Chatham Primary School

Kitchen Garden

Since beginning our Kitchen Garden sessions from Term 1, it has been amazing to witness how the change in seasons has shaped our produce in our Chatham vegetable garden. We have almost come full circle in observing the transformation of our produce. Each year level has contributed to maintaining, producing and harvesting our prolific vegetables. The magic of seeing plants grow from tiny seeds to seedlings and then finally maturing to full size has been fascinating. At the moment, our coriander, rocket, radish, silver beet and parsley have all started to produce seeds. This will allow our students to collect and save the seeds to replant next year. 

 

Spring has come with both consistent rain and days of warm weather, which has allowed our produce to thrive! A big contributor to our garden’s success has been our composting system. The students in Years 1/2 do an amazing job of collecting all the compost containers from each classroom every week and adding their contents to our big compost bins. It takes time for it all to break down and become usable, but we have produced more than enough for our needs this year, in terms of topping up all of our garden beds and giving our plants the nutrients they need. Thank you goes out to Katie Barnett, who keeps a close eye on our compost bins, popping in during school holidays and giving it all a good stir. This ensures we have enough dry ingredients to balance out the wet.

 

This week our Foundation students have harvested silver beet, parsley, spring onions, mint, lemons, lettuce leaves, beetroot and potatoes. With these ingredients we then had a fabulous cooking session, making frittata cups, potato salad and tzatziki dip. Simple, fresh ingredients along with basic pantry items created a delicious meal for all to enjoy. For dessert, our students enjoyed sliced up juicy, sweet oranges from our own orchard. Once again, a big thank you to the parents, carers and special friends who volunteered to assist us during this session. We are very appreciative of the support and we would struggle to run our sessions without it. 

 

As we are growing more herbs and vegetables then we will use, we are planning a Harvest Market Sale soon. Look out for more information via Compass in the weeks to come. Proceeds from our sale will go towards new garden gloves for our students.

 

Enjoy!

Leda Semercioglu

Kitchen Garden Coordinator 

Frittata Cups

Ingredients

6 eggs

¼ cup milk

1 cup of grated tasty cheese

1 cup of chopped silver beet

2 spring onions, chopped

5 stems of parsley, chopped

 

Method 

  1. In a bowl, place eggs and whisk.
  2. Add in milk and tasty cheese, and stir to combine.
  3. Add all other fresh ingredients.
  4. Spray muffin tins with oil.
  5. Spoon mixture into each muffin cup, filling to 3/4 full.
  6. Cook in a pre-heated oven for approximately 15-20 minutes, on 190 degrees, or until golden on top.
  7. This recipe will make 12 frittata cups.

Enjoy!

 

Potato Salad

Ingredients

8 boiled potatoes

6 stalks of mint, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 teaspoon of mustard

1 teaspoon of honey

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

 

Method

Dice potatoes. 

  1. In a small bowl, place oil, mustard, honey, lemon juice and mint, and stir to combine.
  2. Add potatoes into the mustard dressing.

Enjoy!

 

Tzatziki Dip

 

Ingredients

2 cups of grated cucumber

1 ½ cups of plain Greek yogurt

1 tablespoon of dried mint

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

1 medium clove of garlic, crushed 

A pinch of sea salt (optional)

 

Method

  1. Prepare all ingredients and mix all together in a bowl.
  2. Lightly drizzle olive oil on top of the Tzatziki dip.

Enjoy!