May 9, 2023 - Rice
We started by listing rice dishes we know and love and then labeled them according to country of origin. We then looked at this list of illustrated rice dishes from all over the world and see if we knew them:
https://www.howtocook.recipes/40-rice-dishes-from-around-the-world/
We continued by chopping up lots of different herbs to make Sabzi Polo, an Iranian herbed rice dish.
as the rice cooked we read the following article.
April 25 - Continued
We added salt, garlic and herbs to our focaccia and made some ramp pesto and rhubarb compote to eat with it.
April 18, 2023 - SCHOOL LUNCH
This week we discussed school lunch. We heard from each of you how long you have to eat at school, and what are your favorite and least favorite school meals. We then went on to read the following articles about the history of school lunches in America, and the politics around it:
1.
https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-school-lunch/
2.
February 28
We had phone calls with Public Libraries to discuss the cooking program and schedule a lesson by the end of the year.
March 7
We had a zoom session about lesson planning.
See the Google Doc for reference.
You each picked a recipe to make at our future library lesson.
January 24
We visited Wegman's and had a short tutorial about picking out fresh produce.
You then had a scavenger hunt to find the following things:
a local food
a healthy snack
a packaged food with less than 5 ingredients
January 17
We spoke about the experience of cooking at the food pantry the previous week and raised some difficulties in managing a cooking event off site, whether it was challenges in getting settled, finding what to do, communicating with patrons, and needing to be flexible. We also spoke how satisfying it is to create personal connection with people and sharing our knowledge and skills with a broader community.
We made sweet potato gnocchi, and while the dough was resting we spoke about what food insecurity means and what food deserts are, how they are created and what the possible solutions might be.
January 24
We will visit Wegman's grocery store, which is very close to Crawford Mansion. The whole lesson will take place there. Let's meet at 6:15-7:30.
January 3, 2023
We met with Julia Johnson, learned how to style a charcuterie board, and how to photograph and edit food.
Here's Julia's post on her blog that might help remind you some of her work and tips.
January 10, 2023
We made vegetable pancakes at the Interfaith Food Pantry in Mt.Kisco, and served it during pick up time.
Hi everyone,
Happy new year :) Hope you had a nice holiday season!
Tomorrow we will meet as usual at 6:30pm at Crawford Mansion.
Julia Johnson, a chef and photographer, will come to speak with us and teach us some basic food photography. Please make sure your phones are fully charged so you can practice some skills.
As a quick homework assignment, please look up your local library and have a contact name and email address for the children's or teen's librarian. We will start reaching out to them soon to see if we can come in and teach a cooking class.
Please let me know if you have any question,
November 22, Session 8
We dedicated our whole class to cooking sides and a dessert to 3 refugee families from Afghanistan and Ukraine.
We made: roasted butternut squash and Brussels sprouts, stuffing muffins using this recipe (we modified by replacing flax seed powder for an egg), and pear, apple and cranberry cobblers.
We received this thank you letter from ReSet
November 15, 2022 Session 7
We started by making stuffed squash, and used the Koginut squash instead of an acorn squash.
We continued by reading Dan Barber's introduction to his book The Third Plate, and then talked about The Ark of Taste and Row 7.
Next week we will bake a fruit cobbler and stuffing muffins for the refugee families settled in Westchester by ReSet.
