March 2022 - THE CUT: Three Sisters Kitchen

Food does more than nourish. It connects families and communities. Three Sisters Kitchen, a non-profit community food space, is where delicious, affordable, and locally produced foods come together to nourish the community from the ground up. Craig Jones, TSK Food Group Manager, understands the importance of this organization.

Your organization reads like Eat, Pray, Love. Instead, it is Eat, Shop, Cook, Learn. Let us start with the categories, eat and cook. Tell us a little more about that?

We are a non-profit community food space in Downtown Albuquerque. Our focus is to utilize the power and love of local food to create economic opportunity, improve community health, and bring our diverse communities together around the table. So the “Eat” portion relates to our cafe. The cafe was a chance for us to highlight as many local vendors, celebrating the bounty of New Mexico. As well as create a space that is affordable and accessible to the general community. The cooking portion relates to all of our educational programs. We do a lot of different educational programming, all based on local food education, whether it be nutrition or teaching people how to start their businesses.

You have a new product that you are excited to discuss. Tell us about your new granola line and what it means for the community?

We launched a product line in 2020 called TSK Food Group. It is a manufactured product line where we make varieties of New Mexico-inspired products specializing in granola. The flavors we have are Red Chili Apricot Pecan, Green Chili Apple Dates, Biscochito Orange, Blue Corn Mulberry, and Honey Almond Goji Berry. We just wrapped up our seasonal product, our seasonal granola. We have Prickly Pear Ginger Almond. It is delicious!

We started when we had to shut down the cafe. It helped keep our employees working. Ir was also a way to keep working with some of the local farmers and providers we established relationships. But what TSK Food Group has turned into a case study. It is a chance for us to teach our food business students interested in starting their businesses. Then we can take those relationships and lessons and apply them to our teachings.

Education is key to everything. I love that you include education in your lineup for the organization. What classes do you teach at TSK?

We have two in-house programs that we run. One is called Harvest to Health, which focuses on teaching home health care providers how to utilize local food and nutrition to support their work in-home health care. We also have a program - the Food Business Training Program. We teach aspiring entrepreneurs how to start their manufactured food businesses. That is where TSK Food Group helps support the work that we do. In addition to that, we also have a lot of different community partners that we work with, teaching cooking classes to groups of people around the city. We are also hoping to launch our own education space, hosting cooking classes that will be open to the general public.

Where can people learn more about your organization?

We have a website - www.threesisterskitchen.org. You can also follow us on social media @threesisterskitchennm, Facebook, and Instagram. Learn more about the granola line on Instagram - @tskfoodgroup.