The Community Kitchen Brings Old Traditions to New Cooks

The Community Kitchen is the brainchild of Alexandra Lopez Reitzes, co-founder of Rise Up Baking, a collective of bakers, caterers, street vendors, restaurateurs and nutritionists based in New York City. Alexandra turned her hobby of creating specialty cakes into a business in 2007. Rise Up Baking’s worker/owners work from their own kitchens, as well as donated and rented kitchens, and pass on the money they save to their clients and customers. Working mostly rent-free allows Rise Up Baking to use predominantly locally grown, organic and sustainably processed ingredients while keeping prices affordable for the communities it serves. Rise Up Baking has expanded from made-to-order cakes to breads, pastries, catering, a Community Supported Bakery (based on the Community Supported Agriculture, or "CSA", model), and the Community Kitchen, a monthly cooking class and party.

The Community Kitchen was created as a response to the astronomically high prices of cooking and baking classes in New York City. Rise Up Baking's work is rooted in the belief that food traditions sustain strong, healthy communities, and that these traditions should be shared freely, often, and with joy. The Community Kitchen offers a different food tradition each month, from Oaxaca to Japan. The year of classes uses the growing season as its guide, with summer bringing a Basque Bacalao with fresh tomatoes, sweet peppers and chilies, while fall will feature traditional pies filled with just-harvested fruit, roots and winter squashes. There are even classes on making summer's fresh herbs into herbal medicines and teas, and wildgathering the city's offerings of acorns, apples and even ginko berries. Rise Up Baking works with local city farms and gardens, and the vendors at the city's many farmers' markets, to source the majority of its ingredients.

The Community Kitchen brings people together to learn, teach, cook, eat, drink and be merry, using ingredients grown by the people, to keep food traditions alive for the people.

To sign up for one of the Community Kitchen's monthly classes, check the schedule at http://riseupbaking.com/workshops/community-kitchen-a-monthly-party/, then email riseupbaking@gmail.com to reserve your spot. Classes are multi-generational: Children 0 - 11 are welcome and encouraged to attend with their parents, teens 12 and over can come on their own.