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We thought January would be a good time to take advantage of this season of new beginnings. We enlisted the expertise of Jennifer Cole Conn who owns The Farmhouse, a food education business.

Jennifer is a Certified Holistic Health Care Professional and Food Educator. She holds a culinary degree, practices as a natural foods chef, is a certified personal trainer and owns a local market. In short, she knows her stuff. We’ve asked her to conduct a four week series to help us make the most of our garden and introduce us to some new foods and techniques.

We’ve had two meetings so far, and I’ve certainly been impressed. Jennifer joins us at lunch time, and we all gather in the kitchen. She talks us through a lesson–last week “The Real Super Foods” and this week “It’s Easy Eating Green.” Then she prepares a meal for us all to enjoy. She’s opened our palates to new flavors and taught us some great recipes to take home.

We have enjoyed Peanut Butter and Kale Slaw, Baked Beans and Greens, Green Minestrone and a dish she calls “I Didn’t Know I Liked Brussels Sprouts.” We also sampled probiotics outside of the normal yogurt selection, trying recipes with miso, nutritional yeast, sauerkraut and kefir.

Today she brought in Andrew of Tyson-Cole Studio, a local land and garden design firm, to walk us through our garden. He told us about the health and financial benefits of growing your own produce, and gave us a few tips for growing vegetables at home.

We have two more weeks with Jennifer as a tutor and I look forward to what she will teach us. How does nutrition come in to play at your workplace?

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Merrill Stewart is Founder and CEO of The Stewart/Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham.