Growing up, Nichole A. Mooney was welcomed into the kitchen from a young age. “My earliest memories of cooking with my mom was creating amazing dishes without following a recipe.” When her mom cooked, she made even the most complex dishes like crab cakes or the perfect fried chicken seem easy. Cooking has always captivated her, yet it would be more than a decade until she felt a calling to pursue culinary education. “I never dreamed of being a chef; the idea came about after I started working in the hospitality industry.”
In a Zoom interview on a sunny afternoon in July, Spoon University spoke with Mooney, the executive director and founder of Black Girl’s Cook , an organization with a mission to empower and inspire inner-city adolescent Black girls through culinary arts and urban farming. It all started as a hobby. She explained that since entering the workforce in 2004, upon graduating Bowie State University, work became her life. She did not have time for recreation. But, on the rare occasion she had time off, “I would cook different recipes I loved,” Mooney explained. ”I would have people over and have potlucks.”
In 2013, she became tired of the monotony of her life and decided to move to New York to learn from private chefs and eventually became an assistant editor on a cookbook. After discovering that the chef and author she worked with, Amar’e Stoudemire, was collaborating with a charter school in Harlem to implement culinary literacy, she became curious about the intersection of education and food.
At the same time, she witnessed how health issues affected her family, a story that echoed across America. “Growing up, you hear, auntie so-and-so has diabetes or high blood pressure and things like that,” Mooney said. “But then, doing the research, I realized that it’s all connected to the lack of food education and resources for adolescent Black girls.”
According to the Food Research and Action Center, more than half the population of Black women are obese compared to a less than a third of white women. Hypertension, stroke and heart failure are just some of the many cardiovascular diseases that are found to affect Black women at higher rates than any other group in the U.S.
With the intention to change these numbers, she combined her love of culinary arts with her entrepreneurial and community skills and a hint of philanthropy, and thus Black Girls Cook was created. “When I first started the program, [I thought] ‘let me take this love that I have of food and share it with a group of girls,’ and it just evolved from that.” Mooney said.
The organization provides a wide array of culinary and gardening skills to young African American girls between the ages of 8 and 15. “[It’s] that phase where you’re trying to figure out who you are, and you have people trying to tell you who you should be… that’s a very critical point in a girl’s life,” Mooney said.
Launching her pilot program in the Bronx, Black Girls Cook became an official non-profit organization and her program moved with her to Baltimore. It has recently expanded to Miami. She also has an interest in developing a Girl-Scout style curriculum that community leaders could use to make their own centers across the states.With hands-on cooking classes that teach recipes rooted in Black culture and African diaspora, students gain knowledge about the culture that accompany dishes. From diabetic-friendly shrimp scampi and spinach with linguine, to handmade pizza, or watermelon salad, there is no end to the amazing dishes taught
When her students showed interest in growing fruits and vegetables in 2018, the Edible Gardening program was launched that spring. The curriculum guides young women with knowledge of edible indoor gardening practices and emphasizes the importance of nature.
While Black Girls Cook often focuses on food, the program is also infused with a lens on self-efficacy. It is about “providing them with the resources in the tools of education and seeing other women from communities like theirs.” she said. “I’m very intentional about our instructors. The chefs, the gardeners, the beauticians are Black women because they are working in spaces that don’t really reflect us every day, but they’ve come from communities like the girls that we serve.” For the girls attending her culinary program it is imperative that they see that Black women are professionals in these often white- dominated fields to know they can pursue anything.
The best part of Black Girls Cook is watching the influence this has had on her own daughter, Madison. “I’m creating a program for her,” Mooney said. “ When I started the organization, I wasn’t a mom, but now I am. So I’m getting to see her interact with the organization and make changes with different things because of that.”
There is no doubt that Black Girl’s Cook has a significant impact on the students that are enrolled but this also affects the families of these young girls and in turn the generations to come after.