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!

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!

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!

1st Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 7

In the classroom this week we read excerpts from A Very Asian Guide to Vietnamese Food and watched a short video of how rice paper is traditionally made by hand in Vietnam.

In the kitchen the first grade chefs made salad rolls featuring edible rice paper and rice vermicelli. Everyone got to make their own rolls filled with loads of colorful ingredients and enjoyed them with a nut-free dipping sauce. The edible flowers (calendula, society garlic, and pincushion flowers) were grown at the Dearborn Community Garden, which most of the first graders visited on a field trip last spring!

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 7

We started a two-week exploration of global foodways with the book Let’s Eat! Mealtime Around the World. The kindergarten chefs then shared which foods from countries like Sweden, Peru, Pakistan, and Nigeria they would like to try. We discussed how expanding our ideas about what to eat and trying new foods is a great way to stay healthy and grow our community.

In the kitchen we worked with a West African staple grain called fonio and made a pilaf featuring native African ingredients black-eyed peas and harissa. Our recipe incorporated sweet potato as a substitute for yams, which are native to the African continent, and the Red Russian kale Ms. Meri has helped students grow on the schoolyard (leafy greens native to Harvey Milk)! Every chef had a chance to try a new food this week.

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 6

In the classroom this week we read the book No Ordinary Apple: A Story About Eating Mindfully. We learned that mindfulness is a practice that asks us to slow down and engage all of our senses. When we practice mindfulness with our food, we can learn to appreciate a whole new world of color, texture, scent, sound, and taste!

In the the kitchen the kindergarten chefs ripped up New Zealand spinach to add to a batter for carrot and spinach latkes. While the latkes were frying, they participated in a mindful tasting of four varieties of apple: Cosmic Crisp, Fuji, Granny Smith, and Pink Lady. We smelled the apples, listened to them, noticed many had speckles and contained multiple colors, chewed them thoughtfully, and observed all the juicy, tart, sweet flavors. Then we enjoyed the latkes with a homemade applesauce made from the same four varieties of apples we tasted. When we practiced mindfully eating our meal together, some chefs noticed that the latkes had the same aroma as sausage or that the applesauce contained lemon. Mindfulness is a practice we can continue to employ throughout our lives to keep our bodies and our communities strong and healthy.

TK Edible Social Studies: Month 8

For the month of April, the TK chefs celebrated spring and peas! In the classroom we read a My Incredible World book about peas and sang a silly song about peas to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat:

Spring, spring, the season of peas: English, snow, and snap.

They feed the soil and give us energy; Eat peas and that’s a wrap!

In the kitchen, we made a salad of sliced blanched sugar snap peas, radish, cucumber, green onion, and basil with a sesame ginger miso dressing. Our closing circle question asked each chef to share whether they prefer the “sugar” flavor of the peas or their signature “snap” texture.

1st Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 6

In the classroom this week we read The Shape of Home by Rashin Kheiriyeh about a child who moves from her home in Iran to New York City and finds community with classmates with roots from all over the world.

In the kitchen we made a Persian carrot rice dish, havij polo, featuring many flavors we may not have regular exposure to such as saffron, turmeric, candied orange peel, rose petals, and the use of cinnamon in a savory dish. The first grade chefs truly demonstrated their comfort and skill in the kitchen classroom and used a variety of tools to create a fragrant, colorful, and deeply tasty rice preparation from the Middle East.

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 5

In the classroom this week we read Marcia Brown’s retelling of the old European folktale Stone Soup. We talked about what the story is trying to tell us and why its message has survived for decades. The villagers who were at first hesitant to share their resources with newcomers learn that when they come together as a community, they create a meal and an experience far more delicious and meaningful than if they had worked alone.

In the kitchen we made our own version of stone soup with many of the same ingredients highlighted in Brown’s book. The kindergarten chefs prepped so many fruits and vegetables, including bell peppers, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, and fresh herbs. Of course, we had to include a stone in each pot, and enjoyed each other’s company as we prepared and ate the meal together.

1st Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 5

In the classroom this week we read Maurice Sendak’s book Chicken Soup with Rice: A Book of Months from the 1960s. The story features silly rhymes and celebrates the enduring power of chicken soup with rice through the seasons.

In the kitchen the first grade chefs made a vegetarian version of a classic chicken soup with rice that comes from the Sephardic Jewish tradition, avgolemono. They diced celery and carrots, juiced lemons, whisked eggs, minced herbs, and learned a technique called tempering where they slowly thickened the hot soup with the room temperature eggs without scrambling them in the process. The soup was garnished with loads of fresh herbs including parsley and oregano from our own school kitchen garden!

1st Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 4

In the classroom this week we read the book Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match about a girl who comes from multiple cultures and loves them all. A fun thing about the book is that the illustrations show that Marisol lives in San Francisco!

In the kitchen we made arroz chaufa, a staple of chifa, the cuisine that came out of Chinese immigrants in Peru and the melding of East Asian and South American foodways. Many of our first grade chefs had experienced fried rice before, but our recipe kicked up the flavor with the addition of cumin and ají panca, a fruity pepper paste. We enjoyed practicing our chopsticks skills when we sat down to eat together.

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 4

In the classroom this week we read the book Spring is for Strawberries and discussed the concept of eating with the seasons, which is hard to do now within our modern globalized food system. We are lucky to live in the Bay Area with access to incredible local seasonal produce and farmers markets. And all year round our kindergarten chefs will continue to celebrate together through the seasons, whether at school events or birthday parties or sporting events.

In the kitchen we made a spring salad in honor of the upcoming Spring Equinox. We worked with California-grown strawberries, asparagus, spring onion, and baby spinach. Shelling peas weren’t available the week of class, but we substituted California-grown sugar snap peas. Our weekly Edible Social Studies time is another venue for us to come together in community, this time in the 80-degree-final-day-of-winter heat!

1st Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 3

In the classroom this week we learned that wild rice is native to North America and is a sacred food of the Indigenous Anishinaabe peoples, whose land is now commonly referred to as the Great Lakes region. In Ojibwe, the word for wild rice, which is a sacred food of the Anishinaabe, is manoomin. We read a book called The Story of Manoomin, which features many pictures of children participating in the manoomin preparation process and watched a video from PBS Wisconsin called Food That Grows on the Water.

In the kitchen, the first grade chefs made a manoomin salad with several ingredients native to North America: wild rice, cranberries, squash, and pumpkin seeds. We learned to make a salad dressing by slowly drizzling in oil to form an emulsion with lemon juice. Wild rice is nutrient dense and high in protein and fiber. We are grateful we all had a chance to try this delicious ingredient produced by the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians via Red Lake Nation Foods and Rainbow Grocery in the Mission District.

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 3

This week in the classroom we discussed the importance of creativity and art to our health and to the health of our community. We read Time to Make Art by Jeff Mack and agreed that we can make art with any medium and that art doesn’t have to be any which way to have meaning and make an impact.

In the kitchen we made art from salad fixings. The kindergarten chefs prepped different colorful ingredients, then each got a blank cutting board on which to get creative. When we finished the artistic process, those who wanted it got a sprinkling of salt and freshly ground pepper and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. Everyone was encouraged to try two new things; many chefs discovered they enjoy raw golden beets or blood orange for the first time.

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 2

This week in the classroom we read Tomie dePaola’s The Popcorn Book and explored the ideas of Indigenous foodways and Indigenous wisdom. We learned that Native peoples are known for their stewardship of the natural world, for the invention of the Three Sisters planting technique, that oral tradition and storytelling is an important part of Indigenous culture, and that the Indigenous people of what is now called San Francisco are the Ohlone. From the book, we learned that popcorn used to be worn as jewelry and that archaeologists found popcorn kernels that were 5,600 years old in a bat cave in New Mexico!

In the kitchen, we enjoyed two recipes celebrating humans’ long relationship with corn. We made rainbow popcorn from scratch on the stove and ground by hand an accompanying spice blend using a mortar and pestle, an ancient food preparation tool that has many useful modern-day applications in the kitchen today. The kindergarten chefs finished off a recipe of Peruvian chicha morada, a drink made with purple corn, by adding fresh lime juice and cut up pineapple and apples for a truly delicious corn feast.

TK Edible Social Studies: Month 7

In the classroom this month we learned that carrots are a root vegetable that grow year-round in California. They come in an array of beautiful colors and also have edible green tops. We sang a silly song about them to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat:

Carrots, carrots, they grow under ground, purple, yellow, orange, or white.

If you want healthy eyes just take a crunchy bite!

In the kitchen we made a salad featuring carrots prepared three ways: cooked, raw, and in a pesto made from the green tops. The TK chefs used wavy knives to make steamed carrot coins and tried Y-shaped vegetable peelers for the first time this year to make raw carrot ribbons. We enjoyed our carrot salad with bread from Della Fattoria!

1st Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 2

This week in the classroom we read Sandra L. Richards’ book Rice & Rocks, which tells the story of a Jamaican American child, his magical pet parrot, and his friends with food traditions from around the world.

In the kitchen we made Jamaican rice and peas with kidney beans and enjoyed the island flavors with a special beverage called sorrel tea made from hibiscus, citrus, and spices. We agree with Giovanni from the book: rice and rocks rock!