Healthy Eats 101 from Catherine Pearson on Vimeo.

On a brisk fall morning, five families filed into an unfinished room at the Word of Life Church in the Morrisania section of the South Bronx. They pulled black hairnets over their heads, sat down at two long folding tables, and began to chop.

The families were there for the latest in an eight-week series of free morning cooking classes offered by the Word of Life Church, a Christian assembly that operates out of a nondescript, 5,000-square-foot storefront on the corner of Prospect Avenue and 162 Street.

On Wednesdays and Saturdays throughout the year, church volunteers hand out groceries to hundreds of needy men, women, and families who line up on the sidewalk to waiting to fill their pushcarts with vegetables, bread, and—depending on availability—meat.

For the past year and a half, the church has also partnered with City Harvest, the non-profit, to offer regular Saturday cooking classes, using low-cost recipes from the foods offered in the food bank lines.

The classes are led by volunteer nutritionists and chefs, though City Harvest does recruit participants from culinary schools.

“We do the grocery shopping needed to buy ingredients in the neighborhood,” said Sarah Pearlman, senior manager of nutrition education with City Harvest.