4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 8

In the classroom this week we watched a video featuring Cahuilla people talking about their history and culture, including their traditional birdsongs. Some fifth graders who researched the Cahuilla last year shared how cactus and succulents are an important source of water for the people of the desert. We learned that Indigenous peoples use all parts of the cactus for food, chewing gum, and tattooing, and that UC Riverside was the first campus of the University of California to offer accredited Cahuilla language courses to its students in 2018.

In the kitchen, we made two recipes with succulents. Using local homegrown cactus pads (commonly known by their Spanish name, nopales), the fourth and fifth grade chefs made a salsa and enjoyed it with tortilla chips. We also made a fresh soda with beautiful prickly pear fruit donated by friends of the program, Nori and her family, who grow them in Sonoma. We sweetened the soda with agave syrup, which is made by crushing the core of the agave plant. Thank you, Nori, for making our lesson so sweet!

4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 7

In the classroom this week we watched a short video from the BBC called The Fascinating World of Fungi. We learned that most Indigenous tribes in present-day California use mushrooms for food, medicine, and technology. We learned that mushrooms are neither plant nor animal! And we also reminded ourselves never to pick and eat wild mushrooms unless we are highly educated and experienced mushroom foragers.

In the kitchen we made a fungified take on a classic meat sauce served with pasta with eight different types of mushrooms: foraged chanterelles, white button, cremini, shiitake, maitake or hen of the woods, alba clamshells, brown clamshells, and lion’s mane. Many students were skeptical about mushrooms at the start of the cooking class, but patiently browning them brought out a rich, caramelized flavor. Paired with fusilli pasta and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, the ragout was incredibly popular and helped us appreciate the truly fascinating world of fungi that humans have been in relationship with for thousands of years.

4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 6

In the classroom this week we watched a CBS News segment from 2024 about the movement to establish the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary. The sanctuary was designated by the Biden administration later that year; it was the first marine sanctuary to be created in partnership with Indigenous activists.

In the kitchen we worked with an ingredient the Chumash use for food, medicine, and ceremony: seaweed! The fourth and fifth grade chefs made a seaweed salad using wakame, arame, and hijiki; spread sushi rice over sheets of nori; and sprinkled the rice with a Japanese rice seasoning, furikake, that contained a fifth type of seaweed called dulse. Using bamboo sushi mats, we rolled individual sushi rolls, then cut them into bite-sized pieces. The maki were savory, briny, chewy, and a true celebration of all things ocean.

TK Edible Social Studies: October

In the classroom this month we read a My Incredible World book called Squash! and passed around drawings of the eight squash varieties we would use in a salad: acorn, buttercup, delicata, honeynut, honeypatch, koginut, red kabocha, and sugar pie pumpkin. We sang a silly song about squash to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat:

Squash, squash, the colors of fall, Every shape and size,

Acorn, buttercup, sugar pie pumpkin; A party for our eyes.

In the kitchen the TK chefs used nylon knives to cut slices of roasted squash into bite-sized pieces. It was gooey work but a lot of fun. The brilliant orange color of the squash paired with black beluga lentils was a festive reminder that Halloween and other fall traditions are coming soon!

4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 5

In the classroom this week, we watched a video called The Sunflower’s Secret History and learned that sunflowers are native to what is now North America. Their iconic, giant heads that produce large seeds are the product of years of Indigenous agricultural innovation.

In the kitchen, we made a salad featuring five facets of the sunflower: the petals (from our friends at Full Belly Farm in nearby Yolo County), the seeds, the tubers (called sunchokes or Jerusalem artichokes), the sprouts, and the oil. The fourth and fifth grade chefs enjoyed using mortars and pestles, salad spinners, and wavy knives on a gorgeous sunny autumn day. The sunflowers growing next to the Blueberry sink are on the verge of blooming, so we’ll keep the edible sunflower theme going as our unit continutes!

4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 4

In the classroom this week we watched a portion of a video featuring Lushootseed and Nooksack educators talking about stinging nettle, a plant that is native to 49 of the 50 present-day United States. In the video, we learned that stinging nettle has medicinal as well as nutritional benefits. The Kawaiisu people in eastern California walk through the plants intentionally to get stung in preparation for dreams and visions and to stay awake. Students had a chance to look at a sprig of fresh stinging nettle foraged in Mendocino County inside a plastic bag to protect their fingers.

In the kitchen we made a soup using potatoes and pre-blanched stinging nettle. Everyone had a lot of fun using an immersion blender to puree the soup. There was a range of responses to the flavor of the soup, which tastes highly vegetal and retains a vibrant green color even after being cooked.

4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 3

This week in the classroom, we explored the relationship between Indigenous peoples who live along the Colorado River (which runs through seven U.S. states and two Mexican states) and the mesquite tree. We watched a video from the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, featuring Mojave elders and tribal leaders talking about the history of their land and how mesquite takes care of their people from birth until death.

In the kitchen, we made a vegetable-focused taco filling flavored with mesquite powder. The powder smells and tastes a little like chocolate! We enjoyed our tacos with blue and yellow corn tortillas and an array of garnishes: fresh lime, purple cabbage, cilantro, and queso fresco.

4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 2

In the classroom this week we watched a short film, Restoring Wetlands and Wocus, about the Klamath Tribes, their land, and one of the tribes’ first foods, the wetland plant called “wocus” in the Klamath-Modoc language. The video showed how an Indigenous family harvests wocus via canoe, told the history of Tule Lake and its conversion to industrial farmland, and highlighted a farmer who has experimented with returning some of the land to wetlands in order to remain both sustainable and profitable.

While we did not have access to wocus for our recipe this week, we did explore another first food of the Klamath Tribes, the Klamath plum, which is a relative of the many non-native plum trees that line the sidewalks of San Francisco.

In the kitchen, we made a panzanella featuring emerald beaut plums, John W plums, and red pluots (a hybrid variety of plum crossed with apricot). The produce was grown on local farms, not gathered, and our salad incorporated many ingredients and influences that came originally from elsewhere but have now become an integral part of our modern California culinary identity.

4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 1

In the classroom this week, the fourth and fifth grade chefs watched the first part of a short PBS film called Tending the Wild: Decolonizing the Diet. In the film, Lois Conner Bohna, a North Fork Mono and Chukchansi educator talks about the importance of the acorn to Indigenous peoples in present-day California, the tools used to prepare acorn for sustenance, and the challenges facing oak trees today.

In the kitchen, we made strawberry acorn pancakes with acorn flour made from Valley Oak acorns. The recipe gives students an opportunity to taste acorn in an accessible way alongside other ingredients native to North America such as strawberries (now bred into an unrecognizably large size!) and maple syrup. Students noted that the acorn lent a nutty, chocolatey flavor to a familiar breakfast treat.

TK Edible Social Studies: September

In the classroom this month, the TK chefs read a My Incredible World book about watermelons, looked at six different types of locally grown melons (goddess, galia, honeydew, Korean (or chamoe), black jumbo watermelon, and yellow orchid watermelon), made guesses about what color they each were on the inside, and sang a silly song about melons to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat:”

Melon, melon, you’re so sweet, full of vitamin C!

Green and yellow, orange and red, makes our bellies happy!

In the kitchen, we used crinkle cutters to cut melon slices into bite-sized pieces and made a colorful melon salad with the addition of lime and mint in celebration of the last weeks of summer. The next time we see each other, it will not only be a new month, but also a new season!

TK Edible Social Studies: Field Trip

For our Salad Season culminating field trip the TK chefs took MUNI to visit Chef Josh, the chef at SFUSD, and the McAteer Campus Community Farm. Students got to check out the greenhouse and the compost system and picked strawberries, chard, and kale. Chef Josh gave us a tour of the kitchen his team uses to cook from-scratch meals, some of which include produce from the farm, for several of the schools within our district.

We had snacks and got served from the hot lunch line just like the high school students at The Academy and Ruth Asawa School of the Arts! On the menu were a salad bar, tamales, beans and rice, and eggplant tofu stir-fry. Thank you, Chef Josh, our farm guides from Urban Sprouts, and all the amazing Student Nutrition Services staff who welcomed and nourished us!

1st Grade Edible Social Studies: Field Trip

For our final celebration of all things rice, the first grade chefs took the F Market to Hayes Valley and visited Esther Kim’s cafe, The Buoy, where they got to sample three of the bakery’s Korean rice flour-based treats: salt bread, black sesame mochi brownie, and raspberry roll cake. The cafe opened an hour early just for Room 113 and really proved that you can make anything out of rice and it is delicious! The rice adds an unusual springiness to the texture of the breads and pastries.

Thank you for a great year, first graders, and thank you to the team at The Buoy for welcoming us again this spring.

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Field Trip

To celebrate all that we have explored this year, the kindergarten chefs walked from school to the Dearborn Community Garden in the Mission. They took a tour of the nearly 50 community plots, tasted organic lavender, rhubarb, society garlic, calendula, New Zealand spinach, and nasturtiums. They walked around and were tasked with finding the colors of a double rainbow represented by colorful plants in the garden.

We enjoyed strawberry lemonade popsicles, then picked lemons for every student to take home with them. When the Dearborn Community Garden gate is open, all Harvey Milk students and their families are welcome to enter and spend time there. Thank you to all our neighbors who generously allowed students to harvest from their plots and for beautifying our community for over 50 years!

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 10

In the classroom this week we read Pies from Nowhere, a book about the life of Georgia Gilmore, a woman from Alabama whose food fueled the Montgomery bus boycott, a major moment in American social justice history.

In the kitchen we made chocolate cherry cream pies in celebration of the beginning of stone fruit season, our community, and the power of food! The kindergarten chefs made a simple graham cracker crust, removed the cherry pits, and whipped chocolate and vanilla cream. It was a sweet ending to a wonderful unit together. See you next year, chefs!

1st Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 10

For our final lesson of the year, we read The Mochi Makers by Japanese American author and illustrator Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson. The book tells the story of a child and her grandparent who carry on their family tradition of making savory and sweet mochi from pounded glutinous rice for friends and family to enjoy.

In the kitchen, the first grade chefs made shiratama dango, a Japanese rice dumpling similar to mochi made from a special glutinous rice flour called shiratamako. They flavored the dango dough with matcha powder, then formed the dango into small balls we then boiled. While the dango cooked, students did a word search featuring all the recipes we made together this year in first grade Edible Social Studies.

Dango make a delightfully chewy topping for a Japanese ice cream sundae. Ours featured vanilla ice cream from Straus Family Creamery, strawberries, sesame seeds, kinako, red beans, and condensed milk. It was a sweet ending to 10 weeks of exploring all things rice!

TK Edible Social Studies: Month 9

For the month of May, the TK chefs read a book about strawberries, learned about and passed around another edible spring plant, rhubarb, and sang a silly song about strawberries to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat:

Strawberries, strawberries, tiny red hearts, First fruit of the spring!

Seeds on the outside, soft on the inside, Berries are everything!

Before our final cooking class of the year, Ms. Webb’s class presented all the adults with Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.” Then, students got to work cutting strawberries and whipping cream to make a fruit dessert with English origins called a fool. We had the opportunity to taste raw rhubarb, which is shockingly tart. Some loved it, others found it too sour, but everyone enjoyed the rhubarb compote as part of the fool. It is so hard to say goodbye, but we look forward to welcoming back the TK chefs to the kitchen classroom next spring when they will be all grown up in kindergarten.

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 9

In celebration of Earth Day, we read To Change a Planet and discussed how seemingly small actions we take together in community have a big impact on the health and sustainability of our environment. In the food sphere, conserving water, wasting less, and eating more plants instead of animals are all important aspects of the fight against climate change. We learned that beans in particular are a great source of protein and are a unique food crop that simultaneously nourish human beings and the soil.

In the kitchen classroom, the kindergarten chefs worked with fava beans grown by our friends at Eatwell Farm in Dixon. First, we shelled the favas, then we blanched them, then we shelled them a second time, then we pureed them into a delicious spread with tahini, lemon, garlic, dill, and olive oil. We enjoyed the fava bean spread with local carrots and Japanese cucumbers, edible calendula petals, Tartine country bread, and crackers from Northern California-based Rustic Bakery. Happy Earth Day!

1st Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 9

In the classroom this week we read a silly book called Bowl of A’s: An Italian-American Tale about a teacher who mishears the names of the Italian dishes her students are bringing to a school potluck.

In the kitchen the first grade chefs made a classic rice dish from Venice, Italy called risi e bisi, a perfect dish for springtime. They shelled English peas and cut up sugar snap peas and cooked short-grain rice slowly with vegetable stock in a technique similar to making risotto. The peas were added at the very end of the cooking process, then garnished with pea shoots and Parmigiano Reggiano. Buon appetito!

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 8

For part two of our exploration of global foodways, we read the book How We Say I Love You about a Taiwanese American family and learned a few words and phrases in Mandarin.

In the kitchen we made green onion pancakes, a popular savory Taiwanese flatbread. The kindergarten chefs seasoned their dough, rolled and twisted it, then pan-fried the pancakes until golden brown. We enjoyed them with a sprinkling of finishing salt and a cucumber side salad. Gan bei!

1st Grade Edible Social Studies

In the classroom this week we read Sankofa: A Culinary Story of Resilience and Belonging about a Ghanaian American child named Kofi who learns more about his family’s culture when he participates in a school potluck. At the back of the book, there is a recipe for jollof rice, a West African rice dish that is vivid in both color and flavor.

In the kitchen the first grade chefs made a vegan version of jollof rice with a side of coleslaw. They blended tomatoes and bell peppers, grated ginger and measured curry, shredded cabbage and grated carrots. Our meal was hot and spiced as well as cool and crunchy!