On Wednesday, Feb. 8, seniors are invited to participate in Mabel Kay Senior Center’s “Something to Chew On” program that takes place from 12:30 to 2 p.m. The program features Maureen Fitzgerald, a career journalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, from 1986 to 2018, who worked as a feature writer, education reporter.
For the last 15 years of her tenure, she has worked as the food editor. One of her greatest joys is cooking – not especially fancy meals, but simple family dinners. In 2011, when Fitzgerald’s daughter asked for recipes for easy, affordable and healthy meals, the two began a cooking blog, My Daughter’s Kitchen.
Fitzgerald then brought those cooking lessons to a school in North Philadelphia, with the mission of sharing her love of cooking with school children and teaching them how easy, inexpensive, delicious and fun cooking can be. The program has since been expanded to more than 20 schools, with volunteers teaching classes in Philadelphia and Camden.
After retiring from the paper, Fitzgerald continues to run the program, under its new partnership with St. Christopher’s Foundation for Children. The program has a new name, My Family Kitchen, to better reflect its mission of encouraging children to cook with their families. Fitzgerald, who has lived in Haddonfield, New Jersey for 37 years, is married to Michael Vitez, also a career journalist. They have three adult children, and now four grandchildren who she is happily teaching to cook.
