Grades 4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 8

For the rest of the fall semester, the fourth and fifth graders will be implementing a social change campaign at Harvey Milk with the goal of reducing food waste. This was a topic that really energized them during our cooking unit, and we’re excited to see what they come up with. With Ms. Stuti in the classroom, students watched a video featuring activists and political theorists sharing their experiences working on some of the biggest social change campaigns of the past 50 years. Together as a class, they brainstormed who their allies will be, what tactics they can use, what anticipated obstacles they might find, and how they will measure their success.

Class ended in the garden, where students watered plants, took care of the chickens, and explored the dig zone. See you next week!

Grade 3 Edible Social Studies: Week 8

It was great fun welcoming the third graders to the kitchen classroom this week! We will be exploring change and continuity in our city over time and how conflict over who can claim ownership of the soil started hundreds of years ago and continues to this day. We started with a circle where students shared what they knew about the history of San Francisco (e.g. that the land used to be predominantly marshland, that the city was once called “Yerba Buena”) and questions they had about the history of San Francisco (e.g. Did Columbus land in the Bay Area? and How did the first people get here?).

Our first class focused on the indigenous people of San Francisco, broadly called the Ohlone, and what they ate and continue to eat. We talked about hunter-gatherer societies and native plants, and watched a video about two Ohlone chefs who are reviving native Bay Area food traditions at a cafe in Berkeley. In the kitchen, students tore sorrel, dandelion leaves, and watercress into bite-sized pieces, chopped edible roots and fruits, and plucked edible flower petals. They made a dressing in a mortar and pestle with the sorrel, onion, and local honey, and tea with the aforementioned yerba buena, rosehip, white sage, and California bay laurel.

The ingredient the third graders seemed most excited about were quail eggs, which Ms. Stuti and I had soft-boiled prior to class so students could peel and chop them and add them to the salad. Several students remarked that it would have been very exciting to discover quail eggs if you were hunting for food out in the wild! We expressed gratitude for all the people who’ve come before us who figured out what foods in nature are edible and nutritious and passed this important knowledge down to us through the generations. When I went to Cafe Ohlone recently, Vincent Medina asked the guests to spread the word that the Ohlone are here and thriving, that their culture is not in the past tense. I can think of no better way to do this than to work with the same plants people have been eating in San Francisco for thousands of years and to share a traditional tea together as a San Francisco public school community.

Breakfast Around the World: Week 4 - Ghana

We made the Ghanaian breakfast staple waakye this week featuring an ingredient neither Ms. Stuti nor I had ever cooked with before, millet leaves. When placed in boiling water, the leaves dyed black-eyed peas and rice a gorgeous burgundy color and imparted a deeply savory, grainy flavor to the dish. While the waakye was cooking, students prepared a cabbage and apple salad and made their own mayonnaise from our chicken eggs for the dressing. Paired together, the waakye and the salad were a perfect contrast of texture and flavor and allowed us to discuss the history of colonialism in West Africa and the resulting appearance of coleslaw, a traditionally Dutch food, alongside a dish cooked with millet, which has been eaten in Africa for thousands of years.

Thursday’s class got to cook and eat with our special guest Ms. Katie, who came back to Harvey Milk to visit, and everyone all week long enjoyed breakfast with homemade hot sauce, a condiment we learned is traditional to serve with waakye.

Grade 3 Edible Social Studies: Week 7

For our final garden class we taught the third graders a song called “Dirt Made My Lunch” to appreciate the soil’s relationship to everything we eat and to help make the transition to the culinary arts portion of our Edible Social Studies journey next week. Everyone picked up the tune quickly and both classes performed a rousing rendition for Mr. Swick and Ms. Grace, respectively, at the end of class.

In the garden, students applied a weatherproof seal to their tree stumps, which we hope will add beauty to the outdoor classroom for years to come. We then had some free time to play with the chickens, explore the dig zone, and enjoy a seasonal garden snack of Mutsu apples and Persian cucumbers. The cilantro seeds the kids planted earlier in the semester are growing well and we’re hoping we’ll be able to harvest the herb when we begin to explore how different groups of people have made San Francisco soil their home and how those groups have influenced the food culture of our city over time.

Grades 4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 7

It was our final week in the kitchen together, and it did not disappoint! Our class started with a few short videos featuring local food heroes Michael Pollan and Bryant Terry talking about eating locally, cooking together, and youth making change—three practices that not only will fight climate change but also will strengthen our community. Our fourth and fifth grade chef superstars then headed to the kitchen and made a sorbet featuring local strawberries from Tomatero Farm in Watsonville with last week’s candied citrus peels mixed in. We hope many of you made it to the Family Potluck on Thursday night and got to try the sorbet. There’s nothing quite like the taste of minimally processed local produce made with love and lots of laughter.

We look forward to spending the next seven weeks with Rooms 201, 202, and 205 in the garden classroom, where we will continue to investigate the intersection of climate change and the food system but through a social change campaign students will design and implement on the Harvey Milk campus. See you next week!

Breakfast Around the World: Week 3 - Taiwan

We’ve made green onion pancakes every year since our founding and they are definitely our most requested recipe, so we wanted to give our students the chance to make these delicious Taiwanese breakfast treats early in the session to avoid the weekly pleading we experienced last fall! The kids love making the pancakes, I think, because working with dough is such a pleasing sensory experience and because each chef makes his/her/their own. We piled them up on a plate and took turns frying and didn’t even need to label them because no two pancakes look alike.

The best thing about classes this week was a few new students who said they didn’t like onions and found a way to enjoy them, Taiwanese style!

Grade 3 Edible Social Studies: Weeks 5 and 6

Last week the third graders finished painting their tree stumps! We will seal them and find a permanent home for them in the school garden as part of our final celebration next week.

This week, students learned about the three components of soil and their properties: sand (drainage), silt (fertility), and clay (absorption). In small groups, they looked at samples of soil mixed with water in a jar from around the schoolyard (e.g. the chicken coop, an edible garden bed, the dig zone, the amphitheater) and tried to figure out what type of soil it was, using the thickness of each layer of sand, silt, and clay as a guide. Soil that is approximately 40% sand, 40% silt, and 20% clay is called loam and is ideal for growing food. At the end of class, students added compost to their jars and will come back next week to see if this amendment helped improve their soil sample.

Grades 4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 6

This week we explored yet another way in which the food system affects climate change: food waste. Our opening circle focused on San Francisco’s three-bin trash, recycling, and compost system and what goes in which bin. Then we watched The Environmental Cost of Food Waste, which highlighted some startling statistics about the impact of inefficient food distribution systems and personal diet choices world wide.

Conveniently, there were orange peels on students’ desks after morning snack, which transitioned us nicely to one of the two recipes we made together, Food Waste Candy. Our chefs learned a simple food preservation method for a product that usually gets discarded, making candied orange and lemon peels to be eaten as part of our final cooking class for the year. (The orange peels came from the third grade garden snack and the lemon peels came from the dressing we made for the tabbouleh that we served at the October PFC dinner!)

Because it would be unbearable to make food and not get to eat together, we also learned how to make Climate Change Bacon using coconut flakes seasoned with tamari, smoked paprika, and maple syrup, then baked in an oven. We ate the “facon” with a crisp romaine salad and a dijon-red-wine-vinegar dressing. It was one of those weeks where Ms. Stuti and I had no issue eating the same meal three days in a row! I hope many of you are able to try both recipes at home.

Breakfast Around the World: Week 2 - Scotland

We made a simple breakfast porridge from Scotland this week with pinhead oats and served it with peaches and cream and flaky salt. Veteran chefs of our project remembered the Finnish puuro we made last year using rolled oats and noticed the difference in how the oats are processed between the two countries. It was so very delicious, with great texture, even though we had to improvise our own spurtle (a special Scottish kitchen tool for stirring porridge) using the handle end of a salad serving spoon. This worked rather well to avoid lumpiness when the oatmeal was added a little at a time to the boiling water and the spurtle was stirring in a continuous circular motion in the pot.

The recipe allowed for time to play the much-requested Lotería (not from Scotland). Many of the students remarked on how filling the porridge was, even after enjoying just a small bowl. Oatmeal is truly magical, not unlike the national animal of Scotland, the unicorn.

Grades 4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 5

We fielded a question from a fifth grader at the start of our unit about whether eating soy is good or bad for the environment and wanted to address the confusion this week. First, we talked about how eating edible plants like soybeans is usually a healthy choice, period. But what we might not have known before is that most of the soy being farmed around the world is fed to animals that then become meat, eggs, and dairy. When we see images of the Amazon being burned to provide land for soy farming, it’s our consumption of meat and decisions about how livestock are fed that are responsible, not so much our direct consumption of soybeans and soy products. We also learned that more than 90% of the soy grown in the US is genetically modified, a technology that could potentially help us fight climate change (for example, through the creation of drought-resistant crops) or aggravate climate change (for example, by increasing monoculture and depleting the soil’s ability to capture carbon).

In the end, the practical advice to eat any one thing in moderation and to know where your food comes from holds true for soy, too. Back by popular demand, we made salad rolls with rice paper featuring local, organic braised tofu from Hodo Foods in Oakland (soy we can feel good about!). We watched this video from the Exploratorium about how Hodo makes tofu and yuba before heading down to the kitchen and wrapping truly stunning works of edible art, which we enjoyed with a soy sauce-based dipping sauce.

Breakfast Around the World: Week 1 - Mexico

It was amazing to welcome students both returning and new into the kitchen this week and make breakfast together before school! We brought back an old favorite, chilaquiles, from the the spring of 2018, when Ms. Grace and I first piloted Breakfast Around the World. Chilaquiles are an ingenious way to transform stale leftover tortillas into a dish bursting with colors and flavors and, in our case, a fantastic use for the bountiful eggs Harvey Milk’s school chickens produce. (Thank you, Flossie, Wanda, and Shirley!)

Over the course of the semester, we will continue exploring breakfast traditions from around the world and grow our palates, knife skills, and relationships within our school community. Stay tuned.

Grade 3 Edible Social Studies: Week 4

This week the third graders watched a short video featuring local author and journalist Michael Pollan reminding us that when we think and talk about food, we must consider the soil from which it comes. Then they headed to the garden to continue working on their tree stumps and enjoyed a seasonal garden snack of Sommerfeld Fuji apples from Live Earth Farm in Watsonville. Ask your third grader about the four components of soil! It’s fun to see how they’re incorporating those components into their artwork.

Grades 4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 4

This week we discussed the role technological innovation plays in fighting climate change from within the food system. Students reflected on ways technology has improved our lives and also how technology has hurt us. We watched a short video about local company Impossible Foods and its plant-based burger, which promises to deliver the taste and protein of a traditional beef burger without the devastating environmental impact. We also heard from California Surgeon General Dr. Nadine Burke Harris about eating whole foods for health. After reading aloud the ingredients of the Impossible Burger (many of which are difficult to pronounce and nearly impossible to find in a common grocery store), we started to embrace the complexity of food tech products: their design likely makes it easier for more consumers to choose plant-based foods more often, but the Impossible Burger and others like it on the market are still highly processed foods, which our bodies aren’t necessarily designed to eat.

Ms. Stuti’s climate change burger celebrates real potatoes instead of “potato protein” and real tofu instead of “soy protein isolate!” Some of the ingredients were new to students, like amchur (a powder made from unripe green mangoes) and tamarind chutney (which we all agreed contributes a sweet-tart flavor not unlike the more familiar condiment ketchup), but they represent old human technology (harvesting fruit from trees, drying, grinding, simmering). Making the burgers was a highly tactile experience, and the end result is deeply flavorful and satisfying. At the end of one class, a student remarked, “As a professional vegetarian, I give this climate change burger my stamp of approval.”

Grade 3 Edible Social Studies: Week 3

The third graders will spend the semester learning about how different populations of people have made their mark on our local soil of San Francisco. With the fine late summer weather and our outdoor classroom in transition due to construction, we thought we’d spend the next few weeks with Rooms 212 and 213 giving them the space and tools to make their mark on their schoolyard. Students got inspiration from colorful images of the four components of soil and then in small groups sanded tree stumps and painted a base color they can then build on in our next class.

The garden snack this week was organic Nelson carrots from Fifth Crow Farm in Pescadero, which kids and chickens enjoyed alike!

Grades 4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 3

This week, we contemplated another perspective on how the food system and climate change intersect by discussing regenerative agriculture, which focuses on increasing soil health. Students watched a video from the Lexicon of Sustainability about the term “grass fed.” The production of beef from rotationally grazed cows raised on the diet their bodies are naturally designed to eat impacts the environment differently than concentrated animal feeding operations, in which cows are unable to graze and fed a diet of corn and soy to fatten them up more quickly. We discussed how the idea of “it’s not the cow, but the how” might influence the complicated decision about what to eat and how our individual food choices can make a difference.

Our recipe didn’t feature beef, but we did use grass-fed butter produced by Sierra Nevada Cheese Company as the foundation for a truly delicious pot of refried beans. Students sautéed onions and garlic and measured a number of flavorful spices (including chipotle to add smokiness and epazote for flavor and to aid with digestion) to add to pre-cooked pintos before mashing them. They garnished their dishes with fresh cilantro, radishes, and blue and yellow tortilla chips from local producer Jorge Saldano of Sabor Mexicano.

Grade 3 Edible Social Studies: Weeks 1 and 2

With the former edible garden now a staging area for the construction crew at Harvey Milk, this fall is a time for our garden-based education program to rebuild and get creative. Nothing breathes life into an outdoor classroom like enthusiastic students after a long summer break who love to dig in the dirt, hunt for bugs, harvest fresh eggs from our chickens, and share garden snacks.

Ms. Stuti, our new BAYAC AmeriCorps member, will be leading classes in the garden this year. For the first class, she introduced a new ritual of offering infused water and prepared a special treat representing her native India, fresh coconut, for all to enjoy. Students also listened to music and explored the garden before helping to clean up the space by collecting leaves (212, to be exact, for Ms. Grace’s class and 213 for Mr. Swick’s!).

Last week students watched a video called What’s the Dirt on … Dirt? and learned about soil’s four components (air, water, minerals, and organic matter). In the garden, they sowed cilantro seeds in egg cartons in preparation for our culinary unit in the kitchen later this fall. The cartons will live in the classrooms until the cilantro sprouts are ready for transplanting into larger garden planters.

Grades 4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 2

We started class this week with a question posed by doctor and writer James Hamblin: “What if everyone ate beans instead of beef?” It turns out the impact on the environment would be substantial, so we wanted our young chefs to learn how to make a simple, affordable meal featuring a bean you can find at most stores, the chick pea. Students made a parsley hummus with the help of a relatively new technology, the food processor, and their own Middle Eastern spice blend, za’atar, using a very old technology, the mortar and pestle.

Parsley isn’t a traditional ingredient in hummus, but it lends a fresh, bright flavor to the finished product as well as a beautiful color. We ate the hummus with pita and sprinkled both with za’atar, which added complexity but no heat. The kids put so much effort into pounding the za’atar by hand, we will be sure to find a good use for all the leftover spice mixture later in the year (perhaps as a topping for the kindergarteners when they learn to pop popcorn as part of their exploration of superfoods!).

Grades 4/5 Edible Social Studies: Week 1

For 14 weeks this semester, we will be exploring in both the kitchen and garden how the food system and our diet are interconnected with climate change. We started our first class with a circle, where our fourth and fifth graders shared what they already knew about climate change and what questions they had. Then we watched a video from The Daily Conversation called Fight Climate Change, Eat Less Meat. Some students talked about being vegetarians; others talked about how difficult it would be to give up bacon. One student shared about his experience eating a plant-based burger and how it only tasted a little bit different than a traditional beef burger. We all agreed that climate change is complicated and that as learners there is a lot of research we need to do to get to the bottom of big questions like “Is plastic always worse than glass or paper?” and “Is eating soy good or bad for the environment?”

In the kitchen, we made a vegan corn and coconut soup to highlight how flavorful a simple plant-based meal can be. The kids enjoyed reacquainting themselves with some favorite kitchen tools: the garlic press; the citrus juicer; the crinkle cutter; and a new one for some, the immersion blender. Working with ingredients at the height of their season (like sweet corn in late summer) always yields delicious results. We were quickly reminded of why we do this work: the students were engaged, having fun, and enjoying something nutritious they made with their own hands!

Rock and Rollers: Session C

Our final session of Rock and Rollers after school was such a blast. The students made six rolled foods (burritos, kati rolls, dolmas, summer rolls, lumpia, and temaki) and listened to rock musicians from around the world over the course of six weeks. We explored various flavor profiles and also noticed that food cultures from around the world have as much in common as they are different from each other.

Special thanks to Ms. Alyssa and Mr. Anthony from the Mission YMCA for their support and to all of our fifth graders for having changed our community for the better!

Grade 1 Edible Social Studies: Week 3

For our final class exploring the question “Where does our food come from?” we discussed terms like “local” and “organic” and what labels on eggs can tell us about how the chickens are raised. We watched two videos from The Lexicon of Sustainability: Local vs. Organic and The Story of an Egg.

The local, organic asparagus we used in our salad came from Coastal View Produce in the Salinas Valley. The eggs came from our own school chickens (which we decided to label “garden raised”) and from St. John Family Farm in Corning, California. Students blanched the asparagus and then cut it into bite-sized pieces. They hard boiled the eggs (a great life skill!), then chopped them up and made a simple salad dressing. After adding a few fresh herbs, our salad was ready to eat.

The most rewarding thing about our work is probably when students start out by saying they really don’t like an ingredient (in this case, asparagus), decide to try it after making food together with their peers, and then tell us they love it and ask for seconds!

Thursday was Ms. Katie’s last class teaching with The Breakfast Project and Ms. Webb’s class surrounded her for a spontaneous group hug before leaving the kitchen. Thank you, Ms. Katie, for bringing so much positive energy and dedication to the students of Harvey Milk this year. We will miss you dearly.