For our final lesson, we read Meenal Patel’s book Priya Dreams of Marigolds and Masala. In the kitchen, we made rice kheer, a dish with origins in ancient India. Rice pudding requires a lot of passive time with some occasional stirring, so while the kheer was cooking, the first grade chefs worked with rice as their medium and made a work of art they could wear as jewelry or use as decoration.
Our palettes contained brown rice, white rice, saffron rice, jade rice (which is green from bamboo juice!), black rice ramen, forbidden rice, pho noodles, and brown rice spaghetti. Some students made their names; others made abstract designs or renderings of their favorite cartoon characters.
On Thursday we gathered for a field trip and celebration of our Everybody Cooks Rice unit. We took the train out to Ocean View Village shopping center and visited H Mart, where the first grade chefs went on a scavenger hunt to find rice in a snack, in something sweet, in a prepared food offering, and in the frozen section. After the market we ate lunch at Sisterhood Gardens, a beautiful community garden just across the street. What a great year - thank you to all who helped make it possible!
