cutting kernels off cob

Last week we were hoping to add our own sweet corn to the lunch menu. Some critters had beaten us to the harvest. (This would make a good  observational study for a class trip to the garden.)

harvesting sweet corn

happy harvester

shuckng corn

The rest of the harvest didn’t amount to enough for the kitchen menu. We DID have enough corn to make salsa for the salad bar. The jalapeno peppers we planted last spring and a red onion from chef Kim gave us just the right balance of heat. A bit of salt and apple cider vinegar made our sweet and sour salsa so yummy that the cooks were reluctant to give any away! Next time we can add sweet peppers and maybe a few tomatoes.

finished corn salsa

2013 Popcorn Harvest

Just look at this beautiful yield of popcorn! Our fourth grade students worked hard to plant, harvest and process it! Now, if only we can get it to pop into light fluffy kernels like Orville Redenbacher or Pop Secret. What is their secret? Armed with some knowledge about what makes popcorn pop, 4th grade scientists thought that putting popcorn in a freezer or submerging it in boiling water might make it pop. This seemed to make sense considering that a tiny drop of water must explode inside each kernel to produce the crunchy light popcorn we all love. Water expands when it freezes, right? And however we heat up the kernels, will the  droplet explode? I hope that students can find time to  test out their hypotheses. There is a budding scientist in every one of them.

In the meantime, we tried popping our stored popcorn from 2012 and 2013. Then we tasted the results in a blind taste test alongside Orville’s and Pop Secret. Students had to describe each taste sample using three or more adjectives. Their teacher, Ms. Nancy, recorded the descriptions of each. Votes were tallied. Our own popcorn did not get the recognition it deserved. It didn’t pop well. Most of the kernels just did a slow burn. It turns out that popcorn kernels can be over dried, losing that critical droplet of moisture in each kernel. As the students read and recorded their findings, their teacher showcased a few good books about popcorn for future reading. One was a book entitled, “The Popcorn Book,” by Tomi DePaola. In this book advice is given for popcorn that won’t pop………simply add water and keep in a sealed jar in the refrigerator. Our next experiment is taking shape. We’ll keep you posted on results. We can’t wait to enjoy our own popcorn. Thank you, Tomi!

2013 popcorn harvest

tasting and describing

Popped popcorn

descriptions of 3 types popcorn

voting literally blind taste test

Tomi DePaola Popcorn Book

response sheet

pancake array

Nothing is yummier than pancakes with this year’s maple syrup and last year’s pumpkin or squash puree. We baked halves of pumpkin on a cookie sheet in a 350 oven after removing the seeds. (Adding a little water helps to steam the pumpkins quickly.) Remove when they’re fork tender and allow to cool. Then you can scoop out the pumpkin, mash it and store it away in the freezer until the day before you need it. For these children, that freezer bag of pumpkin contains all the memories of last summer’s garden. It also adds vitamin A and fiber to their diets!

pancake eating YUM!

This is an easy recipe to put together and it has lots of opportunities to access math skills for all ages. We doubled the recipe so we doubled fractional amounts, like 1/4 plus 1/4. We set the pancakes in an array as they cooked, calling attention to the multiplication fact you can see in the photo above: 3 rows of 5 or 5 rows of 3 = 15 pancakes…..hardly enough  for this hungry group of After School kids, so we made another 15. How many was that? How many did each of us get to eat?

Each child took turns adding ingredients. Everyone had a chance to smell or taste the ingredients as they practiced new words, like “nutmeg” or “vanilla”.

Everyone took a recipe home to try recreating pancakes with their families. You can click on the recipe below!

following a recipe

reading a recipe

cooking pride

Click on recipe:  Pumpkin Pancakes

These fifth grade chefs contributed to their school’s Thanksgiving Community Feast.

       This year and every year for  a long time, our school has  invited parents and community members to join them for a celebratory feast just before the November Thanksgiving holidays. Parent volunteers and students set up tables for 500 participants and a full Thanksgiving dinner is served. Parents contribute desserts for the masses. Much of the produce is donated by area farmers. Part of the dinner is prepared by our own kitchen staff. Part is prepped ahead of time by volunteer parents (who set tables in the dark on Sunday night due to a power outage!). Part of the dinner is cooked by our neighboring school, Kurn Hattin Homes. So many people benefit from this amazing gathering of resources.

         This November we also hosted an After School Program dinner for parents and children. Forty family members enjoyed vegetable quiche and kale slaw, followed by applesauce for dessert. The applesauce was made by the children in the After School Program. Apples were donated by Russell Allen of Connecticut Valley Orchards. While students made dessert, their parents participated in a discussion on techniques for getting reluctant eaters to try new foods. Everyone had a great family strategy or story to contribute. We all came away with a few new ideas for getting  children to make healthy food choices. Some ideas: Each child is different in temperament, affecting his or her willingness to take risks. Be patient, but be persistent. Sometimes it take four to sixteen attempts before a child is ready to accept a new food. Some children have sensory issues and don’t for instance enjoy any foods that seem lumpy or crunchy. Often if a child participates in the creation of the dish, it is more likely that s/he will eat it.

Each family brought home a box with recipes and all ingredients for quiche and kale slaw. Many thanks for contributions from Russell Allen and from Westminster Organics at Harlow Farm.

Take a look at some of the happy diners below! The recipes for kale slaw and quiche follow. Just click on them to open. Click on any photo to enlarge.

KALE SLAW(1)SPINACH QUICHE #2

Cory Walker is a young farmer in Westminster. In the short time that he’s been farming here, he’s met with his share of misfortune. Hurricane Irene flooded his fields and he and his family suffered tremendous losses. Cory fits right in with the tenacious farmers in Westminster. One of his fields can be seen right off Route 5 as you’re leaving town. Its unmistakable blend of beautiful flowers and crops is enough to make you veer off the road as you pass by.

Cory and his wife have a little girl, Estella. She’s only two years old, but maybe one day she’ll join the students at Westminster Community Schools. When I asked Cory if he had time to help til our garden for the winter, he simply said, “When do you want me to come by?” This spirit of community service, passed down from generation to generation, is what makes our school garden flourish. What a wonderful real world learning experience for our children. Thank you Cory. You can find Cory’s produce, holiday offerings and flowers at Hope Roots Farm Stand on Sundays from 12 to 3:00 until the end of 2013. Friend him on facebook: Guerrilla Grown Produce.

Watching Cory til in November…..

                                                                                    Nola and Maya separating garlic cloves.We raked the straw that was still on our garden paths and recycled it to cover the garlic bed. We decided the straw was like the sheet for the winter and snow, soon to follow would be the ‘comforter’ for the garlic cloves sleeping under it. We’ll harvest the garlic in mid July.

The first trick learned when planting garlic is how to separate those little cloves from the “momma” bulb.  A supportive friend is helpful. But if you’re a budding farmer like Sabin, not yet five, you can figure this out in a snap! Sabin’s mom, Amy Rice Sciacca, has really given us support for next year’s garlic crop. First she bagged up 25 gallons of her horse manure. Then she and her kids  gave up a horse ride on a beautiful fall day and, instead came over to help us plant!

Sabin separating cloves

As our dear friend, Claudia McCarthy  taught us years ago, horse manure and a nice raised bed that looks a lot like a chocolate cake are the best ingredients for growing a good crop of garlic.  After planting cloves about 6 inches apart and covering them  over with soil, she always spread a thin cover of mulch straw. Her methods have never failed us.

We grew some mighty big sunflowers this year. They were tough to haul over to the compost pile, but the After School Program kids had a blast helping to clear the garden for tilling next week. They were asked to pull up as many plants as they were old, but most stayed on for the joy of running around in our garden! Look at their earnest hard working expressions.

Getting darker now……..but still hard at work!

Sleep well, garden.

Do you remember planting these potatoes last May? Can you explain the life cycle of a potato? How do you think these potatoes will change when we put them in the oven to roast? These were some of the concepts second grade students were mulling over as they focused all of their visual attention on the sharp knives they were permitted to use for  cooking chemistry class. Just before the potatoes went into the oven, students discussed how they thought the baking would change the potatoes. One student’s idea was that the heat would turn them into a regular french fry shape. Why not?

After the diced potatoes were dipped in  olive oil, salt and vinegar, they were roasted briefly at a 450 degrees. Very soon (15 minutes, tops) they were ready to take out of the oven. Students gobbled them up for snack without one speck of ketchup. When I brought the roasted potatoes to class from the kitchen, their teacher, Ms. Beaudry-Torrey was showing a very cool kids’ website  on the smartboard. You may want to look it over at http://www.thepotatostory.co.uk

POTATO response sheet

Our kitchen chef, Kim Kinney, using frosted celery in soups.

Our 150 feet of beautiful celery was used for all school snacks until recently. One brisk sunny morning chef, Kim Kinney, took a walk out to the garden after a hard frost and harvested what was left to flavor soup for lunchtime…….terrific display of Yankee Ingenuity! “No one will know it was frozen when I put it in the soup,” she said, matter-of-factly.

Later that day a group of After School “chefs” created a massaged kale salad. Kale is the only crop still happily growing in our school garden this late in the season. We hope to continue harvesting it for a few more weeks. This group was happy to get going, de-ribbing the kale and tearing the leaves into bite sized pieces. They shared bowls for massaging the fibers of the kale into an edible salad. The addition of lemon juice also helps to break down fibers. With a bit of olive oil, soy sauce, some sunflower seeds, chunks of fresh orange and a little finely sliced onion this recipe becomes a yummy nutritious salad. (See recipe below.)

After School students (even the ones not cooking) helped devour as much as we made! Click on any image to enlarge.

MASSAGED KALE SALAD RECIPE
1 lb. kale (de-ribbed and cut into 1” sq. bits)
Roast or Raw:
¼ c. raw sunflower seeds
¼ c. raw sesame seeds
¼ c. raw pumpkin seeds (Irene left out the pepitos)
Slice and Measure:
½ med.red onion sliced thinly
1/6 c. Braggs or soy
1/3 c. lemon
1/3 c. olive oil
Combine and massage above ingred. for 10 min.
Add any:
avocado chunks
pomegranate seeds
fennel slices
clementines or orange chunks

These magic beans will be dried and added to soups during the winter. If you saw an earlier post, they were shown in their blossom stage, winding their way around the shade house. This is my first year growing scarlet runners so I hope I’m drying them them the right way. I was given the starter beans by Marissa Miller, a young farmer who lives down the road from me. She recommended pulling the plants up by the roots in the fall before frost and hanging them upside down to dry.  My plants were so strongly entwined with the shade house saplings that I had to perform major surgery to cut them free.

Then, through a series of trial and error, I cut them free of moisture producing leaves and I found seedling tray supports to lay the beans in. The trays fit perfectly in the rafters of the tool shed. Now, if the mice don’t get them first, maybe they’ll dry there for a few months. Then the fifth graders can shell them and cook them with the other “three sisters.”

scarlet runner bean blossoms

harvest

drying tray

drying in the rafters

UPDATE ON THE SCARLET RUNNERS: This shed wasn’t a great place to keep the beans for drying. The onesthat hadn’t already dried on their vines got frosted and began to rot. Next year we’ll have to try a warmer storage place. it’s tricky knowing when to take in the beans here in Vermont where the temps can dip below freezing in late September. We’ll shell those that were spared and buy more from Marissa Miller, the local farmer who gave us the beans to plant last spring.