VCAL FOOD TRUCK FESTIVAL – 29TH AUGUST – 2022

Throughout term 3 students in year 12 VCAL have prepared our first ever Food Truck Festival. It saw students working in teams to cook and prepare a three course tasting experience for a culture of their choice. Each team was made up of students from the year 12 VCAL cohort, across the classes and they spent time experimenting with different recipes, surveys were taken asking the student body what cuisines they would like to sample from and food truck replicas were designed. The result was our first ever, successful food truck festival where all foods were sold out. The cultures represented and their foods were as follows…

Italian:

Cheese and garlic pizza, spaghetti and meatballs and Nutella calzone

Polynesian:

Steamed chicken buns, chop suey with taro and panikeke (pineapple droughts)

Greek:

Spanakopita, lemon potato wedges and baklava

Chinese:

Prawn crackers, steamed rice and honey and soy chicken

Mexican:

Guacamole and corn chips, taco and chiros and chocolate sauce

Congratulations to all of our year 12 VCAL students for their preparations and determinations leading up to and on the day. Special thank you to Bunnings Melton for gifting the group materials to construct the trucks, Mr Tom Cullum for working so hard to cut out and put together the trucks, Ms Nesa Tuaoi for all of her help in supporting our Polynesian team members, Ms Amanda Cabbin for working with the Greek team and Ms Brittany Tancread and Nicole Hardham who helped our Mexican and Chinese teams. Thank you to the College community including students, staff and families for supporting students on the day. What follows are some reflections from our year 12 students of the day…

…. I went straight into cooking the lemon potatoes with Lewis. We started pealing the potatoes and we were taking turns on cutting the potatoes, when I started cutting I looked up for a second then I went to cut the potato and I cut my finger down the side next to the nail. This scared the life out of me. I went to sick bay with Enzo and got a bandage on my finger, it wasn’t that bad. When I got back to the kitchen I went back to cooking even started helping other groups.

Once all our cooking was done, we started packing all the food into containers so we can sell them and then once all the containers were full we took them to the food truck site in the gym. Everyone sold out, we were the last group, the Greek group, the last ones standing and then all of a studding all our food was sold out…

Jamon

…During lunch on the 29th of August, the Kurunjang Secondary College’s year 12 VCAL students ran a food truck festival for our school community to enjoy and experience three different cuisines from a certain culture around the world for only $5. These cultures included Greek, Italian, Chinese, Mexican and finally Polynesian with a wide range of food for people to try. On the actual day students were lined up at the very moment the lunch time bell rang. All food trucks managed to sell out within the first 10 or so minutes, with the Mexican selling our first, Italian second and Chinse third. The VCAL students spent months and months attempting to run the most ideal food truck festival in our final term together. This included coming together as two classes to create groups and figure out the best meals to provide. Planning the advertisement and overall execution of the day (location, time, weather etc.) Painting and decorating our trucks to be the best possible appearance and cooking the whole day to attempt and meet the lunch time deadline. It’s safe to say our VCAL students managed to learn a number of skills that they can apply throughout life and jobs outside of school such as improved communication, teamwork, collaboration and so much more. Although this was the first time running the food truck festival at KSC, I think it’s safe to say it was extremely successful and will more than likely become a KSC tradition for all students to enjoy as a community.

Bianca

… we had to make meals for each culture, we made traditional Polynesian foods, they were chop suey, taro, beef buns, panikeke. We had lots to make but we made all of it in three hours. We also needed to paint our foodtruck so we needed to layout the truck how we liked, it become worrying for all of the us because we needed to paint a number of coats, but it looked great in the end. On the day we arrived at the college at 8am and had planned all our elements earlier so we knew what we needed to do. We observed the protection protocols, positioned our hair up, washed our hands, put on our aprons and then we had put together all of our foods. We overcame our boundaries throughout those moments however we had pulled through collectively has a team. After plating all our foods, we all walked over to the gym where it was time to promote our meals….

Lavilla

On the 29th of August we year 12 VCAL students had planned a food festival for the students at Kurunjang Secondary College. We planned for every culture to make a culture meal Polynesia made chop suey, taro, pork buns, panikeke. We had a lot of things to make however we made it all in 3 hours leading up to the festival. We also had to paint our foodtruck so we had to design the truck how we liked, it was stressful for all the groups because we had to do a lot of coats on the day of the festival we all got at school at 8am and had gathered all our ingredients before we started, we all followed the safety protocols, put our hair up, washed our hands, then we had prepare our meals one by one we overcame our obstacles during these moments but we had pulled through together has a team. After plating all our meals we all walked over to the gym and it was time to sell them all, all groups meals were all sold in half an hour! The first group that had sold out was the Mexican group they had chips, tortillas, everyone’s cuisines were delicious the students had said they had enjoyed the festival and the meals.

Simon

On the day we sold our food for our project, everybody tried their best to do anything so we can be able to achieve our project and we did it, that was including our teachers help buy organised the ingredients that we had listed in our chosen recipes. We were really thankful to them for their help to us in achieving our goals. We worked in a team to make the food on that day and then sell them during lunchtime. After we sold out, we really felt so happy and felt like we did something really big, achieved something we had been working so hard for. I learned that I have some skills that I didn’t know that I have such as communication, respect and more.

We were really glad that we managed to sell everything …

Maker

I arrived at school at 8:40 and went straight over to S7, when I got there Ms Sant and a few other students had already started setting out all the ingredients, I walked over and chose a table for my group to work at. Once all the other students arrived we had a group chat about how the day was going to go and at what times we were going to serve up the food and serve out the food, after that we all just started the cooking process. In my group I was in charge of Baklava, Riley was in charge of spanakopita and Jamon and Lewis were in charge of lemon potatoes. For the Baklava I first crushed the chocolate chips so they cooked a little bit better, I mixed in a little bit of cinnamon and then I started the layering process. Once the baklava was in the oven I went and helped out Jamon and Lewis as they needed some help and then once the potatoes were in the oven I helped out the Mexican group with their tacos. Once it hit 1:00pm we started serving up the food into the containers which is where we had an issue, there wasn’t enough spanakopita! It worked out ok in the end…

Kiara

On Monday the 29th August, year 12 VCAL held a food truck festival. We had 5 different dishes to choose from they were Greek Italian Polynesian Chinese Mexican. Leading up to the festival we had to figure out what to cook. We also practiced cooking the foods for weeks leading up to the day. I was in the Greek group and we made spanakopita, baked lemon potatoes and baklava. Mr Cullum made the trucks stands out of ply wood and then we painted them in the countries colours. I worked with Jamon making the baked lemon potatoes. Amanda and Riley made the spanakopita and Kiara made the baklava. The festival was fantastic all the foods sold out!

Lewis

I got there on Monday morning around 8 30am on the day and started cooking. I cooked the spanakopita with Amanda and Lewis cooked the potatoes with Jamon and Kiara cooked baklava, we were in the Greek group. It was a success, we cooked cleaned served efficiently that we all sold out it was a great day. Leading up to the festival we had to figure out what to cook, we went through some testing and obviously found the right food with a bit of trial and error we planned what day might look like and practiced all the cooking. We also made the trucks from plywood and painted them to stand behind them and serve it, ours looked great! I learnt that I’ve got some good cooking skills and can work with a team, I have great communication skills which I used to my advantage. I also observed others develop their confidence in there cooking. It was a great festival and ran really well, I would recommend it to be done again.

Riley

Monday the 29th of August the VCAL students were prepping and cooking food to serve students for the food truck festival. The VCAL students planned designs and cuisines for a food truck, we were all split up into 5 ethnicity groups, Greek, Polynesian, Italian, Chinese and Mexican. We set our goals and then from there worked out what we needed to do. Every Tuesdays we would have a double PDS where all VCAL students practiced their cooking, we even learned new skills, and even though VCAL students only come to school for three and half days a week, the festival was a huge success.

Faith

On Monday the 29th of August the year 12 VCAL students had planned the food truck festival, everyone had participated in making food from their own culture or background the groups we had was Chinese, Polynesia , Mexico, Italian and Greek all the VCAL students had to get at school by 8:00 in the morning to prepare their own individual ingredients, after prepping they started cooking there meals, everyone had to follow the safety protocols beforehand, VCAL students had to plate there meals and place the labels on the container, after plating the groups walked to the gym to sell the meals that went for $5 each. The week heading up to the festival there were a lot of preparations, groups had to paint their trucks, practice cooking their meals and how they were to plate it, it was a stress and worrying week before leading up to the big day. I think our festival was a big hit because we all got to showcase our meals and our culture to the whole school. We got to work together as a group, this was great but was also stressful, but we all came together to pull it off. We all learnt how to work as part of a group, how to be resilient and the most important one was we learned how to cook.

Hope

… was ran by the VCAL students and was a pretty eventful day. This consisted of 4 hours or a bit over of cooking time. There was a lot of preparation and practice in order for this event to run as smoothly as possible, this also included a lot of planning and rearranging especially with weather conditions. Each group had their own things to do and there was a variety of work skills involved such as communication, teamwork & leadership. We demonstrated these skills to each other which is also how we got a good result in the end with the festival. There were some issues though, it started raining and so we need to use our contingency plan for the wet weather, we moved the festival to the gym. There were some ups and downs in the kitchen, but we all worked together to overcome these problems which is what helped to make the day a good and successful project. … I would really recommend next year’s class continue this event, it’s a fun project but also really hard work and I am 100% positive that everyone who does this project will have the best experience during school!

Stephanie

Mrs Sant

Parent/Carer Mental Health Forum