Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden 2025

Welcome to a new term and the start of our final term for the year. Last week we started the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program with our last class for the year which is 3/4K. They have embraced the program with excitement and an enthusiasm to learn new skills. With this beautiful spring weather, we hope the vegetables grow in abundance and give us lots of produce for the remaining five weeks.

Last week, the students went to great effort to design and colour in their placemats that will be used when we set the tables for eating each week. Some wonderful designs and work in the pictures below. In the garden this week, Rod (our maintenance man) gave us some watermelon and pumpkin seedlings that we planted in our open space behind the garden shed. These proved to be very successful last year as we were blessed with heaps of pumpkins and a few huge watermelons that we used in the kitchen earlier this year.

In the kitchen, we cooked up tasty spaghetti with spinach, ANZAC biscuits, crunchy salads, pastries and tasty savoury scrolls. We always ask that the students at least try the foods we make. They don’t have to like them, but giving it a try is really important. Especially as our taste buds are constantly changing and foods taste different in different recipes.

If you are free to help in the kitchen from 11:40 - 1:40pm on any of the Tuesdays, via Seesaw or at tsiegert@smdingley.catholic.edu.au

Arigatou!

Mrs Tammie Siegert

Favourite Recipes:

Student Reflections:

Isla - Day 1 (7.10.25) This is the first cooking session! Today my group(eggplants) made the main meal! We made spaghetti! I chopped garlic and grated cheese! Our group's helpers today were Karen and Aaron( Pia Scalzo's dad) . I love chopping up garlic! The way I chopped up the garlic was I diced it! The dip with cream cheese,crushed pineapple and spring onion. The Tomato group had lettuce, corn, tomato, olive, onion and dressing with olive oil vinegar and sugar for salad.

Jacob - For Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden. Zucchini made Dips. Tomatoes made bread. Carrots made Salad and eggplants made the main course pasta. I tried olive oil with vinegar and sugar and it didn't taste that good. But it was very fun cooking.

Juliana - During my session of cooking, I baked ANZAC biscuits with Ella, John, Alek and Angus. We used things like sugar, oats, coconut powder and golden syrup. I really enjoyed not only working with my group, but seeing everyone using teamwork and helping each other to make the food delicious! I really enjoyed mixing and pouring in all the ingredients with everyone in my group.

Marcus - For Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden we have to get the ingredients for each group then each group is assigned for a specific meal and then we cook the meal with the ingredients and cut the ingredients then one group sets up the table and the three other ones when the tables and cutlery is set up by a group then we eat the food we made:D

Charlie - Today I made a salad while cooking.

Livansh - I stirred pasta which was a hot thing to do and you have to be supervised. Also I stirred garlic to make it brown and I slipped the spoon and it fell into the pot of hot things and it burned. Then my hands were sore because I was stirring noodles which were cheesy and tasty.

Thalia - I really liked it and it was really fun. Learning to cook was really interesting and I found cutting the tomatoes really hard but I still did and it was really hard but I liked the challenge.

Alex - I made ANZAC biscuits and almost everything we needed was sticky! I liked making it because I had to shape the dough into spheres. I liked that we were making ANZAC cookies because I kind of like it. I had to but the ANZAC dough balls far away from each other because if I didn't then after we cook it then it all be connected together. I really liked cooking the ANZAC biscuits and I liked stirring it because it felt so squishy.

Angus - I made salad. It was hard, but fun too. I juiced a lemon with John and Alek. I was in the tomato group. Zucchinis made a burrito thing. Carrots made a vegetable scroll. Juliana shaved a lot of potatoes and Ella cut a lot of stuff.

Thalia - I made vegetable bread scrolls and it was very fun. What I found challenging was kneading the dough. I enjoyed the challenge. I love it and I can’t wait to do it again.

Alannah - Today in cooking my group [carrots] and zucchini did gardening. In gardening we planted new plants and watered all the baby seedlings. In the actual cooking, we made the bread. Me and Ryan had to cut onions. I learnt how challenging it is to cut onions without crying. For our dishes today we are having easy bread rolls, roasted capsicum dip, creaming spinach and silverbeet rolls and for salad we are having potato salad. Overall I had so much fun and I think the food will be great.

Aston - My challenges were not trying to cry when I was cutting the onion. The part that I enjoyed was when we were pasting the egg on the pastry. What I learned is to not wipe your eyes when you're cutting onions.

Danica - During the lesson I overcame some challenges. Such as the strong aroma of the onions making me cry. Forcing me to go outside for a while to let my eyes cool down.

Something that I learnt was how strong the aroma of some vegetables are, your eyes tear up as the aroma of the onions is extremely strong! What I enjoyed the most was chopping the capsicum. It sounded very satisfying while it was being chopped into pieces. I’d do it again a million times! I also enjoyed kneading the dough with my hands, it was like playing with slime. Very sticky though!

Livansh - Today I made the main meal. I made creamy cheese and silverbeet scrolls which was very fun and challenging. The thing that I found challenging was cutting the onions. It was so hard because my eyes were watering which was even harder to cut. The other thing that I cut was silverbeet. It was easy and satisfying. The Eggplants made roasted capsicum dip, the Carrots made bread scrolls, the Tomatoes made potato salad. My group did gardening! We planted plants and seedlings and took out weeds. It was so fun. Then we had to get seedlings and plant them then water them which was really challenging and fun.

Jacob K - Today in the kitchen garden we made some yummy stuff. My group made bread scrolls, Zucchini's made the main meal which was spinach pastries. Eggplants made the dip. The tomatoes made potato salad. I enjoyed my time cooking. I also got to do gardening today. My group and the Zucchini’s did gardening today. We watered, planted plants and we also took weeds out of the garden.

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