Last Friday, Chestertown’s Modern Stone Age Kitchen Restaurant and Bakery became the launch site for a significant pilot program—to impact the health of the Eastern Shore by introducing Kent County 6th-graders and families to healthy eating.
Conceived in partnership with Midshore Health Coalition, the initiative aims to promote healthy eating habits and cooking skills among students and their families.
Christina, Dr. Bill Schindler, and the Modern Stone Age Kitchen staff invited 15 families to enjoy pizza made from scratch for the inaugural class. The month-long series of classes will focus on transforming familiar foods like pizza into nutritious options. The program aims to make a lasting impact on participants’ dietary choices.
“One of the things we focus on at the Modern Stone Age Kitchen is taking real familiar food and just making it as healthy as nourishing as it can be. And a lot of times we use pizza as a teaching tool,” Bill Schindler says.
To accommodate participants’ schedules and potential transportation challenges, the program offers evening classes with two time slots. Content is digitally recorded to allow participants to access it remotely and review it at their convenience. At the end of each class, participants receive recipes and ingredients to recreate the dishes at home, ensuring access to resources necessary for healthy cooking.
John Queen of Bayside Hoyas will assist in distributing food to families facing transportation obstacles. Queen also was instrumental as a liaison with Kent County schools.
“Christina wants to impact the demographic that doesn’t come downtown to the restaurant, and at the same time, I was looking for someone to partner with in a meaningful way because the Hoyas have already been involved with food recovery and food delivery,” Queen says.
Using popular foods as a starting point, the initiative bridges the gap between everyday meals and nutritious options, empowering individuals to make healthier choices. The pilot program will provide valuable data to refine and expand efforts to promote healthy eating and cooking skills among middle school students throughout the community.
“Especially being former educators, it’s near and dear to our hearts to be able to give back to the schools and really be able to spread this message because it’s important,” Christina Schindler says.
In addition to engaging students, the program encourages family involvement, recognizing that the entire household plays a crucial role in fostering healthy eating habits
The Spy Interviewed Bill and Christina the day before the event.
This video is approximately five minutes in length. To find out more about Modern Stone Age Kitchen go here. For more about Bayside HOYAS, go here.
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