The Feb. 25 class on making yogurt and cheese was Pawcatuck resident Amelia Smith’s first time teaching a workshop for Thames Valley Sustainable Connections. A nearly full-house crowd of 11 filled the kitchen of St. James Episcopal Church in New London to watch as she transformed store-bought milk into healthy dairy treats for the whole family.

Smith is the workshop coordinator for Thames Valley Sustainable Connections, a New London-based non-profit organization dedicated to creating sustainable communities since 2008. She said the workshops coordinated by the organization teach residents how to make their own versions of foods that are often purchased.

“I’ve been doing this sort of thing since I was little, with my mom showing me how to can, and then on my own a few years ago making cheese and yogurt,” she said.

As a baker, farmer and cook, she’s interested in the connection between the farm and kitchen and finding ways to utilize everything.

The ingredients and equipment needed to make common storebought foods is often easily accessible even for low-income families, she told the class. In the case of ricotta cheese, one of the featured foods of the Feb. 25 workshop, she said it is cheaper to make your own than to purchase it from a cheese shop or farmers market.

In the two-hour course, Smith walked the 11 participants through both the yogurt- and cheese-making process, and even though the yogurt would require another eight hours to finish, two variations of ricotta and a pre-made Mason jar of yogurt were ready for sampling. She fielded questions about incubation setups for the yogurt, the differences between using lemon juice or vinegar when curdling the milk for cheese, and what kind of milk to use.

“What if your milk is on the verge of going bad?” one participant asked.

“That is the only kind of milk that I use,” Smith said with a smile.

It might take a few days off the shelf life of the final product, she added, but it’s a great way to use milk that won’t be consumed otherwise.

Art Costa, president and CEO of TVSC, said the workshops started about four years ago as a spin-off of the Field of Greens markets that the organization also runs.

“The idea was really to try to reconnect people with something that had been traditional, usually passed down from mother to daughter,” he said.

As home economic classes faded from schools, TVSC saw a need to teach canning and other techniques so residents could utilize the entirety of their garden bounty.

Both Smith and Costa cited the annual tomato crop that inundates gardeners at the end of the summer, saying that canning and other preservation methods taught in the workshops help keep the extra tomatoes from going to waste.

The classes are consistently full: Costa said one attracted more than 20 walk-ins, far above the recommended class size of 12, and Smith had to turn away a few people who had called to register for the yogurt and cheese class.

Other classes have covered topics such as natural medicines and “dining on a dime.”

Workshop ideas often come from requests from participants, and if the instructors aren’t experts on a given subject, they’ll find someone who is.

Smith said she was excited for the March 11 class on Native American foods, which will be taught by Rachel Sayet of the Mohegan Library.

“She’s basing them on maple sugar, which is in season now,” she said, “so she’s using the history of the area too.”

Future workshops include homemade pizzas, fermented foods and holiday cookies.

For a full listing of workshops, visit the TVSC website or email foodandcanning@hotmail.com.

a.hutchinson@theday.com