Wow! The garden is HUGE. My late and straggling garden is so jealous the school garden. The plants are looking so healthy and vibrant, but are also in need of picking! Oh, and the signs for the garden are charming. Great use of a rainy day!
Rose helped me arrange permission to use the kitchen at the Rec Center yesterday — many thanks to Meagan, and to Judy for letting us invade her space to do something a little different with the kids. I must confess to being a bit nervous about doing a cooking demo in a kitchen I’d never seen before, with kids I’ve only met once. But my fears were totally unfounded. These kids were incredible. They all listened and followed instructions, asked terrific, relevant questions, and brought their very best to the table. I’m so impressed and I have to share with you how incredibly elated I felt all day yesterday after working with them. To witness so many kids transform their idea that “green food is yucky” to “may I please have another bowl?” was incredible.
We started at the garden at 9:30 and the kids showed us everything that they had noticed over the last week. The pole beans were ready for a light harvest. I explained to them that beans need to be picked regularly once they produce beans in order to stimulate more flower growth and more beans. If the beans get too old on the vine, it tells the plant that it’s time to go to sleep and then they stop making beans. They were quite intrigued by the fact that the green beans (Fortex French Bean variety) are struggling under Japanese Beetles attack, while the purple beans aren’t being touched. I have both varieties at home (I donated those seeds to the garden) and have the exact same thing happening over here on Vine St.)
The Okra has flowers and some big purple Okra already — they wondered if the flowers become the Okra and I showed them where the pod is just below the petals.
There’s still one radish in the garden, and it has a massive, woody root structure that curls across the garden, off the bed, and into the path. We talked about how root plants make more seed and decided to leave that radish to see what happens. Perhaps we’ll get to collect seed to plant next spring!
They tasted lettuce again, and just about everybody spit it out, myself included. It looks beautiful still, but the heat is making it full of bitter milk. We should decide about pulling that out and maybe re-seeding more lettuce or some other fall crop.
Lots of enthusiasm about the cherry tomatoes, some of which are turning gold, but they weren’t sure if they are ready to taste yet. I have never grown the Sungold variety, so I’m not 100% sure, but I suggested they might taste one and see if it’s ready. It felt a little firm to me and they decided they wanted to wait.
Karl Liske had brought over a beetle trap a couple of weeks ago and the kids have loved emptying it every day, but the bag got pretty stinky so rather than buy more bags, Rose worked with the kids to make a bag using a plastic bag, tape and string. They did a fantastic job of modeling it after the original bag shape and it’s working just fine. Excellent work! I am so impressed with how invested the kids at the Rec center have become in this project
So, on to the best part…
The children harvested all of the ripe beans and peppers, although we wouldn’t be using them in the food demonstration (we left them for Judy to take home and enjoy as a thank you for letting us use her kitchen). Then they harvested a couple of pounds of chard and kale, plus gave the basil and oregano a much-needed haircut. It had rained overnight, so we didn’t have to water, so we went back to the Rec Center with the harvest.
That group of kids went on to their next activity with the promise that there would be plenty for them to have a taste when we finished. The next group came into the kitchen and wow. What an enthusiastic bunch. We set up two electric skillets on a rolling cart, then all gathered around the big stainless worktable. They took turns with just about everything, using real knives and learning how to hold their thumbs under their hand while cutting. Some of the kids said they had never cooked before. None of them had ever eaten kale or chard. Most of them had never heard of it until the garden.
They learned how to cut an onion (tough with small hands on a large Vidalia onion), peel and cut garlic into fine mince, looked over all of the greens for bugs (found a patch of eggs on the back of one chard leaf), picked basil leaves and oregano leaves off the stems, chopped all of the greens.
They helped with sautéing the onion and garlic in olive oil, making sure it didn’t burn to the bottom of the pan, added the greens and herbs and took turns stirring until they were bright and tender.
Meanwhile, another group took turns with two hand-crank cheese graters to shred a big wedge of Parmesan cheese.
I had cooked two pounds of penne pasta at home and coated it well with extra virgin olive oil, so we added the greens and cheese to that in a giant mixing bowl. Again, they all took turns mixing it to make sure all of the ingredients were well distributed. Then it was time to eat!
Rose was kind enough to bring plastic ware and paper bowls, which every child but one filled at least twice. The first group came in and most had seconds. The staff all had a bowl. Even some of the kids who said they would only eat the noodles said that kale and chard are delicious. Some said they would ask their families to plant those in their gardens next year so they could have that dish at home. One young man popped back into the kitchen as I was cleaning up to announce that the dish “Rates a 10!”
Which brings me to the closing of the loop. I typed up my recipe for this pasta dish and Rose is copying it to give to all of the children. She said she’ll check with parents in the morning to see which ones would be interested in making the dish, then those kids can take turns harvesting the chard, kale, basil, and oregano from the garden to bring home to make with their families over the rest of the summer. The recipe is attached here if anybody else wants to try or adapt it to personal tastes.
Sometimes at home, I add cannellini beans for protein.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading… and thanks for all you do to make this project a success.