This fall, the third graders will be exploring the history of San Francisco in 10 meals. We started at the very beginning, with the Ohlone, the Indigenous people who have thrived off this land since time immemorial. In the classroom, students watched a short film about two Ohlone cultural leaders and chefs, Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino, and their project, Cafe Ohlone, in the East Bay. We learned that Ohlone foodways involve foraging from the abundance of edible plants, fish, waterfowl, and land animals that make what we now call the Bay Area one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.
In the kitchen, we made an Ohlone salad—not a recreation of the Ohlone diet as most of our ingredients were sourced from Northern California farms, but rather an attempt to honor native plants and the spirit of eating locally and seasonally. We washed and dried watercress, chopped blackberries, picked edible flower petals, diced hard-boiled duck egg, and made a simple dressing featuring elderberry juice. Everyone worked as a team and it was a great way to introduce our new third grade teaching team to our program as the third grade chefs showed off their accumulated knowledge and how to prepare food and enjoy it together in community.
