2nd/3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 9

In the classroom this week we celebrated Black History Month by learning about Mississippi Delta hot tamales, a dish many historians believe was forged out of friendships between migrant Mexican farmworkers and African American sharecroppers in the American South a century ago.

In our rainy day kitchen classroom (aka Room 107) every chef worked with soaked corn husks; a cornmeal dough; a filling featuring corn, poblano chiles, and tofu; and rolled and folded the tamales like pros. Hot tamales are cooked in a spiced, tomato-based broth and deepen in flavor the longer they steam. Mr. Orlando’s students made hot tamales for Ms. Reynolds’ students, and Ms. Reynolds’ students made hot tamales that were shared with the community. Our theme for the week was that across our differences, the things we create together are stronger, more creative, and more delicious. Happy Black History Month!

2nd/3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 8

We reviewed the history of agricultural labor organizing this week and learned that the United Farm Workers is still going strong, though its membership today is far smaller than at the height of its power in the 1970s. A few headlines from the UFW website highlight the fear of deportation felt by farmworkers around the country, the poor air quality farmworkers in Southern California are facing as a result of the catastrophic wildfires, and labor wins like the recent union certification at an apple farm in New York state.

We’ve learned about several legends of the farmworkers movement over the past few weeks. Our lesson this week named some of the less famous but no less important people in our community who feed us. In the classroom we watched a short introduction to the Heart of the City Farmers Market, which we will visit in a few weeks on a field trip and which is run by one of our very own Harvey Milk community members! We also explored the contents of a CSA box from Eatwell Farm, which is run by farmer Lorraine Walker and sells produce at another farmers market in San Francisco at the Ferry Building on Saturdays. We learned that some farms use a community-supported model where members receive a share of the farm’s produce every week, that members can connect directly with the farmer and its farmworkers through newsletters and farm visits, and that a simple recipe like a stir-fry can help us try new or unfamiliar vegetables.

The second and third graders marinated tofu in multiple kinds of citrus juice, chopped daikon radish and purple-topped turnips, and picked the leaves of so many different kinds of leafy greens: mizuna, arugula, Komatsuna spinach, and chard. We enjoyed our stir-fry over warm brown rice and many chefs topped their snack off with some chili crisp for heat. Thank you to the whole team at Eatwell for this beautiful meal celebrating the abundance of Northern California in the middle of winter! We are grateful.

2nd/3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 7

In the classroom this week we read Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez. We learned that he wasn’t just one of the most effective and powerful advocates for farmworkers’ rights in history, but also a champion of women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and animal rights. We also learned that historical figures are often complicated. In Chavez’s case, he was vehemently opposed to undocumented immigrants, a view that would certainly not be shared by most of his activist peers today.

In honor of Chavez’s Mexican heritage and his veganism and vegetarianism, we cooked a vegan tortilla soup featuring vaquero beans, which are named for their similarity in appearance to the spotted coat of the appaloosa horse. There was so much activity in this lesson, we didn’t get many photos. But we played several lively games of telephone while we waited for the soup ingredients to simmer and deepen in flavor. Some chefs loved the soup, while others found the inclusion of chipotle peppers a bit too spicy for their tastebuds.

2nd/3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 6

In the classroom this week we read Dolores Huerta: A Hero to Migrant Workers. We learned about her early experiences as a schoolteacher that fueled her activism, her many arrests for nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, her coining the rallying cry “¡Si, se puede!,” and her role in organizing farmworkers and establishing the labor union that is now called the United Farm Workers. We learned Huerta is 94 years old, has a social justice foundation in her name, and that a public elementary school in San Francisco was re-named for her in 2018.

In the kitchen we made a classic Mexican farm breakfast, huevos rancheros, in celebration of Huerta’s and her students’ Mexican roots. Students warmed corn tortilas, made pico de gallo, and fried eggs to order. This was a complicated recipe with a lot of components, but everyone worked together to put together a visually stunning and truly satisfying meal!

2nd/3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 5

In the classroom this week we learned about the labor leader and activist Larry Itliong, who immigrated to the United States from the Philippines when he was a teenager. We looked at several books that feature Itliong’s life and specifically his role in the formation of the United Farm Workers union during the Delano Grape Strike of 1965-1970. For Labor Day 2024, PBS News Hour aired an animated StoryCorps short film featuring Itliong’s son Johnny and his grandson Aleks, which we watched together.

In the kitchen we made lumpia filled with onion, garlic, carrot, Japanese sweet potato, Savory cabbage, and bell pepper. We learned to roll the filling in a wrapper not unlike the dumpling wrappers we worked with earlier and sealed each lumpia with an egg wash. The chefs took turns placing the lumpia gently into hot oil, waiting for them to turn golden brown, and removing them safely onto a paper-towel-lined plate. We enjoyed the lumpia with banana ketchup, a popular sweet/savory/spicy Filipino condiment.

4th/5th Grade Edible Social Studies Field Trip

Room 202 braved three modes of public transportation (MUNI, BART, and AC Transit) on a beautiful, sunny winter day and visited Cafe Ohlone’s latest outdoor restaurant space, called ‘oṭṭoytak, on the UC Berkeley campus. Students met with the Ohlone chefs and activists Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino, who shared their languages, basketry, history, instruments, native plants, and family stories. We learned a song in Chochenyo and played an Ohlone game with sticks very similar to one we played together during our last cooking class of the year.

No matter how many points each table got while playing the game, everyone got a special treat to end the sesssion: rosehip and elderflower tea served with chia and black walnut brownies. Thank you, Cafe Ohlone, for hosting us and modeling the thriving Indigenous past, present, and future.

2nd/3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 4

We started class this week by reading the book Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, which introduced the concept of a labor union and a labor strike. We then learned about a famous strike of sugar beet farmworkers in Oxnard, California in 1903. In opposition to their wages being cut and being paid in store credit among other issues, farmworkers across languages and cultures came together to form the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association, one of the first multi-racial labor unions in American history. The farmworkers ultimately won their fight against the sugar beet company and their contracting company. We looked at some photos from Oxnard from this time period and a poster from 2023 inviting locals in Oxnard to a public ceremony commemorating the events of 120 years ago.

In the kitchen, we made a salad of roasted beets with a dressing of garlic, ginger, orange, and miso. Students were able to customize their own rice bowls with toppings from Japanese and Mexican food cultures: nori, furikake, pepitas, salsa macha, avocado, green onion, cilantro, and lime. It was many chefs’ first exposure to beets and everyone had a lot of fun getting messy and dyed fuschia!

2nd/3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 3

This week in the classroom we learned that some of California’s earliest farmworkers were Chinese immigrants who were looking for work after helping to build the transcontinental railroad in the 19th century. We looked at photos from this time period of Chinese people in the fields and vineyards of California as well as a political cartoon referencing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the United States’ relationship with other minority and historically oppressed peoples.

We watched a video about the history of dumplings and talked about how almost every food culture has some form of dough wrapped around a delicious filling.

In the kitchen we made our own dumplings, filling them with fresh, local produce as well as a few hidden coins. The tradition of hiding coins in dumplings is a part of Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations, which will occur in January of 2025. The Chinese zodiac will turn from the year of the dragon to the year of the snake. The person who gets the coin will be very lucky and have good fortune in the new year!

2nd/3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 2

In the classroom this week we reviewed statistics about California’s farmworkers: most are Mexican, most are men, most are undocumented. We discussed how people without documentation are not protected by laws guaranteeing a minimum wage, meal and rest breaks, or the right to vote. Mexico is both California’s neighbor and another major agricultural producer. We read the book Mi papá es un agrícola/My Father the Farmworker, which was written by the son of a Mexican man who came to the United States to work on farms as part of the Bracero Program in the mid-20th century.

In the kitchen, we made a bright, delicious guacamole using Haas avocados grown in Mexico and Bacon avocados grown in California. The chefs enjoyed the guacamole with yellow and blue tortilla chips from local food producer Sabor Mexicano. At the end of class, we washed the avocado seeds and every student placed one inside a damp paper towel inside a sandwich bag, where they will sit for a few weeks while we wait for them to sprout. In the new year, all the second and third graders will be able to take home an avocado plant, which won’t likely produce fruit for many years but should make a lovely houseplant!

2nd/3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 1

For our first week together, the second and third graders learned that California is an agricultural powerhouse that produces much of the produce eaten around the country and even the world. In the classroom, we read Before We Eat: From Farm to Table by Pat Brisson and illustrated by Mary Azarian to remind us of and celebrate all the labor that goes into our food system.

In the kitchen, we made a 100% California-grown salad highlighting the autumn season. Our produce came from local organic farms in San Benito, Santa Barbara, San Mateo, Tulare, Monterey, and Santa Cruz Counties. The thyme came from San Francisco County from a pot on my balcony! There was quite a bit of salad spinning, chopping, and emulsifying involved in putting together all the colorful components of our dish. In our closing circle, each chef named their favorite ingredient in the salad. Every ingredient (except for poor fennel) got at least one shoutout. Happy fall!

4th/5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 10

In the classroom this week we watched a short film called Seeds of Our Ancestors from the Cultural Conservancy featuring Native youth from California talking about their relationship to Native foodways. We spotted 12 ingredients in the film that we’ve used during our unit this year.

For our final course of the year, the fourth and fifth grade chefs made a simple chia porridge with a huckleberry sauce and topped the dessert with edible flowers, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, cocoa powder, bee pollen, and mesquite powder—all ingredients native to the Americas.

Each table played the Ohlone staves game, a fun game of chance with extreme highs and lows. It was wonderful to see how supportive the chefs were with each other through robust competition. In our closing circle, everyone shared a favorite recipe from the fall and an appreciation about Edible Social Studies. Our fifth graders will be sorely missed!

4th/5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 9

In the classroom this week we learned about the three sisters, a companion planting method Indigenous peoples across what is now the Americas developed over thousands of years. The short film we watched was narrated by Oneida Nation citizen Rebecca Webster. The Oneida are one of five nations in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. As it was the week of Election Day, we also learned that the Haudenosaunee are the oldest participatory democracy in the world. Haudenosaunee values and practices influenced the creation of the US Constitution in the 18th century.

In the kitchen we worked with the three sisters (corn, beans, and squash) as well as other ingredients native to the Americas such as tomatoes and potatoes. Our recipe comes from the Chicasaw Nation and involves a lot of chopping, which our fourth and fifth graders are pros at by now! The resulting stew was chunky, hearty, and thoroughly nourishing. We closed class with a circle where each chef shared something they are grateful for.

4th/5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 8

This week we watched a short film about the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, their migration story, and the importance of birdsongs in Cahuilla culture. We learned that in the desert, water is life.

In the kitchen, we worked with three ingredients that have sustained desert peoples in what is now called the Coachella Valley for thousands of years: cactus pads, prickly pears, and agave. The fourth and fifth graders blanched freshly picked cactus pads and made a salsa, which we enjoyed with blue and yellow tortilla chips. They scooped out the flesh from prickly pears grown in Sonoma and donated by a friend to The Breakfast Project, mashed them, strained out the seeds, and sweetened the puree with agave syrup. The puree mixed with fresh lime juice and sparkling mineral water made for a truly delicious and refreshing beverage as we honored and celebrated all the treasures the desert has to offer.

4th/5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 7

In the classroom this week we watched History of Native California from Humboldt State University featuring Wiyot, Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk communities sharing their stories.

In the kitchen we worked with a variety of cultivated and foraged wild mushrooms and made a ragout we enjoyed with fusilli pasta. We reviewed the importance of mushroom identification expertise as many varieties of poisonous mushrooms look extraordinarily similar to edible ones. Students prepared king trumpet, lion’s mane, chanterelle, shiitake, oyster, brown and white beech, and hen of the woods mushrooms. It was a rich, sensory experience, and the lesson definitely converted some mushroom-adverse chefs into fans!

4th/5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 6

This week we learned all about highly nutritious stinging nettles, which are native to North America. Indigenous peoples such as the Kawaiisu have many medicinal and ceremonial uses for nettles, including walking through the plants to get stung on purpose in preparation for dreams and visions.

In the kitchen we made a potato and stinging nettle soup with nettles foraged in Mendocino County. Students used tongs to blanch the nettles and were able to chop them up afterwards as heat deactivates the sting. The aroma as the nettles were cooking is reminiscent of spinach! In addition to working with a wild ingredient that is difficult to find at a local grocery store, we got to play with immersion blenders to make a smooth, pureed, deep green soup after all the vegetables were cooked through. Many chefs garnished their soup with crème fraîche, a drizzle of olive oil, and some locally grown society garlic edible flowers.

4th/5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 5

This week we discussed how Indigenous cultures often use all parts of a plant—for food, medicine, ceremony, housing, and more. In the classroom we watched a time-lapse video of the sunflower plant (native to present-day North America!) go from seed to seed in 75 days. We learned that Indigenous peoples make bread and cakes out of sunflower flour, use sunflower oil for sunscreen and to treat snakebites, take pigment from the petals to color hair and textiles, and use the long, fibrous stems for construction.

In the kitchen we made a salad featuring five parts or expressions of the sunflower plant: the sprout, the tuber (which is commonly called sunchoke or Jerusalem artichoke), the petals, the seeds, and the oil (which we made into a dressing). In our closing circle, each chef named the sunflower part they liked the best after tasting the salad.

4th/5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 4

In the classroom this week, we watched a recent news segment about a Chumash-led initiative to establish the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary off the Central California Coast.

In the kitchen, students made a seaweed salad with hijiki, wakame, and kombu. Each chef rolled their own sushi roll using another seaweed, nori, as a wrapper, and sprinkled the rice with another seaweed, dulse, and furikake, a Japanese seasoning that contains sesame seeds and seaweed. This recipe was very popular, and almost every chef said they tried something they had never eaten before.

During the closing circle, students shared ideas about what humans get from water, including plant and animal life, hydration, sanitation, play, and spirituality.

4th/5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 3

We learned about the Mojave people who make their home along the Colorado River this week and watched a short film about the Mojave relationship with the mesquite tree.

In the kitchen, we made mesquite sweet potato and pepper tacos featuring mesquite powder as part of a spice mix. Mesquite powder is made from the dried screwbean fruit of the mesquite tree; many chefs agreed it smells and taste like chocolate! We used sweet Gypsy and Jimmy Nardello peppers in our tacos and enjoyed them garnished with purple cabbage, fresh lime juice, cilantro, and queso fresco.

4th/5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 2

In the classroom this week, we looked at photos of Prunus subcordata, also known as the Sierra, Klamath, Pacific, or Oregon plum, which is native to present-day California and Oregon. We learned the Konkow word for this plum and watched a short film by the Konkow Valley Band of Maidu Indians about recent initiatives to return land back to their tribe.

In the kitchen, we made a plum panzanella, not with native plums, as we don’t have a known, organic source for them, but with the descendants of plums from around the world that are now a highlight of the late summer California agricultural bounty: Black Kat and Dapple Dandy pluots from Cliff McFarlin Family Farms in Orosi and Santa Rosa plums from Knoll Farms in Brentwood.

There was quite a bit of chopping involved in this salad, as well as making a salad dressing and adding in fresh herbs such as thyme (which we grew in our own school garden!) and basil. We added a little fresh mozzarella to the mix, and only wish there had been a bit more time for the bread pieces to soak up the dressing before we had to eat, though this didn’t stop some chefs from having four servings before our closing circle.

4th/5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 1

For the first class of the unit, the fourth and fifth grade chefs learned about the acorn as a universal and important food source for Indigenous peoples almost everywhere in present-day California, with the exception of the desert. Acorn gathering season is September and October, so students were able to touch and observe locally gathered acorns from the East Bay.

In the classroom, we watched a video of a North Fork Mono and Chukchansi woman known as “the acorn lady,” Lois Conner Bohna, preparing acorn and talking about the steps and tools used to process acorn into food.

In the kitchen, we made strawberry acorn pancakes with acorn flour produced in Nevada County, about 150 miles from our school. It was fun to be back in community cooking together, and the pancakes were popular, especially with loads of maple syrup (a nod to the Indigenous foodways of the Northeast!) on top.