Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden 

Sonia Nista  

Kitchen Specialist

Bianca Tondo

Garden Specialist

News from The Patch café

It’s so good to see the students back in our kitchen, they are very keen to find out what delicious dishes they will be creating this year. At the moment, our students are spending their first Kitchen sessions practicing their knife skills, to be safe and ready to get back to doing what they love! When all kitchen students have participated in Knife Safety, each class will be issued their knife licence to proudly display in their classroom.

This year we will celebrate food around the world, and I would like to invite families to contribute by sending through recipes that are culturally dear to them. Our menus will still be seasonal and generally meat-free, so if you have a recipe to share, please email it to me at Sonia.Nista@education.vic.gov.au

This week I held our very first Masterclass for our parents. Together we made pasta dough from scratch and learned to make hand-cut Tagliatelle. Our pasta was topped with a delicious tomato sauce which we served with Greek Salad and shared Pear Crumble muffins for dessert. We used our own fresh eggs, spring onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers all from our garden - The Patch. Lots of fun was had by all and I hope it is the first of many more to come. 

Now more than ever, it's important to keep our connections as a community, for ourselves as parents but also our children. Volunteering in the SAK program is another great way to connect with other parents and share some special time with your children. 

The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program relies heavily on volunteers, without them we wouldn’t be able to run the amazing program that we do. Kitchen/Garden classes run on Mondays for years 3 and 4 students and Tuesdays for years 5 and 6. So far I have had some responses to my call out for helpers, but we desperately need more, especially for our year 3 and 4 classes.

We welcome mums, dads, grandparents, or friends within our local community. Volunteers must hold a current Working With Children Check (WWCC) and complete our Classroom Helper Training program.

For more information, please email me, or pop into the kitchen after school on a Monday or a Tuesday, I would love to show you around.

Stay safe and happy cooking!

News from The Patch

Hello! My name is Bianca, and I will be the Garden Specialist for Term One. 

It is so exciting to see families back on site and wandering through our beautiful grounds and taking in the wonderful vegetable garden that has grown over the summer.

We have an abundance of cucumbers, jack zucchini and lebanese zucchini, squash, corn, and a huge variety of tomatoes.

If you’ve wandered through the garden, you will notice that the chicken coop is looking a little different. This is because we are getting ready to introduce new hens to the coop. When introducing new hens to an established flock you need to do so slowly to ensure they will get along!

In classes, we have been reviewing the garden and tool safety to make sure we are all up to speed on how to be safe when in the garden. I am looking forward to teaching the students about planting seeds and seedlings, composting, and harvesting. I hope they learn to love gardening as much as I do.