
New Haven Harvest Executive Director

One of the greatest pleasures of my life has been that I have never stopped learning about Good Cooking and Good Food.
- Edna Lewis

Meet Nadine Nelson

A Chef Educator and Owner of Global Local Gourmet

 

Chef Nadine Nelson, Green Queen of Cuisine, is the eco-chef and social entrepreneur of Global Local Gourmet, a roving community-supported kitchen.

Chef Nadine was born in Toronto, Canada of Jamaican Heritage. She has always loved cooking and her vegetables.

She has studied the culinary arts in Paris at the Ritz Escoffier, has a certificate in food styling from the New School and a certificate in Philanthropy and nonprofit management from New York University in New York, and earned a teaching degree from Tufts University in Boston, consequently, she brings a worldly perspective to seasonal food.

She is a social activist, cooking instructor, chef, writer, recipe developer/tester, food consultant, experiential epicurean event producer, and culinary artist.

 

She is an expert in interactive cuisine and has worked with such clients as :

  • Yale
  • Harvard University
  • The Apollo Theater
  • the City of New Haven
  • Boston Office of Conventions and Tourism
  • The National Park Service
  • The Food Project
  • Disney
  • Bain and Company
  • Columbia University
  • International Association of Culinary Professionals, and the Tobago Jazz Festival designing and delivering:

Cooking classes, culinary team building, wellness workshops, culinary tours, and epicurean event planning.

 

MacArthur Genius Will Allen, Executive Director of Sustainable giant Growing Power said of her work: “I have been a lot of places and seen a lot of things, but I have never seen people having the community come together and cook their meal together, that was something new. That put New Haven on the Map. The organizer is ingenious”.

 

 

“If you’re going to be teaching people, you need to understand who they are and what they eat, to teach them how to change to healthy foods; you can empower them if you understand about their diet.”

– Nadine Nelson

Learn more about Nadine Nelson and her passion for food, culture, sustainable food, farming, and racial justice in this article from Yes Magazine, What White People Can Do For Food Justice

Our Partners