4th and 5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 5

All three 4/5 classrooms braved the rainy weather this week and made it outside to prepare a batch of warm refried beans! Thank you to all the students, our teachers, and community volunteers for stepping up and making it happen.

In the classroom this week, the fourth and fifth graders learned about regenerative agriculture and in particular, the argument some ranchers are advancing that it’s not the cow, but the how. We watched a video from the New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group featuring farmers and ranchers discussing the important role large herbivores play in the ecosystem and how allowing cattle to graze, eat their natural diet of grass, and resting grazed lands for long periods—practices with origins in Indigenous communities—can contribute to, not undermine, the fight against climate change. Students shared their guesses as to why grass-fed beef and dairy products are more expensive in the grocery store than their feedlot-produced counterparts.

In the kitchen we made refried beans with grass-fed butter from Sierra Nevada Cheese Company (fewer than 3 cows per acre that are on pasture for 300+ days out of the year). Everyone had a choice of garnishes, including spring onion, radish, cilantro, lime, and queso fresco. We enjoyed the refried beans with tortilla chips produced by local company Sabor Mexicano. While many experts and activists disagree on whether there is a way forward with cattle ranching given the dire circumstances our climate is in, it was an important discussion to have with students about how food is produced and what our priorities should be as we prepare to feed future generations.

3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 8

This week the third graders discussed the Second Great Migration in the mid-twentieth century, which brought millions of African Americans from the American South to cities like Oakland and San Francisco in the West, the Midwest, and the Northeast. In San Francisco, many African Americans found high-skill, well-paid jobs in the defense industry, including at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

In the classroom students watched chefs Michael Twitty and BJ Dennis cook collard greens and talk about African American foodways and the intersection of traditional African culinary practices (e.g. eating greens with their juices or growing rice) with new ingredients native to the Americas or introduced by Europeans. We learned the word “potlikker,” the nutritious, flavorful liquid that’s left over after the greens are done cooking, and how enslaved African Americans saved it to feed to their families when slave owners ignored it and would otherwise have thrown it out.

In the kitchen we made a vegan version of collards with onions, garlic, smoked salt, smoked paprika, apple cider vinegar, and vegetable stock. The smell was intoxicating! Though it was a tight timeframe in which to properly cook the greens until totally soft, we were able to enjoy the collards with fresh cornbread, the potlikker, and, of course, hot sauce. We had a surprise special guest, Coach Antoine, during Ms. Grace’s class. He made sure to taste the collards prepared by each table and declared all three the winners.

4th and 5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 4

This week the fourth and fifth graders explored what would happen if everyone ate beans instead of beef. It turns out it could make quite a difference in our fight against climate change!

In the kitchen students made a centuries-old Middle Eastern savory dish featuring beans, hummus. The recipe we used incorporated traditional hummus ingredients such as garlic, sesame, and lemon while also adding in parsley for a bright flavor and beautiful color. Some chefs worked on building the hummus in the food processor, then pulsing the ingredients while drizzling in olive oil. Other chefs worked on making za’atar, a spice mixture common in the cuisine of many countries in the Middle East, grinding a total of 10 ingredients in the mortar and pestle. The fourth and fifth graders loved the za’atar, and we sprinkled it on the hummus, on our plates, and ate it straight when we ran out of pita. Leftover za’atar is great with scrambled eggs, yogurt, flatbread, grilled vegetables, and whatever else suits your fancy.

3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 7

This week the third graders watched a short film called Exclusion: The Presidio’s Role in World War II Japanese American Incarceration that tells the story of both Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt’s signing of the executive order from the Presidio that evacuated and interned people of Japanese descent from California, Oregon, Washington, and the territory that is now Alaska and the Japanese-American soldier-linguists who were trained in the Japanese language and helped the U.S. win the war from an abandoned army hangar on Crissy Field. Students had a lot of impassioned ideas to share about what they would have done had they been alive during that time.

In the kitchen, we learned how to make temaki, a sushi hand roll that doesn’t require a sushi mat. Everyone had a choice of a variety of fun fillings: furikake (a Japanese rice seasoning), pickled ginger, carrot, Japanese cucumber (grown by the Japanese-American-owned Hikari Farms), oshinko (pickled daikon radish), braised tofu from Oakland-based Hodo Foods, green onion, sunflower sprouts, and, of course, sushi rice. We talked about how important it is to see others as human beings in addition to learning about and celebrating cultures that are new or different.

4th and 5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 3

This week students watched a stop-motion animation film from the NPR series Skunk Bear called The Carbon Footprint of a Sandwich. Many of us were surprised to learn that the fertilizer used to grow wheat, the bacon, and the lettuce are all resource-intensive components of a BLT sandwich. We got to thinking about everything from the tractor that plants seeds in the ground to the microbes in the soil that burp out CO2 to the factory that produces the plastic bags the bakery uses to ship loaves of bread to consumers.

One way we could approach this information is to make changes to the way we eat, but we also discussed what we could do if we were the president of the United States to effect change on the systems level. The fourth and fifth graders had many great ideas, like incentivizing farmers to use compost instead of industrial fertilizers, serving less meat for school lunches, and eating a coconut bacon sandwich on TV for everyone to see how good a plant-based diet can be.

In the kitchen students sliced multigrain sourdough from Berkeley-based Starter Bakery, Haas avocados, and Purple Cherokee heirloom tomatoes; washed and dried Little Gem lettuce; and seasoned unsweetened coconut flakes with a variety of ingredients meant to evoke bacon’s complex fatty, smoky, sweet, and salty flavor profile. Each class prepared the coconut bacon for the next class, as we’ve only got access to one electrical outlet in the outdoor kitchen and had to bake the trays slowly two at a time in a toaster oven. It worked! The final sandwiches showcased the fourth and fifth graders’ knife skills and teamwork, and hopefully minted a few lifelong coconut bacon lovers.

3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 6

This week we talked about the many historical moments that brought Russians to San Francisco over two centuries, including the fur trade, the Gold Rush, the Russian Civil War, and Soviet religious repression. We learned that the Russian Hill neighborhood was named for a small Russian cemetery that was discovered atop the hill during the Gold Rush, and that Little Russia is in the Richmond District, where some of our Harvey Milk students and staff now live.

In the classroom we watched a Russian American food entrepreneur named Anna Tvelova share her experiences coming to San Francisco and starting a business selling pirozhkis, a stuffed yeast-leavened bun that is baked or fried.

In the kitchen students made a vegetarian filling featuring cabbage, potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, smoked paprika, and dill, then rolled out the dough, topped each circle with filling, sealed them, and fried the pirozhki like pros. Some were a little tentative around working with hot oil, but in the end the third graders showed they are incredibly capable and safety conscious.

While making the pirozhki, students dreamed up their own fillings. The dough we used is equally delicious filled with something sweet (like apples, cinnamon, and honey) so we hope many will try the recipe at home!

4th and 5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 2

This week we learned that different diets have different carbon footprints. In the classroom, we watched a video from the University of California and Vox called The Diet That Helps Fight Climate Change. One of our takeaways was that figuring out the impact of various foods on the environment is complicated and involves a lot of statistics. Scientists around the world are actively working on extracting meaning from the data we have, and new information is coming out every day. However, no matter how many calculations there are to consider, there is consensus that plant-based diets in general are both better for the earth and for our health.

The fourth and fifth graders had lots to share. Some are vegetarians, some have tried to eat vegan, and some had heard of ways that people are trying to tackle the problem of methane emissions in cattle (for example, by trapping the gas and using it to generate energy, or by experimenting with an artificial substitute for meat, like the Impossible Burger).

In the kitchen, we made a vegan recipe that highlights local seasonal produce (corn!), relies on Southeast Asian aromatics (shallots, garlic, ginger, spicy chili) instead of meat for flavor, and employs coconut milk instead of dairy for creaminess. It’s a meal that requires a lot of preparation, but students rose to the occasion. We’ve solved our outdoor electricity challenges for now by offering a single power tool station instead of tools at each table. Many chefs tried using an immersion blender once the ingredients were cooked through, which allowed them to puree the soup to their desired consistency right in the pot.

3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 5

This week we discussed the aftermath of the great earthquake and fires of 1906. In the classroom, we watched a short PBS documentary about the Italian American community in San Francisco called Up From the Ashes. We learned about Italian-driven economic activity at Fisherman’s Wharf and in North Beach around the turn of the century, the devastation Italian Americans faced after the earthquake, and how Amadeo Giannini’s Bank of Italy, which eventually became Bank of America, helped Italians and Italian Americans survive and thrive after a major catastrophe. The most special part of the week was when Mr. Orlando showed Room 213 a photo of his own Sicilian American ancestors, one of whom worked at the original Bank of Italy!

In the kitchen, students made a recipe with roots in ancient Rome, minestrone. They chopped carrots, cauliflower, and summer squash for the soup, snipped fresh herbs, and made jokes about the name of the pasta we used, known as orecchiette (or “little ears”). The vegetables were cooked with onion, garlic, tomatoes, cranberry beans, vegetable stock, and the cooking liquid from the beans. Once the table was set, many chefs chose to top off their soup with a few gratings of authentic Parmigiano Reggiano. Mangia!

4th and 5th Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 1

We had a great day on Wednesday with three classes back to back, the first time we’ve made food together in person since the fall of 2019 and spring of 2020 with these now-much-taller fourth and fifth graders. In the classroom, we each shared a strength that we have as we will need all the assets in our community if we are to end the climate crisis. I read an excerpt from an essay the climate justice activist Xiye Bastida wrote that’s included in the anthology All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis about the need for intergenerational connection and the importance of lobbying at the local level for change.

In the kitchen, students cut and juiced lemons using a variety of tools, muddled blackberry and homegrown yerba buena, measured agave, prepared garnishes, and then set the table for our happy hour of sorts, bar snacks included! It’s true that we are a vegetarian program, but we wanted to pair something savory with the lemonade. Since we will be spending weeks discussing the impact of eating meat and what sustainable protein will look like in the future, chile-lime crickets seemed like an appropriate one-time exception to make. Many students tried them, and some thought they were delicious! Though crickets as food is a new concept for most of us, humans have been eating insects for thousands of years. Many of the food practices we must adopt to survive will similarly hearken back to our ancestors and move us out of our comfort zone.

3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 4

This week we watched a video from Newsy about the Chinese people who came to California as the Gold Rush started in the mid-19th century and helped build North America’s first transcontinental railroad. The Chinese nickname for San Francisco, Jiu Jin Shan (“Old Gold Mountain”), remains today. The issues raised by the video—immigration, pay equality, labor conditions, and whose stories get told—were alive in the 1800s and continue to figure prominently in our national conversations in 2021. Most students said they knew what it felt like to be excluded, and many expressed outrage when we compared the historical erasure of Chinese contributions to the railroad to a hypothetical Harvey Milk yearbook that only shared photos of one of the two third grade classrooms.

In the kitchen, we made lo mein, a dish that celebrates one of the great culinary inventions of all time, noodles! The third grade chefs minced the aromatics garlic and ginger and chopped an abundance of vegetables that all got thrown into a traditional Chinese high-heat cooking vessel known as a wok. Once the vegetables were cooked through, we added cooked noodles and a simple sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil, and ground white pepper. There were chopsticks available for anyone who wanted to practice. We were too deep in conversation to remember to snap any photos, but I can attest to the fact that there were many creative ways of using the chopsticks to transfer the food from plate to mouth.

3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 3

This week we discussed how the Spanish, who ate wheat and considered it the food of the Bible, learned to eat corn, a food the Spanish considered suitable only for animals and the poor, from the Mexicans. The Spanish didn’t understand Mexican food culture very well, however, and completely missed the ancient process of nixtamalization, developed by Mesoamericans, that allows the human body to access all of corn’s nutrients when consumed. Eating a diet of only raw corn led some Europeans to develop pellagra, a vitamin deficiency with terrible symptoms, many of which resemble the characteristics of vampires, who perhaps not coincidentally first appeared in legends around the same time.

In the classroom, we watched two videos from Eater, Why Corn is the Most Sacred Crop and The Dark and Terrible History of Corn. San Francisco became a part of the Mexican Empire after the Mexican War of Independence ended in the early 1800s. Today, Mexican food culture continues to permeate our city and we owe a great debt to the Indigenous Aztec and Mayan people for domesticating corn from a wild grass. Their ingenuity allows people all over the world to now enjoy corn in so many delicious forms.

In the kitchen, students made their own corn tortillas, working with a masa dough made from masa harina, oil, salt, and hot water. We had some issues with the electricity so switched to camping stoves mid-week, which worked well! We learned to cook the tortillas on cast iron without any oil, to watch for a few brown spots that signal to us the tortilla is cooked, and to stack them inside a clean towel to keep them warm for serving. To accompany the tortillas, the third graders made a simple pico de gallo (also known as salsa bandera or salsa Mexicana as the colors represent the Mexican flag) using dry-farmed Early Girl and heirloom tomatoes. ¡Que rico!

3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 2

This week we discussed the arrival of the Spanish in the 1700s to the present-day Bay Area. The Spanish mission system irrevocably changed the local landscape and its legacy lives on today in our neighborhood, whether that be in the name of our city (“San Francisco” for the Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi) or landmarks such as Mission Street, Mission Dolores Park, and Mission High School.

In the classroom, we watched a news clip from the summer of 2020 about protestors pulling down a statue in Golden Gate Park of the Spanish priest Junipero Serra, who also has a San Francisco public elementary school named after him. Some students thought the protestors should have found a more peaceful way of making their voices heard; others expressed positive feelings that the statue was torn down; others worried what would happen if we no longer remembered the past.

The Spanish brought with them livestock production and agricultural systems that highlighted their fundamentally different relationship to the land. In the kitchen, we made a salad featuring many of the ingredients the Europeans introduced, many of which California is now famous for producing (a nice tie-in with our second grade unit last year focusing on our state’s commodities and the farmworkers movement!). We cooked the wheatberries before class because they take longer than we have time for when we’re together, but the third graders did all the other components of the salad themselves - slicing olives, peeling and slicing Valencia oranges, mincing parsley, snipping green onions, and making a simple dressing of lemon juice, sherry vinegar, and extra-virgin olive oil. I’m proud of all the chefs who tried a bite, even if the flavors weren’t ultimately their favorite, and was delighted so many students asked for seconds.

3rd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 1

We are back! Working with students in person! In a new outdoor kitchen classroom created around a high-voltage box the modernization project left in the middle of our school’s former edible garden! It’s wonderful!

In preparation for welcoming our third grade students to Edible Social Studies this year, we reviewed many rituals and routines from our time together in first grade, talked about how the classes would be different this year with masks and being outdoors, and read a sweet book by Jillian Tamaki called Our Little Kitchen to remind us how every kitchen has its own energy and culture, just like the one we will create for the first time on the Harvey Milk campus.

Our third grade unit is an edible history of San Francisco. Students were asked to interview someone special in their lives about their history with the city. Many students reported that they have an adult at home who was born and raised in another country or state and moved to the Bay Area for work, safety, love, and/or education. We learned that the word “native” can be used to describe someone who was born here, but that words like “Native,” “Indigenous,” and “First Nations” refer to the Indigenous people of a specific place. Here in San Francisco, we recognize that our program and school operates on the land of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, who have lived here for time immemorial and continue to live and thrive here in the present day.

We are lucky in the Bay Area to have Ohlone leaders like Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino of mak-’amham raising awareness of Ohlone foodways and sharing recipes that we can recreate at school. A lot has changed about the food system in the past 250 years and the ingredients in our Ohlone Salad were sourced from local farms rather than gathered, but we all agreed to honor the spirit of Ohlone food even if our meal wasn’t entirely authentic.

In the classroom we watched a short video from PBS’s Native America series called Ohlone Foodways. In the kitchen classroom we made a salad of watercress, spinach (standing in for sorrel), blackberries, flowers, sunflower seeds, popped amaranth, and quail eggs. Students made a dressing by mixing elderberry shrub with sunflower oil and salt. A chef at the Strawberry table ate FIVE servings of salad! On Thursday, we had a special surprise guest, Coach Glenn, which made for a particularly poignant first week back cooking, eating, and laughing together after such a long time apart.

Finally, we want to give heartfelt thanks to the many members of our community who pitched in to install a commercial sink, figure out how to provide shade to our students while they work, sewed coverings so our maple-top work tables can withstand the elements, and who are giving their time to lead the Blueberry table all semester long. We couldn’t do what we do without you and we are so grateful for your energy and support.

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 4

Every Edible Social Studies unit ends with something sweet, and this year we thought strawberry shortcakes would be a fun treat for the kindergarteners to assemble and enjoy at the park. Our food rule for this lesson was Eat Together! A lot of nutritional dogma can feel restrictive, punitive, or totally divorced from pleasure, but more and more science is emerging on the role of relationships in our overall health and specifically the benefits of eating with friends and family. When we sit at the table (or on the grass) with each other and break bread, we are communicating, slowing down, often laughing, and strengthening social bonds.

We read Cathryn Falwell’s beautiful counting book Feast for 10, which depicts a family shopping for, preparing, and sitting down to enjoy a meal together. Each of the kindergarten chefs got to make their own strawberry shortcake. Some students piled the strawberries and cream on top of the cake, while others took a more deconstructed approach and enjoyed the components separately. Some tried the mint garnish and reported back that it tasted “fresh,” “spicy,” and “like toothpaste.” While everyone ate, we sang “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” a good reminder that we always have each other if we are ever feeling lonely. We ended class with a closing circle where everyone had the opportunity to share their favorite meal we shared together this year.

We want to thank our incredible kindergarten teaching team, Ms. Martinez and Ms. Vashti, for making Edible Social Studies work during such a chaotic transitional time this year and to all the students for their spirited engagement. We can’t wait to see them all again in first grade and hope everyone has a colorful, delicious summer break!

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 3

This week we celebrated the cycles of the year and started the circle by sharing our favorite season. One way we can keep our bodies healthy and contribute to a healthy community is to eat with the seasons, meaning eating plants that are naturally ripe and harvested during the present time of year. Fruits and vegetables that are in season are usually fresher, tastier, more nutritious, and more affordable. They are more likely to be grown by local farmers and don’t have to travel as far to get to the market, which means eating seasonally can also support a healthier planet.

In northern California, we are lucky to have a variety of produce growing no matter what time of year it is. Some fruits and vegetables grow year round, like broccoli and carrots, and others are a special treat at certain times, like peas and stone fruit. To celebrate the spring bounty, each kindergarten chef got a paper plate to use as a canvas and a container of locally grown, organic spring produce: arugula, chives, carrots, broccoli, edible flowers, blueberries, cherries, mandarins, purple daikon, dill, English peas, and spearmint. They also got cooked fusilli, a corkscrew-shaped pasta, just for a different shape (and taste)! Everyone got to work making and eating salad people (or salad pets), we read a book called In My Garden written by Charlotte Zolotow and illustrated by Philip Stead about a child enjoying the seasons, then sang a silly song about the seasons to the tune of “If You’re Happy And You Know It," which got everyone clapping, stomping, and shouting “Hooray!”

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 2

This week the kindergarten chefs discussed why and how to eat for a healthy planet. We started with a circle where they were invited to share something they love about nature. In rooms 107 and 111, we love plants, flowers, pandas, bugs, trees, and the ocean! Many students have heard of climate change, and already had ideas about what we can do to fight it. Even though the most impactful decisions that affect the environment must come at the policy level for systemic change, food waste and emissions from livestock are two important sources of greenhouse gasses that we as consumers can do something about. One simple thing we can do is to replace animal protein with plant protein in our diets more often.

Protein helps us build strong muscles, repairs damaged tissue, and keeps us feeling full when we need energy during the day. Beans are a great way to get protein from plants, and in the spring in Northern California, we’re lucky to have fresh fava beans at our local farmers markets. In class, the kindergarteners each got two blanched fava beans to peel and taste. Then they spread fava bean hummus on a piece of bread and garnished their toast with edible flower petals.

One thing that has changed in how we teach sustainability and healthy eating over the years is a shift away from focusing on the individual to instead recognizing all the people in a community. When we talk about organic produce like the fava beans we worked with this week, we talk about what pesticides do to our bodies but must also talk about the effect exposure to pesticides has on farmworkers’ health and the impact on the soil and water. We also cannot ignore that organic produce remains more expensive and therefore inaccessible to many. What can children do? Learn, ask questions, and when it’s time, vote!

We read the book I Love the Earth by Todd Parr and then had a dance party to a song called “The 3 R’s” by Jack Johnson. By chance a friend of mine reached out and said she had lemons from her backyard tree to donate to our school, so every chef left class with a lemon of their own to cook and/or eat with. I’m not sure how many of them will actually make it home, but hope they brought a few moments of delight while they lasted.

Kindergarten Edible Social Studies: Week 1

What a gift to be able to work with the kindergarteners in the outdoors after a year of Edible Social Studies via Zoom with grades 1-5! Over the month of May, we will be exploring what healthy bodies and healthy communities need to thrive. Each week we’ll learn a simple idea that we’ll carry with us as we build on our knowledge all the way into fifth grade. Our first class started with introductions. Every kindergarten chef shared their name and their favorite color. Many chefs have multiple favorite colors, and I loved how some students included metallic colors like gold and silver.

Next, we opened up our kits and discovered a rainbow fruit salad to help remind us that eating the rainbow, a variety of brightly colored fruits and vegetables, makes our bodies strong. Surrounding ourselves with a diversity of people also makes our families, schools, and neighborhoods strong.

Normally students would be in the school kitchen preparing the fruit salad themselves, but the modifications we need to make this year give them more time to enjoy the food and also allowed time for some live music. We read Lois Ehlert’s book Planting a Rainbow, which has beautiful illustrations of many colorful plants, including several that share the same name as some of our kindergarteners! Then we sang a song about the colors of the rainbow set to an old Appalachian folk tune. The ukulele was a big draw, so I’ll be sure to bring it back next week so we can sing more songs together at the park.

This year’s rainbow salad featured strawberries, Gold Nugget mandarins, mangoes, kiwis, blueberries, and blackberries, but as we’ll learn over the course of the unit, we can change the ingredients with the changing of the seasons. All deeply colored plants provide us with phytonutrients that help us grow. For those of you who would like to recreate the recipe at home, it’s posted below. Our suggestions are to wait until the fruit is ripe for maximum flavor, and to let kindergarteners practice cutting on their own. A crinkle cutter (think potatoes turned into Ruffles potato chips) is a particularly great culinary tool for this age group and works well on soft foods like fruit.

Grade 1 Edible Social Studies: Week 6

For our final first grade class of the year, we read the book Priya Dreams of Marigolds and Masala, written and illustrated by Meenal Patel. The story follows a family with roots in both India and the United States and celebrates the bright, colorful, and delicious traditions that can traverse time and place. Our units always end with something sweet, so for our last meal together we all enjoyed rice kheer, an Indian rice pudding seasoned with the masala (in this case cardamom, cloves, saffron, and rose) Priya dreams about.

We’ve explored a diversity of rice in all shapes and sizes, each with their own stories, and yet there are so many more dishes and family connections we didn’t have time to share with each other. I hope this unit prompts more discussion around the dinner table for all of us. While listening to music and eating the kheer, the first graders used some of the materials we’ve been working with (brown rice, wild rice, basmati rice, rice vermicelli) as well as black pearl rice, a grain we didn’t have a chance to taste, to make their own rice necklaces, mandalas, or hangings. Some chefs spelled out their names, others incorporated found objects from their own homes, and one managed to make a three-dimensional sculpture using the curve of the dried rice noodles.

Thank you to the entire Harvey Milk first grade community for making this distance learning unit happen given all the obstacles. I look forward to seeing you all next year in second grade!

Grade 1 Edible Social Studies: Week 5

At the start of each unit we always ask students to share something they are looking forward to or to find some way to connect to the topic as we embark on Edible Social Studies for the year. For our Everybody Cooks Rice unit, the initial prompt was simply to share a favorite rich dish. This helps me learn more about who is in the classroom, and also allows me to take what the kids share and incorporate their connections and ideas into our syllabus. Many first graders shared their love for Mexican rice, so this week we made Mexican rice tacos in class together. Because we aren’t able to cook together, I thought it would be a nice opportunity to support a local business that makes the best Mexican rice I’ve ever tasted, La Palma Mexicatessen, which has been operating in the Mission since 1953.

Our read aloud for the week was Isabel Quintero’s and Zeke Peña’s book My Papi Has a Motorcycle, which tells the story of a Mexican American child riding through her neighborhood and interacting with her community with her dad.

We’ve shared our recipe for a vegetarian version of Mexican rice below, but also encourage everyone to support local Mexican American businesses like La Palma, too, as they are the foundation of our city’s vibrant neighborhoods. In third grade, students will learn more about San Francisco’s history as a part of Mexico and Mexico’s influence on California food culture. I’m excited to start building cross-grade-level connections like these as we continue to pilot and improve on our program.

Grade 1 Edible Social Studies: Week 4

This week was ambitious! We distributed kits to the first graders so we could make Vietnamese spring rolls (gỏi cuốn) together over Zoom from all the various places from which students attend school during distance learning. We started by washing our hands, then dipping a sheet of rice paper into a bowl of water. Warm is ideal if you make the recipe again at home, but cold works just as well. When the paper began to soften, we removed it from the bowl and placed it on a flat surface. If you leave the paper in the water too long, it gets increasingly more sticky and difficult to work with.

Students loaded up the lower third of the rice paper with our fillings: lettuce, carrots, braised tofu, Thai basil, cilantro, spearmint, red cabbage, and rice noodles seasoned with toasted sesame oil. We folded from the bottom up over the filling, then folded the paper in from each side, then continued to roll up from the bottom to form our first spring roll. Each student received a small jar of dipping sauce that could be poured into a small dish or poured directly into the spring roll as we ate.

The read aloud for this week was the book A Different Pond by Bao Phi and illustrated by Thi Bui. In the story, a boy goes fishing with his father to feed their family. He hears stories from the country where his parents come from, Vietnam, and about a war that took his uncle’s life, and wonders what life is like there. In class we talked about the meaning of the word refugee and how the refugee experience is another important aspect of American culture. As the first grade chefs rolled and ate their second spring roll, we watched short videos of rice paper and rice noodles being made by hand in Vietnam. We learned that it’s the bamboo drying racks that make the cross hatched pattern on the rice paper and that really big rice paper is then cut into noodles on a machine.

After eating our final rolls, we had a little brain break and dance party to a song all about rice and how it’s eaten around the world from the new Netflix series produced by Barack and Michelle Obama called Waffles and Mochi. There’s a whole episode about rice, so it was a nice tie-in to what we’re studying this year in first grade. Congratulations to all our chefs for trying a recipe with a lot of steps during distance learning. You did it!