Teaching students about easy and healthy dishes, the Health Education Resource Center will be hosting the cooking class, Healthy Cooking 101: Springtime Fiesta at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Klehm Hall 2309.

The class will teach students how to prepare quick and healthy Tex-Mex dishes including chicken and veggie fajitas, which will have pico de gallo, guacamole, and sweet and spicy slaw.

HERC holds three Healthy Cooking 101 sessions each semester, all held in the same classroom.

The first cooking class of this semester was on February 10 and had a Valentine’s Day desert theme. Students who attended the class learned about healthy alternatives and substitutions for deserts.

After the Springtime Fiesta cooking class, the last Healthy Cooking 101 will be at 6:30 p.m. April 6 and will be focusing on breakfast. This session will also focus on quick recipes and touch on why it is important for students to make time to eat breakfast and boost their metabolism for the day.

Caroline Weber, nutrition promotion coordinator for HERC, said that these fajitas will already be healthful due to the amount of vegetables in the dish.

During the cooking class, students will oven bake the fajitas, which will cut down the fat when cooking. Then the chicken will be spiced up with a variety of seasonings that will help bring flavors to the dish without the addition of added salt. The slaw uses an oil dressing, instead of the mayo dressed slaws that are normally found in fajitas.

“The plant oils are the healthier fats that we want to try to include in our diet,” Weber said.

Weber is in charge of coming up with the theme for each of the cooking sessions that the HERC puts on and decided the springtime fiesta theme would be most fitting for students.

“We are now in the second half of the semester and students are getting busier and busier. This means we are more susceptible to the fast and quick items that we get when eating out,” Weber said. “However, we all know that eating at restaurants can offer larger portions or items with more calories, fat and sodium.”

The program is free and registration is required to attend the Springtime Fiesta cooking class. Students can sign up online. All materials needed to make the dish will be provided during the class.

Abbey Whittington can be reached at 581-2812 or anwhittington@eiu.edu