What people are saying about our classes...

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Sunday, March 16 2025

3:00-5:00pm

Location: Rachel's Kitchen (Central Sioux Falls)

 In this hands-on workshop, we’ll cultivate our inner herbalist, discovering the properties, benefits, and uses of medicinal garden plants and backyard wild weeds. We’ll discuss and demo a variety of herbal preparation and preservation methods such as drying and making infused oils, with a focus on skincare remedies like salves, sprays, and perfumes. Participants will smell and touch their way to a personal herbal infusion to take home.

Friday, March 21, 2025

 6:00-8:00pm 

Location: CTE Teaching Kitchen

In this combo class between cooking instructors Sandrine Pilaz and Rachel DeBoer, become a master of spices AND sourdough. Rachel’s background in herbalism and culinary arts will equip and inspire you to spice up your everyday cooking, covering all things spices -- blending, medicinal benefits, dry toasting, and tempering, all while stirring up an Indian-inspired chickpea curry to enjoy. French cookbook author, Sandrine Pilaz, will guide you through preparing homemade sourdough naan bread and homemade ghee (traditional clarified butter). Sourdough starters will be available for participants to get started baking at home. 

Friday, April 4, 2025

6:00-8:00pm

Location: CTE Teaching Kitchen

Description: Think grain-free, gluten-free, refined-sugar-free baking can’t also be DELICIOUS? I’m here to prove you wrong. Master the art and science of baking with alternative flours, natural sweeteners, and healthy fats to serve crowd-pleasing creations everyone will feel good eating. This class will cover the essentials for a grain-free baking pantry, featuring almond flatbread crackers and perfect savory rolls.

All recipes are gluten-free, dairy-free, refined-sugar free.

Friday, April 11 from 6:00-8:00pm

Location: CTE Teaching Kitchen

Breakfast is the BEST and the most important meal of the day. Learning to prepare a better breakfast could be your secret to improving mood, focus, productivity, reducing carb cravings, weight loss, and balancing blood sugar. This hands-on cooking class will cover chef knife skills, flavor balancing, breakfast superfood additions, and eating to FEEL your best. Roll out hand-turned gluten free pie crust dough for a grain-free veggie quiche, sip herbal mochas, morning glow smoothies, and more! 

All recipes are gluten free but do include eggs and grass-fed butter. Grass fed milk optional. 

 Fridays,  April 25 or May 2, 2025 6:00-8:00pm

Location: CTE Teaching Kitchen

French Macarons: Tiny, delicate, almond-flour-based goodies, naturally gluten free, and balanced with healthy protein and fats. Might they the best sweet treat? We think so! With the instructor’s background in gardening and herbalism, pipe in fillings like soothing lavender or naturally-sweetened strawberry rose. 

Students will leave with the skills to bake their own macarons from scratch, whipping egg whites, sifting flour, and folding in some of their own flavor creativity. 

Location: CTE Teaching Kitchen

Upcoming Dates TBA

Have you heard about the benefits of probiotic foods, but you're not sure where to start? Looking for ways to increase the shelf life of garden produce or fresh herbs? Learn to ferment! In this hands-on workshop, you'll enhance your chef's knife skills, taste and create unique flavor combinations, and learn how to preserve seasonal herbs and produce through the art of home fermentation. All participants will take home their very own jar of sauerkraut and a kombucha SCOBY to get started brewing at home.

September 2025 Dates TBA

in Rachel's Garden 

Central Sioux Falls

Insider  Price $37

Usually $55 in the SFPS CommEd Catalogue!

 In this hands-on workshop, we’ll celebrate the bounty of summer’s herbs, learning more about their properties, benefits, and uses in everyday life. We’ll discuss and demo a variety of herbal preparation and preservation methods such as drying, making infused vinegars, tinctures, and oxymels, focusing on herbs that are regularly found in kitchens and gardens, and support local wildlife and pollinators. Participants will smell and taste their way to a personal herbal infusion to take home.

Monthly support-group style meetings for those looking to find health + flourishing in community 

Cook. Eat. Learn. Support. Grow.

Traditional cultures understood the importance of diversity and growing in community. The Indigenous Three Sisters practice of growing corn + beans + squash together is both an intentional polyculture and  way of life.  Corn provides a trellis for climbing beans. Squash leaves mulch and shade the soil below, maintaining moisture. Bean plants replenish the soil with nitrogen from the atmosphere to feed their hungry sisters. In collaboration rather than competition, their generous gifts produce more abundantly and sustain the health of humans and the health of the earth. 

"Of all the wise teachers who have come into my life, none are more eloquent than these [The Three Sisters], who wordlessly in leaf and vine embody the knowledge of relationship."

- Robin Wall Kimmerer in 

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

 Upcoming Dates TBA 

Location: CTE Teaching Kitchen

Take your baking to the next level, mastering vegan donuts and decadent chocolate cake. These recipes will feature wholesome ingredients like protein and vitamin-rich alternative flours and natural sweeteners. Participants will practice using a piping bag, zesting lemons, and drizzling homemade probiotic glaze. All recipes are gluten-free, dairy-free, refined-sugar free, and sure to be DELICIOUS. :)

Location: CTE Teaching Kitchen

Upcoming Dates TBA

Wondering how to refine your cooking with flavors from around the world? Become a master of spices. What makes Ethiopian berébere? What about Moroccon ras el hanout? Chinese five spice, garam masala, or herbs de Provence? What about using indigenous flavors right here in South Dakota like juniper, sumac, and sage? Discover these and more at this hands-on cooking class. 

Integrating an herbalist approach to the properties and benefits of different spices and common culinary herbs, a bit of geography and history of the spice trade, this interdisciplinary class will equip you and inspire your curiosity. With a framework which believes food is medicine and using the world as our classroom, this course will give you tools and inspiration to boost your immune system, support your health, broaden your palate, and literally spice up your everyday cooking.

Join a hands-on culinary class taught in partnership with 

Sioux Falls Public Schools Community Education located at Career Technical Academy

Fresh Flavor Cooking Class

Upcoming Dates TBA

Whether you're hoping to spice up your weeknight meal or are navigating specific dietary needs, this hands-on meal planning and preparation class, led by a registered nurse, will equip you with the skills to feel confident in the kitchen and create nourishing meals that support a healthy and vibrant life. Curate a well-stocked pantry, gain flexible meal plans and recipe ideas, practice knife skills and flavor balancing, and feel empowered to cook with fresh herbs and seasonal produce. Create and sample from-scratch salad dressings, pestos, and sauces. All recipes will be gluten and dairy free, as well as low-carb, vegan, paleo, and Whole30 friendly. Ages 16 & up.

Maintaining balance and intentionality in everything we do usually that means good things take time. 

As we grow, we are excited to offer:

Book Clubs

Recipes

Herbalism Courses

Gardening Workshops

Community Skill Shares

One-On-One Health + Nutrition Coaching

Local Resource Collection

Support for Moms

But we can't do this work alone.  Send us a message if you're interested in getting involved!  We all have valuable gifts to share.As a wise woman once told me,
"We just haven't met the right people yet."