Community happens when a group of people come together in unity for a shared purpose to better everyone around them. We celebrated this effort by bringing 2 school communities around a table of food prepared by and served by the students themselves.
All school garden programs have an end focus of feeding as many students as possible using ingredients grown from the school garden. This is not an easy task here in BC where the growing season is short and this spring, interrupted by a heat wave causing the crops we wanted to serve in a salad to bolt weeks before the lunches were planned.
Nonetheless, these events were a combined effort of many to cook and serve to 2 whole school communities. Students were trained all year and a few, several years in the making having participated in the cooking classes for at least 5 years before.
The menu stayed simple so that as many students would be willing to at least try. A tomato pasta made with fresh tomatoes, garlic, salt, a pinch of chili flakes, olive oil and fresh basil topped with freshly grated parmesan. Ingredients from the garden in the form of a salad where many younger students needed a bit of a preview in the Seed to Table Classes before hand. The primary students were given samples of the salad and dressing ahead of the lunch to tempt their taste buds and get them used to the idea of eating salad at all.
Several people have asked about the salad dressing recipe as well which was a Maple Soy based vinaigrette with balsamic and rice wine vinegar sweetened with maple syrup.
Funding support came via a grant from our friends at the Greater Vancouver Food Bank with a generous donation of 150lbs of tomatoes from Houwelings farms in Delta along with 16 basil plants, added to the gardens afterwards.
Teams of cooking class students worked all morning to cook up the tomato sauce with another team of students from Gr. 4 to 7 helping to set up the gym spaces and eventually serve the meal to their school and classmates.
Volunteers including our own Caio Condradt, Youth Committee Head from Burnaby Mountain joined us to help wherever he could along with Shayla Brambila from Cariboo Secondary and former student at Edmonds.
Pasta maker extraordinaire and parent volunteer, Ms. Selena Yip, lended her final help at Forest Grove, manning the stove of large pots of pasta cooking it to perfection according to one Gr. 5 student who said “both the pasta and sauce were outstanding!”
The end result and overall intention of these events were to allow for the students to shine their gifts and talents, experience what it is like to work together as a team with a varied cross section of students, develop their confidence by doing something hard and feel an overall sense of satisfaction from giving back to their community.
Testimonial from Nieva, student at Edmonds: I had the pleasure of helping out with the Community lunch at my school today. My friends and I had a very fun time cooking and serving food for the whole school. If you were at the lunch, we hope you enjoyed the pasta. i am so grateful that I got to help out with the Community lunch 🙂 it was alot of hard work but it was worth it
In the end and after a lot of reflection, I myself am proud to share the following statistics from this past spring season alone:
Up to 700 students were fed a meal created and served by their classmates at 2 schools
We have increased the overall eating habits of most of these students by creating a meal made with fresh local ingredients
72 recipes were taught to 70 cooking class students
Lessons taught to students in both the after school garden clubs and in school Seed to Table Program not only included waste management, sustainability and how to become a local changemaker but we also discussed mistakes made, how the climate affected the growth or damage to our crops deepening the connection we have to nature itself
As we head into our summer months of 2 weeks of a Wellness and Summer Camp in both July and August, we are ever mindful of the new school year ahead and how much we still need the generous support of our direct donations with grants for charities with a focus on school gardens limited and small. Your help means we can continue to create a lasting legacy of change with these students, evolving their eating habits, sharing tools for anxiety management via our Social Emotional lessons and continue to improve their pride and confidence in themselves.
Donate today to continue our just cause to Sprouting More Chefs!
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