Kitchen Garden Update

In the Kitchen

It’s been a delicious month in the Kitchen, with our Year 3 and 4 students cooking their way through some perfect winter soup recipes. We’ve made Jerusalem artichoke and potato soup and a hearty minestrone soup, which included Warrigal greens, tromboncino zucchini and herbs, including parsley, native thyme and oregano, harvested from our own garden. Students even made their own vegetable stock and froze it for the next group to use in their recipes.

Students have also been busy making bread rolls, learning about kneading, proving and shaping the dough. We experimented with traditionally shaped rolls as well as rolling them into a sausage shape and forming a knot, before seasoning them with our delicious SKiPPS herb and salt seasoning that we made last year using dried herbs from the garden.

For dessert, we made my favourite, apple crumble with custard. The apples were left over from the free fruit generously donated to us by Woolworths. Rather than letting them go to waste, we stewed and froze them last term, ready to use in our cooking this term. It was a great example of making the most of the food we have and reducing food waste.

Throughout this round of sessions, students have continued to build their confidence with chopping, measuring, following recipes, working as a team and, of course, sitting down and sharing the food they have made together.

Want to try some of our Kitchen Garden favourites at home?

You can find the recipes here. 

In the Garden

Our Garden groups have been rotating through three different activities each week, giving students the opportunity to explore different parts of our garden and learn some of the many jobs involved in caring for it. Students have spent time exploring our Indigenous garden, identifying some of the weeds growing around our school and learning more about them. Under adult supervision, some students even got to taste some of the edible weeds. We reminded them that this must only be done from a garden you know, with adult permission.

They have also been caring for our worm farms and chickens, as well as sorting and organising the food waste from our Kitchen sessions for composting. This gives students a chance to see the whole cycle in action, from growing and harvesting food, to cooking and eating it, and finally returning our food scraps to the garden through worms and compost. This week, one of the groups from 3E also witnessed a chickens lay an egg!

The Joy of Trying Something New

One of the loveliest pieces of feedback we received recently was from a parent of a student who can a fussy eater at home. They shared that through Kitchen Garden, their child has tried many foods they would never have been willing to try and has even come home excited to announce some new foods they now enjoy. They also told us how proud their family has been to see them becoming more adventurous and willing to give unfamiliar foods a go.

This is such a wonderful reminder of one of the mottos of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program, schools providing a ‘pleasurable food education’. We never expect students to love everything we cook, but we encourage them to have a taste, be curious and give new things a try, while sharing the experience with their friends. Seeing students grow in confidence around food is one of the most rewarding parts of the program.

 Our Wonderful Volunteers!

As always, a huge thank you to the many parents, grandparents and family members who volunteer their time to help with our Kitchen and Garden sessions. Over the past month, we’ve welcomed some new helpers, some people who have swapped or filled in at the last minute, as well as many familiar faces who have volunteered with us numerous times before. We are so grateful to all of you!

We simply couldn’t run the program in the same way without our volunteers. Having extra adults allows us to cook ambitious menus, work safely in small groups and offer such a wide variety of hands on Garden activities. Thank you for chopping, washing dishes, digging, supervising, encouraging and enthusiastically joining in with whatever job comes your way, even if it does involve worms and rotting fruit!

We are always looking for Kitchen and Garden helpers. You can add your name to the volunteer roster here.

We are looking very light on volunteers for 4Js session next week, 24/08 so if your circumstances have changed and you can spare some time, we would really appreciate it. You will be compensated with delicious fresh pasta!

Our chickens also need some love on weekends and some days during the school week. As an added bonus, if you sign up for chicken duty, you get to keep the eggs you collect!

You can sign up for the chicken helper roster here. 

Thank you for continuing to support our Kitchen Garden program and helping us provide these wonderful experiences for our students.

Chantel and Alli