A mutual interest in food sourcing and nutrition put Sara Elliott and Jenna Foor on a literal garden path toward helping Central Floridians take control of their diets and their health.
Foor, a native of Melbourne (Florida), began her career in food service and then attended the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts. A gardening hobbyist, she also sold plants at the Audubon Park Community Market. Soon she was selling produce through consumer-supported agriculture boxes (CSAs).
That led to her starting an urban garden, MidMod Urban Farm in Winter Park. “If we’re all growing our own food, we can just become a little bit more self-reliant,” says Foor.
Gardening became a way to contribute to her family financially while empowering other moms to do the same while raising their kids.
A suburban D.C. native, Elliott gained her understanding of food systems and sustainability through her years with The Nature Conservancy in Virginia and the Stone Barn Center for Food & Agriculture in New York’s Hudson Valley. “That’s where I fell in love with food as kind of this complex system with many points of entry,” says Elliott.
In 2019, she came to Orlando as executive director of 4Roots Farm. There she learned about what was then College Park’s Edible Education Experience (which was rebranded in 2025 as The Kitchen House).
In August 2024, Elliott began to share the role as the nonprofit’s co-executive director with Betsy Gwinn to help people with “the skills and knowledge they need to put more plants on the table and have a healthier lifestyle.”
In late 2025, Foor joined the staff, working part time while continuing to maintain her own urban garden. She provides garden-to-table cooking classes for children and adults in a massive, four-station kitchen that overlooks 3,000-plus square feet of perennials.
The Kitchen House partners with AdventHealth to offer culinary wellness classes to promote healthy eating among kids at risk of obesity. It also offers gardening classes, community tastes and tours, family workshops and garden-to-table cooking classes. Garden-box CSAs are available weekly with no subscription required.
In addition, classes with such nonprofits as U.S. Hunger and the Orlando Neighborhood Improvement Corp. promote nutrition awareness and access in underserved communities. Says Elliott: “That’s why I do what I do, to empower kids and families to cook their own food and be healthy.”
Healthy eating begins with a change of mindset, she adds, encouraging people to flip the script by buying what’s fresh and in season rather than yielding to a predetermined menu: “If we teach people how to source food differently and some really basic skills around what to buy and when and how to prepare it, it’s not a punishment. It’s not restrictive.”
For more information on The Kitchen House’s programs and CSAs, visit thekitchenhouse.org.
