Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden (SAKG)

We are very excited to have 12 fertile eggs in an incubator to hatch. We will have to wait 14 more days before they hatch and even more to find out if they are boys or girls. In Monash council we are not allowed to keep rosters and we have a school in Gippsland that will take them who breed their chooks.  After the chickens hatch, they will live under lights in a small enclosure indoors until they are around 3 months old in which they will go in a smaller cage within the chook pen. 

They will need a family to care for them over the holidays in their indoor enclosure, If you would like to help, please let Ms McIlroy know. bronwyn.mcilroy@education.vic.gov.au

 The 5/6s are working on designs to extend the far end of the chook pen and will build after production as they will still be too small to allow to free range and might get through the wire on the oval side of the chook pen. 

This project was going to be at the start of term 3 but fertile eggs were in demand. The 

This experience is fascinating to watch and a good lesson in life cycles and life and death as not every egg will hatch and every chick might not survive. Hopefully we get some beautiful chickens to add to our lovely girls. 

In the Kitchen

We have continued looking at the Science of Taste over the past month and have explored the cuisines that use particular ingredients to enhance flavours in dishes. 

The Year 5/6s have enjoyed recipes from Vietnamese cuisine that embrace the 'salty' taste sensation (think soy and fish sauces) - wok tossed vegetables, baked potatoes with herb salts and sea salt lime biscuits. The Year 3/4s will enjoy these in Week 9 as they were away at the district athletics. 

This week we learnt how Indian cuisine uses lots of bitter herbs and spices (bitter to the taste when had on their own) to produce flavoursome recipes such as vegetable samosas and many of us tried kale chips for the very first time... massaging the leaves with olive oil before baking in the oven or air-fryer is the trick to eliminate the bitter taste!