There are a few recipes that students are always asking to make every year, and spring rolls is one of them. We first introduce Vietnamese spring rolls as part of our first grade Edible Social Studies theme “everybody cooks rice” and we’ve now added it to our fifth-grade lineup as well. This time, though, we’re talking about food waste, and spring rolls are a fun and creative way to use up leftovers. I told the chefs that someday when they’re 35 years old and staring into their fridges, I hope they’ll remember this activity from elementary school and find some inspiration.
In the classroom we watched a film called Food Wastage Footprint from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and talked about the parts of the food system where food waste occurs (e.g. farmers not being able to sell imperfect produce, markets and restaurants throwing away leftovers, and consumers buying more groceries than they can consume). When food waste goes into the landfill and rots, it emits methane, the same potent greenhouse gas cows burp into the atmosphere. (In the green bin, food waste gets routed to special facilities where oxygen is introduced, allowing microbes to decompose organic matter and transforming it into humus that can then be returned to enrich the land.)
In the kitchen we learned how to rehydrate rice paper, an inexpensive ingredient that is easy to find at many local grocery stores. We filled our rolls with tofu, fresh herbs, rice vermicelli, and a mix of colorful vegetables. Our dipping sauce recreated the flavors of a classic Southeast Asian peanut sauce, but used sunflower seed butter instead, and some of the students enjoyed the sauce spiked with drops of pineapple sriracha.
For our closing circle, we shared one thing we personally can do to fight climate change. The fourth and fifth graders talked a lot about eating plants instead of animals, sorting waste into the correct bin, walking instead of driving when possible, and writing letters to people in positions of power encouraging them to use their influence to center the climate crisis and the action we all must take.
