The second graders will spend the next two months exploring the role farmworkers play in our community, so we started off our unit by learning about the many fruits, vegetables, and nuts that are grown in our state that feed people all over the country. In the classroom, we watched a short film about the many American agricultural products, including almonds, lettuce, carrots, garlic, avocados, lemons, broccoli, grapes, artichokes, olives, pistachios, and strawberries, that are mainly or solely grown in California.
In the kitchen, we made a salad featuring organic California-grown produce: Little Gem lettuce and Nantes carrots from County Line Harvest in the Coachella Valley, fennel from Frecker Farms in Carpinteria, watermelon radish from Riverdog Farm in Yolo County, Kishu mandarins from Blossom Bluff Orchards in Fresno County, Moro blood oranges from Tulare County, and Medjool dates I brought back from a winter break trip to San Marcos Date Farm in Desert Hot Springs!
It’s mind-boggling that these chefs have never been in the kitchen classroom at Harvey Milk before this due to the early months of COVID school closures in the spring of 2020 falling right before we were to start the kindergarten Edible Social Studies unit and because our entire Everybody Cooks Rice unit in first grade was done over Zoom in the spring of 2021. The second graders acclimated to the work quickly and everyone had a great time chopping, slicing, peeling, mashing, whisking, and emulsifying in our new outdoor kitchen, as if they’d been doing it together forever. It was a beautiful, delicious salad enjoyed with beautiful company and we hardly had any leftovers.
