
Chef Steve Glenn, Smart Soul Food instructor and culinary director of UGK Community First (Photo courtesy Smart Soul Food)
When Jasmine Sheffield was told to use Greek yogurt in a dumpling recipe, she was skeptical. Her concerns dissipated after sampling the finished product — chicken a la king with cheddar drop dumplings — at Smart Soul Food, a pilot program aimed to educate residents of Richmond’s 6th District in cooking skills and healthy eating.
“It was amazing,” says Sheffield, a teacher and North Side resident who has attended two separate sets of classes through the program: one with her students at Woodville Elementary and one session for older adults with her grandmother.
Launched in January under a contract with the city of Richmond, Smart Soul Food provides residents with cooking tips, recipes and take-home ingredients during cooking classes held in multiweek sessions. The effort is managed by UGK Community First, a local nonprofit established in 2020 to support food insecure children, families and older adults through community-based feeding and educational programs.
The program is supported by partners including VCU Health, specifically dieticians from the School of Nursing and the Community Health program, and Shalom Farms. “[We] couldn’t do this without the participation of VCU,” says UGK Director Micheal Sparks.
Sparks hopes to see the program work for residents and grow as new partners are brought into the fold. “We want this to be consistent and see outcomes,” he says, adding that it’s not only about the ability for families to get “fresh, clean food but to also do something with it.”
The pilot program, held at the city’s Annie Marie Giles Resource Center on Oliver Hill Way, has hosted over 200 families and seniors since January and plans to host another 200 this fall. For Sparks, the aim is that Smart Soul Food will be citywide by the end of the year.
Chef Steve Glenn, culinary director of UGK Community First and a finalist on season 20 of Fox’s “Hell’s Kitchen,” creates recipes based on seasonal availability, ease of preparation and nutritional value.
“The key to success is chef Glenn teaching parents to cook healthy meals with the family. Nutritional meals are the best treatments to recovery for all that troubles the body, mind and soul,” says 6th District Councilmember Ellen Robertson, who was instrumental in helping UGK bring its classes to the East End.
Glenn encourages participants to make more from-scratch foods rather than premade items to avoid unnecessary sodium and sugar.
“For our senior community, we tend to lean towards designing low-carb [and] low-sodium recipes to battle diabetes and hypertension,” he says, noting that he chose the chicken and dumplings Sheffield made to put a new spin on a classic recipe. “The addition of Greek yogurt to the dumpling mix adds some more healthy protein to the recipe while also allowing for the dumplings to maintain a light, fluffy texture.”
For Sheffield, the classes were helpful in developing her cooking skills and added new snacks and meals to her recipe book. “I would attend the classes again because I enjoyed it,” she says. “I looked forward to it each week.”