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Seed-to-Table Gardens
Seed-to-Table Program in the News
Slow Food Denver Seed-to-Table Coalition
Slow Food Denver's Seed To Table Coalition supports school gardens and cooking classes in the metro Denver area. We empower children to become enthusiastic supporters of Good, Clean and Fair food. Read more.
Garden Harvest Classes Begin
If you see groups of kids working in the gardens or sitting at tables in the cafeteria with knives and cutting boards, be assured that the 2008 Harvest Classes are going on. Slow Food Chefs Andy and Krista are leading three classes a day on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays in our new Garden Classroom space in the cafeteria. The classes are learning many basic kitchen skills such as safe cutting with knives, measuring ingredients in a recipe, and how to divide a large task amongst a team. The lessons also include table manners, sharing, and good conversation around the table. Most of the lessons are based on vegetables from the Steele gardens.
Basil into Pesto
One of our favorite classes is making pesto with the young students. In the garden, we talk about the parts of the plant using a whole basil plant just pulled from the ground. Each student gets a large branch of basil to take into our Garden Classroom. Once in the cafeteria, everyone helps pull leaves off the basil plants, being careful not to include much stem or any flowers. Chef Krista and Chef Andy then show how people have made pesto over the years. First, a very heavy mortar and pestle are used to show how basil leaves are ground without electricity. A more modern way of making pesto is demonstrated with a food processor. No matter how the pesto is made, the class enjoys it with pasta and on French bread!
Vinaigrettes
One of the most important jobs of a chef is to balance flavors in the dishes they cook. Students had a chance to be a chef when they designed their own vinaigrettes for salad greens from the gardens. The kids had many choices in the sweet, salty, sour, and bitter categories, and followed a simple formula for making a vinaigrette. In small groups, they learned how to balance these flavors to compliment the taste of the salad greens.
French Potato and Green Bean Salad
The last couple of years one of our most successful crops have been potatoes. This year�s crop was no disappointment. Ms. Duran and Ms. Hunter�s classes helped to harvest the potatoes this year and boy did they have fun! The scene looked like a Easter egg hunt underground. This year�s crop had red, yellow, white and blue potatoes. In the Garden Classroom, we used magnifying glasses to examine the potatoes closely to see different patterns in the cut sections. The recipe was to make a French vinaigrette with Dijon mustard and capers. This vinaigrette was tossed with cooked potatoes and steamed green beans. This French Potato and Green Bean Salad is a healthy version of the American Potato Salad.
What to do with all this zucchini?
To celebrate the summer season, we chose to make calabacitas, a Mexican sauté of summer squash, onions, bell peppers and corn. The kids helped us to cut the vegetables while Chef Krista prepared the dish on the induction burner. We enjoyed our calabacitas with cojita cheese and a zucchini muffin that Chef Andy prepared.
August 2008--Steele Students at Farmers' and Food Artisans' Road Tour Event
On August 23rd, Steele students participated in the Farmers' and Food Artisans' Road Tour event at the Cherry Creek Whole Foods. The event featured many local producers and the tasting of local foods. We were invited to set up a small version of the Youth Farmers' Market that appears every Thursday at Steele. Whole Foods provided baskets of fresh produce for us to sell as well as cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants and peppers that were harvested from the school gardens. In addition to selling vegetables, Steele students showed off their culinary skills as they made three different salsas right in front of the crowds for everyone to taste. Customers could vote for their favorite salsa by giving a contribution to our program. The favorite salsa was Fresh Tomato and Spicy Chiles, which made $42.00. In second place was Tomatillo and Sweet Peppers salsa, which earned $39.25. Finally the third place salsa was Watermelon Salsa, which collected $33.50. Overall, we earned nearly $400 for our Seed-To-Table program. Many students gave up part of their weekend to participate, including Adam L., Matthew J., Cristina K. Daniela K., Rebecca K., Geneva M., Caylin Z., Anna R., and Spencer T.
More Recipes . . .
More on our program . . .
The Youth Farmers' Markets will continue into October of the 2008 school year. We feature produce from the school gardens, as well as great produce from local Colorado farms. (Volunteers needed to help run the markets.)
One of our goals this year is to increase the parent participation in the gardens. If you would like to help, please send us your email and we will put you on a weekly mailing list of upcoming opportunities (dates and times). Also, if you have any ideas for projects in the gardens, please let us know and we will see if we can accommodate your plans.
Andrew Nowak, Slow Food Seed-To-Table School Garden Program
ajnowak@mindspring.com
Seed-To-Table School Garden Wish List
If you find yourself cleaning out your garage or basement in the near future, please think of the school garden program before you throw anything away. If you have any of the following items, please let us know. If you have an item that might be fun to retrofit for a garden project, please contact us. Thanks for your support:
- used bike rims for a special construction project
- picnic tables and benches
- hand garden tools
- hoses
- 2 and 4 pots for seed starting
- light-weight metal or wooden shelves
- bags of potting soil
- metal fence posts and wire fencing
- tomato cages
This Page was last update:
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 11:10:40 AM
This page was originally posted: 9/24/2008; 8:28:13 AM.
Copyright 2009 Steele Elementary
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