Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden

SAKGP Garden and Kitchen Programme 

News - from the kitchen & garden with Chris and Eve

Our cooking and gardening classes are each Tuesday

We would love to have more volunteers in both the garden and kitchen classes.

No garden or kitchen skills required, enthusiasm to support the students as they learn is all you need.

If you would like to know more, come into the office and see Chris (Principal)

Gardening with Eve

This week the P/1 and 2/3 classes focussed on planting out the many native daisies and grasses that the kids propagated last term.  The Prep/1s had asked, earlier in the year, to create garden beds down in the Outdoor Investigations area where they like to build and play, so we have been working on establishing some beds there and have also been planting native everlastings around the new trees.  I had taught the students how to correctly and gently remove the plants from their pots, prepare holes and add fertiliser, I was super impressed at how well they all did this and how expertly our seedlings were planted! A group of kids took on the job of filling watering cans and making sure that all of our new plants got a soak, while another group pulled weeds and went to visit the chickens to give them a feed of greens.

The 2/3 class focussed their energy on planting out the beds in the Fairy Garden - planting a big patch of Billy buttons around the Forest Pansy Tree and multiple patches of native everlastings throughout the area.  A group of students tackled the long garden beds along the Lyell Street fence, planting out local Poa grasses and some winged everlastings.  We’ll be adding some more native daisies to this strip too.  We grew A LOT of them! 

We had Cam working with the garden classes again this week.  Cam is doing community placement as part of his Bio Med course and has loved it so much that he is thinking about staying on til the end of the year!  It’s great to have an extra helper and the kids are enjoying working with him in garden classes.

The 4/5s had a ‘Chicken Therapy’ session this week. We made our way to the orchard and had some quiet time hanging out with the chickens and ducks and doing some weaving.  Some students are still working on their bike wheel spinners while others learnt how to make ‘gods eyes’, which we are using to decorate the tree in the 4/5 tea garden.  Merry was an excellent teacher and showed quite a few of the other students how to make these simple, fun weavings.

Alfie and Henry didn’t feel like doing any weaving and asked instead to be my ‘garden slaves’ (lol) and do any garden jobs that needed doing so they helped me bottle and label up some more worm wee fertiliser and refill the produce cart.  It’s been so popular, we can’t keep up with demand! 

I had a meeting in the afternoon with Emily from Resource Smart schools who is going to be running some incursions for us - one day of nature journaling and a session on water bugs as a taster (not literally) for the River Detectives programme which the school will participate in next year.  This will be optional, so kids who are interested can sign up for it in 2026.  

Huge thanks to Sam and Yael for coming to do some weeding in garden club.  It’s a big help.

A shout out to Becky and Ali who took our remaining tomatoes to Woolies, Castlemaine and raised an extra $500! Whoop! 

Cooking with Chris

This week in Cooking, Grade 5 and 6 made an Indian Feast of Potato and Silverbeet Torte, Vegetable Samosas, Vegetable Pakoras, Yoghurt and Sesame Sauce and Green Chutney. As we had a smaller class than usual, everyone had lots of preparing and cooking to do for the Indian Feast.

From the garden we used eggs, silverbeet, kale, coriander, mint, spring onions, chives, greens, parsley, celery, broccoli and pumpkin.

Anais, Chloe (Corny) and Elsie made the Potato and Silverbeet Torte. They made the pastry, kneaded it and let it rest and then Elsie and Corny used the scales to divide the pastry into 2/3 and 1/3 for the base and top of the Torte.  While the pastry was resting, they prepared and chopped the silverbeet, greens and herbs and Elsie grated the cheeses for the filling. Lee-Anne peeled and chopped the potatoes so they could be boiled and then chopped into pieces.  Anais used a tea towel to make sure all the moisture was squeezed out of the silverbeet before adding it to the eggs, cheeses and herbs for the filling.   After recess they did a great job of rolling out the pastry and putting together the Potato and Silverbeet Torte ready for cooking.

Dante, James and Lenny had the job of making the Vegetable Samosas.  James measured out all the ingredients and made the special samosa pastry by melting the butter in boiling water and mixing it with the flour  and kneading it very well. He did a great job as the pastry was very soft. Dante and Lenny washed, peeled and chopped the potatoes into small pieces and steamed them, then mixed them with the steamed pumpkin, herbs and spices.  They cooled the mixture ready for us to make the Vegetable Samosas after recess.

Patrick, Levi, Tahj and Andrew worked with Scott to make the Vegetable Pakoras.  They chopped and grated the pumpkin, potato, carrots, herbs and cabbage and then made the chickpea batter to bind the vegetables.  After recess, they worked well together to cook the Pakoras in the frypan in batches. 

Lizzy and Grace and Levi made the Yoghurt and Sesame Sauce and the Green Chutney. For the Green Chutney they harvested the herbs, spring onions and coriander that’s been growing so well in the Hothouse over winter.  They did a great job of washing and chopping the herbs then using the food processor to mix it and create the delicious chutney. They toasted spices and sesame seeds and mixed them with yoghurt to make the Yoghurt and Sesame Sauce.

After recess we worked in groups to roll out the pastry and make the Vegetable Samosas. The teams finished of their cooking tasks and while the Samosas and Potato and Silverbeet Torte were baking, cleaned up, washed the dishes and set the table and prepared the serving dishes.

Grade 5 and 6 all worked very well in their teams to make the delicious Indian Feast and enjoyed the delicious food they made.  The extra Vegetable Samosas they made, Lizzie took back to the classroom for their afternoon tea.

Here’s what the Tahj and Grace shared about their cooking and the dishes they made.

I cooked the Pakoras with Patrick, Andrew and Levi, they were good! Tahj

The Yoghurt and Sesame sauce I made with Lizzy, first tasted sour, then nutty from the sesame seeds and then you could taste the mint. Grace

Well done everyone, and thanks Scott and Lee-Anne, it was a great cooking session.

Recipes and photos below