Cooking Class Teaches Life Skills To Recovery Community

SOMEONE’S IN THE KITCHEN –

May 26th 2022 – Bailey is standing side-by-side with her peers in the recovery community at this cooking class as they learn tips and tools for a safe, sober life. The Alano Club of Portland, in partnership with Ben’s Friends, has organized monthly cooking classes for people working through their addiction recovery, taught by some established Portland-area chefs who are also in addiction recovery.

The project, known as Plates For The People, was born before the coronavirus pandemic but was halted, as COVID-19 forced people into isolation for two years. Kasey Anderson, the Alano Club of Portland’s director of development, said they did their first in-person Plates For The People course in February 2020. “And then we did not do our second class, or our third class, or our fourth class, and then it became really evident that we were probably not going to be able to do this for a while,” Anderson said. “We are at a place now, after a couple of years, that have been especially hard on the recovery community — I think that has been well-publicized with what people have seen, what isolation does to people struggling with substance use and mental health disorders. So it feels really good and inspiring to even get a small group of people together for a night in a room to spend some time together and really reconnect with the community.”