When you’re at your wits’ end trying to get a kid to taste a new vegetable, you resort to the Trojan Horse method: hiding the offending food in other dishes. The logic goes as such: you love Little One, Little One hates healthy food, but you’ll be darned if Little One isn’t eating healthy, whether they know it or not. Thanks to generational wisdom (and Pinterest), we all know a million different ways to hide a whole range of veggies from picky eaters. My mom was no stranger to pureeing eggplant into my lasagna. I, too, once took secret joy in sneaking beans into meals cooked for a legume-hating but fiber-poor ex boyfriend. From butternut squash stirred into mac and cheese to meatballs packed with tiny mushroom chunks, invisible veggies just go down easier with those who can’t even look at a cauliflower floret without gagging. This includes many of my students, who won’t hesitate to proclaim that the turnip greens I’ve just harvested and lovingly prepared for them look “absolutely disgusting. YEEUUCHHH”

Part of my job as a FoodCorps service member is to encourage these pint-sized naysayers to try healthy foods in a fun and controlled environment so that they’ll actually eat the vegetables on their school lunch tray instead of throwing them away. I do this by conducting taste tests of locally-sourced produce on a monthly basis with my co-service member, Kelly. My goal when selecting a taste test recipe is to ensure the veggie appears prominently in the dish, so the kids can recognize it and eat it when it resurfaces in future meals. This is especially important when the vegetable is brand new to them; whereas nearly every kid knows what carrots look like before they’re mashed up into a souffle, fewer have encountered an intact beet or radish. Admittedly, it’s hard to reconcile this vision with veggies so brazenly healthy that they scare kids away on sight. Is it a coincidence that the veggies with the worst reputations for flavor tend to be dark green? Broccoli, collards, and green beans each incited horror among my sisters and I at our childhood family dinners. Those scary green mounds were the visual embodiments of sheer, unadulterated nutrition! There was no way stuff that looked like that would taste good!

So, with kale on the docket for November’s Harvest of the Month taste test, Kelly and I considered our options: mask the leafy green threat in fruity smoothies? Blend up some kale hummus? Try kale pesto pasta? Each of these recipes would render the original kale leaves unidentifiable, but we guessed that with its big, fluffy leaves and deep green hue, it’d be a tough sell if left raw.

But kids can surprise us. Before the monthly sampling kicked off, I had tested a kale salad recipe with some of my Stefanik Elementary students. Each kid picked their own leaf from the beautiful purple kale plants growing in the school garden. They watched, some eagerly, some with heavy skepticism, as I tossed the leaves in orange juice vinaigrette and passed them out like leafy popsicles. Overwhelmingly, the students told me they loved it and picked their stems clean. Armed with those positive preliminary reviews, Kelly and I decided to buck kid-friendly kitchen logic and serve raw kale salad to everyone.

​This salad had no frills beyond its sweet and tangy dressing–no croutons to distract from all those frighteningly fresh greens, nor Craisins to incentivize both chewing and swallowing. Right before our kickoff taste test at Bowe Elementary, I got cold feet, panicking that the Stefanik kids were only jazzed about eating raw kale because they’d picked it themselves. To my shock and delight, a majority of the Bowe students who tried the salad voted that they’d either liked it or loved it! We went on to tally a 69% positive response on average at Lambert-Lavoie, Stefanik, and Litwin during subsequent taste tests. I loved the kale taste test because it proved that, while having your kid help prepare their own healthy food (picking kale, dressing a salad, stirring a pot, whatever) is a sure-fire way to get them to taste it, kids won’t always balk at a food based on looks alone. It helps that Kelly and I bring lots of energy to these events and reward brave tasters with stickers. But at the end of the day, kids will face their ultimate food foes on their own and decide they aren’t so disgusting after all. Now hopefully, when they see kale again in their school lunch, they won’t be afraid to dig in.​

The post How to Get Kids to Eat Kale (Without Hiding It Under the Potatoes) appeared first on FoodCorps.

For a long time, I would have agreed to this assessment as I had experienced Nikki’s obstinance during class for months. She refused to try any fruits or other new dishes we made together in her kindergarten class with impressive conviction. I always inquired, “You’re not going to try the salad you just worked so hard on?” and “How do you know you don’t like it if you never have tried it,” to convince her to take just one taste of our nutritious creation.

Then, during a taste test in the cafeteria on a random day, Nikki decided to step out of her comfort zone. We were sampling different types of pears, delicious varieties from Bartlet to Bosc. Nikki came by the table and I asked her if she would like a sample. She gave me the “I don’t want to try it but I don’t want to say no” face I often got from her. I picked up a smaller piece than the others: “please have a tiny piece, look, just try one tiny bite.” With a look of hesitation, she took the sample and scurried away. I waited in anticipation, feeling grateful that she took the pear if nothing else.

Minutes later, she came back to the taste test table with a giant grin on her face. “That apple was delicious,” she said with glee and enthusiasm! I laughed to myself and said to her, “it’s not an apple, it’s a pear, but I understand why you would get them confused since they look and taste similar. Want some more?” Nikki answered with an exclamation of “YES!” and then skipped back to her table. For Nikki, after months of refusing to try new foods, that was a huge move out of her comfort zone. For me, it was a revelation. I can relate to Nikki in many ways: in a time when she is still exploring flavors and texture, the decision to #TryThings was daunting, which made the reward was so great. Since that time, Nikki has been more willing to try more foods. She has liked some and hated others, but the important point is that now she is at least making an attempt to try.

Just like Nikki, I too have been pushing my limits during my time as a FoodCorps service member. My service so far has been a continuous series of stepstones out of my comfort zone. It was daunting to enter into FoodCorps service without extensive experience in the classroom, garden, or school lunch arena. However, just like Nikki experienced, there is enormous reward in trying new things and growing through discomfort. Through trial and error, lots of questions, hours of research, and support from FoodCorps and my service site, AtlantiCare, I have been able to push past my worries. I look back on myself six months ago and see how much I have grown in the areas of health, gardening, teaching, leadership, and cooking. I still have much more to learn but I am excited to see what I will uncover and experience during the rest of my service and beyond!

The post #TryThings: Happily Outside of the School Food Comfort Zone appeared first on FoodCorps.

WALDOBORO — Alexis Zimba-Kirby has just walked a half-dozen middle schoolers through making a simple beet salad.

Lessons were learned on both sides. One, shallots are like onions, but not as spicy. Two, beets are a source of sugar. And three, when trying to get kids to try something new, patience is key.

Summer Wasilowski, 12, has tried couscous, ground cherries and squash during her time in the school’s Outsiders Club – she’s even started making couscous at home – but she eyed the cilantro in the beet salad with skepticism, and when she forced herself to taste it, she looked as if her BFF had just dumped her.

Dig In

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And yet, last spring as the school year was winding down, I found myself in the cafeteria holding a two-pound tub of baby spinach and watching it fly out of the container until there was none left and I had to tell my little eaters the sad news. I was overjoyed and amazed by my students’ newfound desire for spinach. This was not how I had anticipated ending my year of service nine months earlier, at the beginning of the year.

I first met these students last October when they took field trips to my service site’s one-acre teaching farm. As the students unloaded from the school bus, their energy and enthusiasm for being at the Grow It Green Morristown farm and seeing Farmer Shaun, my supervisor, was electric.

A few weeks later, I visited their school to conduct a swiss chard taste test in celebration of National Farm to School Month. The district’s head chef cooked more than thirty pounds of chard that was grown less than three miles away from the school at Grow It Green’s farm. The taste test display was fun and colorful: a bright poster board where kids could use stickers to vote if they loved, liked, or tried it and leave post-it notes with any pictures or comments they wanted to share.

The swiss chard was a vibrant success. Nothing endorses a food more strongly than having a student say that it tastes better than ice cream. James’s post-it note read, “thi is betrr then ic crem.” Aida, a seven-year-old, personally thanked Farmer Shaun for the delicious Swiss chard on a post-it; while Oliver, another six-year old, told me that it tasted so good he wanted to marry it.

Several months later, as I settled into what had become my normal teaching routine, my students remembered that first taste test. During my lessons, I found increasingly more ways to expose students to new vegetables, including many leafy green vegetables (collards, kale, and spinach) prepared in a variety of ways. We blended baby spinach into smoothies, pureed our own hummus and made vegetable faces, and layered fresh fruit parfaits with unsweetened yogurt.

By April, the kids had tried sautéed greens a number of times, so naturally I was thrilled when the school’s chef asked me to help her prepare collards. Branded as “Chef Cara’s Crazy Collards,” they made their debut on the lunch line sautéed with garlic and olive oil. Before the third lunch period was over, I received the following photo from the chef:

That afternoon, as I handed out 150 recipe cards to students rushing to their buses, I couldn’t help but feel that FoodCorps and its approach were working. Students who initially hesitated before trying cucumbers were now requesting vegetables and nearly fighting over the last few leaves in a container of baby spinach. These moments motivate me to continue to find new ways to play with food and expose kids to different vegetables. Most importantly, it serves as proof that farm to school programming is making a difference in the lives of kids by improving their habits and health. Every new day serves an opportunity to watch a child discover a new vegetable they like and hopefully bring that enthusiasm home to their family. As a new service year is beginning, I can’t wait to share my passion for cooking and gardening with the students of Morristown and look forward to months of learning with and from them.

The post Taste Test: Can Vegetables Be Better than Ice Cream? appeared first on FoodCorps.

One of the highlights of the unit (for myself and the students), was a visit from Chef Andrew Wilkinson, the Seafood Specialist at North Coast Seafoods – the company that provides the locally-sourced redfish for the Cambridge schools. Dressed in his chef’s jacket, he engaged the students in lively conversations about the importance of sourcing food locally and fishing sustainably. Chef Andrew was even able to give the students expert advice on how to make a sauce to accompany the redfish. At the end of his presentation, Chef Andrew opened a small white box to reveal a whole redfish. In what turned into the ultimate show-and-tell, the students got a chance to hold, pat, poke, and observe the fish. Some of our most reserved students were front and center, taking in every opportunity to examine the fish’s gills and open its mouth. Early on in the sauce development project, the students were encouraged to see the connections between the work they were doing in class and the school cafeteria. In seeing and holding the fish, I hope they were getting an even deeper sense of how to their work was connected to the natural world and the local food system.

After the visit from Chef Andrew, the students set to work in small groups developing their signature sauce recipes. They were tasked with creating a precise recipe that could be replicated by anyone. They mixed together different ingredients, searching for the combination that would create the perfect flavor and texture. After each group’s recipes
were developed and perfected, it was time to put them to the first real test. Each group made their sauce recipe, and everyone in the class tasted the sauces with the coconut crusted redfish. Using our sauce development rubric, the students rated each of the sauces based on flavor, texture, compatibility with the redfish, and visual appeal. With the ratings in, the rubrics were tallied and one sauce emerged as the favorite in each class. The classes then went back to work tweaking their winning class recipes to make them even better. By the last week in April, each grade had a sauce that would represent them in the school-wide Sauce Off.

On the day of the Sauce Off, we set up a table in the cafeteria complete with samples and ballots. With the help of Cambridge Food Service Director, Mellissa Honeywood, Chef Andrew, and VLUS/Tobin Kitchen Manager, Chef Paul, my co-teacher Ro and I prepared hundreds of samples of the signature sauces with the redfish. As the middle schoolers trickled into the cafeteria, they stopped by the table to try samples and vote for their favorites. The competing sauces included the Master Unicorn Sauce (6th), the Rosemary Tropical Dash Sauce (7th), and the Alezle Sauce (8th). During each grade’s lunch period, the Sauce Off table was abuzz with students trying samples and voting for their favorite sauces.

Students from our CitySprouts elective were thrilled to see their sauces on the “big stage” and kept bringing their friends and teachers over to vote. In the frenzy of sample-tasting and ballot-casting, it occurred to me that not a single student had complained about eating the fish. In fact, many students came back to
the table asking for more. Throughout the project, a number of people had warned me that pairing the sauce with fish was going to deter the students. I am happy to report that I did not experience that at all. Overall, we received almost 100 ballots, which amounts to almost 300 samples of fish and sauce eaten without a single complaint. While all of the sauces were well-received, the 7th grade Rosemary Tropical Dash Sauce earned the most votes! The Tropical Dash Sauce recipe was sent to Mellissa Honeywood and is listed on the May Cambridge school lunch menu.

On May 16th, the Rosemary Tropical Dash sauce was served with the local and sustainable redfish in cafeterias across Cambridge. The students in our elective were beaming with pride and kept telling all of their friends, “I made that!” Our students weren’t the only ones who loved the sauce. By the end of lunch, the other students were scraping the bottles to get out every last drop. I even overheard one student ask, “can I buy this in stores?”

At the end of it all, I hope the kids are taking away some new interest in science and engineering, a deeper understanding of recipe development, and  – most of all –  the belief that their opinions matter and have the power to help shape their school food environment.

The post Vassal Lane Culinary Engineers Perfect Pairing with Sauce Off appeared first on FoodCorps.

1) Lentils are good for you.  Many people know they contain protein and fiber, but did you know pound per pound they have more iron than ground beef, more antioxidants than blueberries, and more potassium than a banana? Holy health food, Batman…get out your spoon!

2) They’re cheap. Buying dried lentils doesn’t cost much…cost  of nutritious food can make it a challenge to eat healthy. Lentils are cheap and have a shelf life that can rival Twinkies, but without added preservatives.  Dried lentils can sit in a jar in your cabinet for years.  Unlike beans, they cook quickly so there is no need to soak them overnight (which I personally can never seem to remember to do).

3) They’re delicious and people love them. In Ronan School District #30, we set out to introduce students to lentils.

Shh…don’t tell, but our food service director has been sneaking lentils into meals with ground beef to increase the nutritional value of meals for years!

This year we decided to take them center stage.  Second graders made lentil taco salad, flavoring lentils with their own homemade taco seasoning and eating it with chips, tomato, lettuce, and salsa. One student asked, “Can we make this again next time?”  while another student said, “This is the best day ever.”

We took it to the district level and taste tested Montana taco lentil beef. Out of all the students, 657 students loved it, 56 liked it, and 32 brave souls tried it, but didn’t like it yet. The next week in the lunch line, a student asked food service staff when they could  expect to eat lentils again.

Then in class students made their own Montana red lentil hummus. Hummus is a new food for many of our students. It went over poorly in a taste test earlier in the year. However, after making hummus with their own hands, the tables turned.  Pablo After School Club had a 100% “loved it” rate. Much to my amusement, more than one student licked globs of hummus off their plate when the dipping chips and carrots were gone.

4) They’re good for the land. Lentils, like other legumes fix nitrogen into the soil.  It may sound crazy, but lentil roots have houses for bacteria to live in.  To pay rent, these bacteria use nitrogen taken out of the air, a product that is useless to a plant, and transform it into a form of nitrogen that plants can’t live without. Most plants, including wheat, take nitrogen out of the soil to grow, and leave the soil depleted. Instead of depleting the soil, lentils add nitrogen to the soil.  Therefore, lentils are a good crop to rotate with wheat and many other crops.  They reduce the amount of nitrogen that needs to be added to the soil. They can also reduce pest and weed problems that can come with growing the same crop in one place for a long time.  Many organic growers in Montana choose to grow lentils for these reasons. If you are interested in learning more about this I recommend a book called Lentil Underground by Liz Carlisle.

5) They’re shaped like flying saucers. A surprisingly good selling point with eight year olds!

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“You can’t make chips from apples!”
“Wait, these are orange.”

These were just a few reactions to our healthy snacking lesson in my first grade class at Mackenzie Elementary-Middle School in Detroit. The students were all very familiar with potato chips and couldn’t help but shout out their favorites. None of them, however, could tell me what was in them or where they came from. This led into a great educational moment. We talked about how potatoes grow and the processing that happens when they are made into potato chips. They saw how the vegetables we could grow and pull from the ground were no longer nutritious. This led into a discussion on what healthy snacking means, and we brainstormed healthy snacks we could eat instead of potato chips. I then brought out the apple and sweet potato chips and was met with some very confused faces.

“You just told us chips aren’t healthy!”

This was true. At least I knew they were listening.

So we then talked about how these chips were made, and I brought out the dehydrator to demonstrate. The only ingredients in our chips were sweet potatoes and apples; we did not add oil, salt or sugar to them. I showed them how the fruits and vegetables could be cut into thin pieces, laid on the drying trays and turned into chips.

Then came the best part: the taste test. Each student got to try apple and sweet potato chips. There was definitely some hesitation, but it quickly went away. They realized how crunchy they were and how naturally sweet the apples tasted. Then I heard “Can we have seconds?”

One student asked me to just leave the bowl of chips at his desk as he exclaimed, “I want to eat all the apple chips!”

I was also able to connect this lesson back to our school garden and explain how these fruits and vegetables grow. We compared the apple and sweet potato and learned how the apple was a “top” and grew above the ground, and the sweet potato was a “bottom” and grew underground. I drew a picture on the board, and each student then took a turn to tell me their favorite fruit and vegetable. Then we figured out where it grew too. As we went around the room, I added these new fruits and vegetables to our picture. We had a very full garden by the end! The students were really excited when they figured out where their favorites came from. I then passed out coloring sheets so they could take the information home to their families.

Sometimes all you need to engage a group of kids is sitting right in front of you. For me, that was apples and sweet potatoes. Both of these had just been harvested from our farm and garden sites. This year we have 78 school gardens and two farm sites as part of the Detroit School Garden Collaborative (DSGC). DSGC is a Farm to School initiative sponsored by The Detroit Public School’s Office of School Nutrition and The Office of Science. I am fortunate enough to be one of two FoodCorps service members with this program. FoodCorps partners with organizations like DSGC that are working for the common mission to connect kids to real food to help them grow up healthy. This year, we were able to grow over 15 different crops at Drew Farms, a three acre site at Drew Transition Center. Drew Farms produced over 20,000 pounds of food this past year that was distributed directly to cafeterias, as well as community farm stands and food pantries.

Many of our classroom cooking lessons have been centered on what we have available from the farm and gardens. For example, we had an abundance of curly kale at our ½ acre farm at Mackenzie Elementary-Middle School this fall. A few weeks later we had green smoothie lessons, where students were able to try a new vegetable and learn about local foods. Most students had never tried kale before, and I was met with some “yucks” because of the green color. Then I compared it to collard greens, which the class was more familiar with, and we learned how it helps keep our teeth and bones strong. All my students then tried our kale smoothies, and I was met with many thumbs up and hilarious smoothie mustaches. I still have classes that ask when our next smoothie day will be. If it was up to my fourth graders, that would be every week.

I have also been able to make Salsa Verde with a class that harvested green tomatoes from their outdoor classroom in southwest Detroit, as well as making Rainbow Wraps with spinach grown in our high tunnels at Drew Farms. Through the Detroit School Garden Collaborative, students all across the city are learning what it means to eat healthy and that they can grow vegetables right at their school. This program truly is making a difference, and I am very grateful to be a part of it.

The post Getting a Taste of Detroit appeared first on FoodCorps.

“Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.”

– Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

I believe that showing appreciation and kindness to others is one of the most important and influential acts that a person can make. Gratitude is everything. As a FoodCorps service member working in a low-income, minimally-funded community, gratitude keeps my program running. During the day, I funnel all of my energy into getting my students to learn how to eat healthy foods and grow their own, but at the end of the day, my second job is to give thanks to those who make it possible.

Seeing these K-8 kids succeed in becoming happy and healthy human beings is my greatest hope for this work. I have gratitude for every kid who tries a new fruit or vegetable — no matter how funny they think it looks or smells. I have gratitude for my family, who raised me to show love and respect to all people, myself, and my body, through the act of eating well. And I especially have gratitude for all of the community support I receive in my service.

In order to express my deep thanks for this generosity, I interviewed 9 people who all play a role in my service. These people are dedicated, skilled, hard-working and genuinely care about their work. Without them, I couldn’t do what I do everyday (or, maybe I could…just not as seamlessly and it definitely wouldn’t be as much fun!)

Allee Steinberg, Two Bites Bakery, Prescott Farmers Market

Greatest Passion: Local foods!

Secret Superpower: Quick Thinker. “My brain is filled with useless information, that comes in handy sometimes. Customers at the market ask the strangest questions. It’s good if you can come up with a fairly believable answer.”

Hope Wilson, Family, Consumer and Health Sciences, Cooperative Extension

Greatest Passion: Learning and teaching new things.

Secret Superpower: Strategic. “ I love coming up with new ideas as part of a group. Being strategic helps me think about how actions now might impact goals and objectives in the future.”

Katie McDaniel, Health Educator, Yavapai County Community Health Services

Greatest Passion: Education.

Secret Superpower: Kindness. “As much as possible, it’s so important to be warm and understanding with both kids and adults. Showing kindness oftentimes is undervalued.”
Kelley Villa, Market Manager, Prescott Farmers Market

Greatest Passion: Food Justice.

Secret Superpower: Strength. “I get both mental and physical endurance from my hot yoga practice. It’s super handy while balancing two jobs and keeping a smile on my face!”

Pamela Liuzzo, Nutritionist, Humboldt Unified School District

Greatest Passion: Family and Community Health.

Secret Superpower: Wellness. “It’s a way of life. Students are more likely to listen to what you have to say if they know you practice what you preach.”

Paul Katan, Grants Director, Prescott Unified School District

Greatest Passion: Healthy Food Access.

Secret Superpower: Chef! “My secret superpower is being able to cook for a lot of people, it’s true! Having done this through social services, restaurants and for family events, my superpower helps me connect with others through the cultural language of food!”
Rebecca Serratos, SNAP-Ed Program Coordinator, Cooperative Extension

Greatest Passion: Sustainable, local foods.

Secret Superpower: Chameleon. “No really, it’s true! I have the uncanny ability to be able to fit in and flow with a variety of people and situations.  In order to see any of my dreams and goals realized I need to be open to who I come in contact with and conscious of how I treat them.”

Sharmel Jordan, Health Education Coordinator, Yavapai County Community Health Services

Greatest Passion: Supporting local farmers.

Secret Superpower: Practice what you preach. “I personally believe in what I teach about nutrition and believe in supporting health prevention, I think we are responsible for our health and living a balanced life keeps us happy and healthy.”
Tami Hitt-Wyant, Director of Food and Nutrition, Humboldt Unified School District

Greatest Passion: Student Health.

Secret Superpower: Budgeting for Health. “I don’t know if it is a super power, but being a working Mom gives me perspective. I have always had a passion for child nutrition, but having two of those children as my own really makes it personal.”

Several people who responded are members of the Prescott Farmers Market Board of Directors and others are members of Yavapai Seasonal Harvest, a collaborative effort to promote fruit and vegetable consumption and local agriculture in Yavapai County. Thank you all for your passions, secret superpowers, and making this community a great place to serve!

What are you grateful for today?

The post Practicing Gratitude appeared first on FoodCorps.

Yesterday I taste tested some fresh parsley and dill from the greenhouse. As I was passing out samples of the herbs, the janitor came up to me and said, “You know, the kids might like those greens if you cooked them in something, but they’ll never like them on their own.” With pride, I was able to show him the ‘Tried It, Liked It, Loved It’ and show him how many stickers students had put in the loved it box. “Well, how old were those students?” “K-5!” He stood corrected.

We have so many assumptions about what young people will or will not eat. The second I give them the chance to try new things I am always astounded by the positive feedback! Now I wonder how the culture that is created in taste tests can be recreated every day when students receive school lunch.

The post Try New Things appeared first on FoodCorps.

A huge grin broke out on Mateo’s face when he tried a Fugi apple in a taste test. After his remark, the third grader was up on his feet in a flash and busted out his best dance moves. When his 5 second dance party was over, he calmly sat down and ate the rest of his apple slices while smiling from ear to ear.

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