Chocolate beet cake with hot pink beet frosting: one way to get kids to try beets! This was the recipe for success suggested by our veggie of the month taste test queen, parent (and so much more for our school), Stacie Illingworth. The result was amazing. I think we have a whole school of converts to the joy of beets!

Above: two amazing volunteer parents: Amy Rice Sciacca and Stacie Illingworth

As an elementary classroom teacher I was always looking for opportunities to encourage personal  connections with literacy.   My own childhood connection with fairy tales brings back warm memories. And what fairy tale doesn’t include some kind of food experience? I started rereading the old favorites and here are some of the cooking related projects I came up with: Jack and the Beanstalk: Black Bean Dip, Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Porridge Your Way, Baba Yaga: Chicken Soup, The Little Red Hen: Bread Making, The Three Billy Goats Gruff: Kale Chips and Kale Smoothies (We took liberties with the grass related eating theme.) Irish fairy tales: Irish Soda Bread.

Each personal pizza had its own unique personality when we created pizza from scratch last December with the After School kids. One thing the pizzas had in common was the sauce. It can easily be made using last summer’s frozen tomatoes. They were washed and cut in half after harvesting, then put into ziplock bags for winter cooking projects.

Some students just can’t get enough frozen kale and raspberries. Here are a few getting ready to make smoothies. Just add a little juice and vanilla yogurt to these two garden harvests and blend until smooooooooth.

These After School club students also learned how to grind wheat berries into flour, both by hand and by using an antique electric mill. They also cooked the last of our own sweet potatoes.

The entire school enjoyed a taste of butternut squash bread with the help of these happy chefs last December.The recipe was challenging but they put together enough ingredients for each student to get to know how yummy butternut squash can be. We can grow it in our own school garden………and we have!

Autumn Spiced Butternut Squash Bread (Click on recipe)