Dear CSA Members,
Last week I had the pleasure of teaching a cooking class at Nixon Elementary. There was a point in my life where I was a full time educator for elementary to middle school age children, and cooking with the kids at Nixon Elementary made me remember how excited and present children can be about learning.
In the Bay Area, it seems that many children are accustomed to eating healthy food. But, there are still many children that have palates restricted to sweet and salty. Changing children’s minds on how they perceive healthy food, especially vegetables, is very important to me. Therefore, whenever I am assigned to do a cooking class, I like to teach recipes that showcase seasonal produce.
For this cooking class I wanted to highlight the seasonal ingredients from Frog Hollow Farm. So I harvested a handful of beautiful pomegranates, collected some deliciously sweet, tart and crisp Pink Lady apples and brought along some of our buttery extra virgin olive oil. To complement these ingredients I decided to go with the beloved green, kale. I love using kale for cooking demos with kids for a couple reasons. The first being that most kids have heard of kale, and while a few love it, others think they hate it. Secondly, because it is a tough, sturdy green that is made more palatable by being torn and massaged. Which is perfect when there are 44 little hands grabbing at the greens.
We divided the kids into seven groups. Each group made their own salad following the process of de-stemming, tearing, and massaging the kale, de-seeding the pomegranates, and grating the cheese. I then showed them a quick demo of how to make a healthy salad dressing using Frog Hollow Farm olive oil, shallots, a little vinegar, and the extra pomegranate juice. I went around to each group and sprinkled a little salt and drizzled some dressing over their salads. The kids mixed the ingredients together and the teachers helped to serve them the salads that they had prepared.
At the beginning of the class one of the teachers asked the kids “who likes kale?” some of the kids raised their hands and others made a stink face. At the end of the class most of the kids had cleaned their plates and were excited about teaching their parents how to prepare the recipe. I am gaining the reputation of the salad lady at their school, and I am okay with that!
– Chef Anna
