The Children's Culinary Academy

Wrapping it Up

There's so much to report from the last two weeks (yes, I'm a little late with these posts!). We made a wide variety of amazing foods, including zucchini bread (after we discovered a forgotten zucchini in the garden that was nearly 5 pounds we had to do something with it), blueberry johnnycakes with blueberry syrup, berry quick bread, Mexican tinga (shredded chicken), Bread of the Dead, fruit pizza, roasted red pepper ravioli, ciabatta bread, gnocchi, breakfast burritos, and even some cream puffs and eclairs!

I think the tinga was one of the biggest hits, which surprised me because I honestly thought the sweet, aromatic Bread of the Dead would be the clear winner that day. One day we even made ice cream. That particular class had a lot of energy so they had no trouble jumping and hopping and rolling their way to fresh ice cream in a ziploc bag! They also made a delectable peach kuchen.

The garden is still going strong and we've finally been able to harvest the cantaloupes at their peak of ripeness (as opposed to all the other times we picked one only to find out it wasn't quite ready yet). They're small, but incredibly flavorful.
To add to the excitement, we are suddenly overrun with tomatoes! Big ones, red ones, purple ones, yellow ones, small ones, and teeny tiny ones too! Swiss chard continues to grow tall and strong, and we picked the last of the beets this week. Eggplants are putting on weight, and zucchini and yellow squash are abundant. We're still waiting for the miniature yellow bell peppers to 
turn yellow. They're close, just not quite there yet.

We'll be heading right into the fall program starting September 26th, so don't forget to head over to www.childrensculinary.com to sign up for the regular session as well as the special, 4th Annual Ghoulishious Grub Halloween Class!

Also an important note of thanks to Stephen, Emily, and Sarah for all their volunteer help this summer!! We couldn't have done it as smoothly or as effectively without them. I loved having them around all summer and I know the kids enjoyed being with them too. 

Have a wonderful last week of the summer everyone! Good luck with the start of the new school year, and stay in touch!! 

Nostalgia

Last week I was feeling nostalgic about the kids who have been with me from the beginning of the program. I've had the pleasure of watching them grow for three years. Many have moved from Rake and Bake to Green Teens this year, and they've done so seamlessly. A couple of the teens are becoming teachers and mentors to the younger kids, which is a joy to watch.  Sometimes I'm surprised by what they've retained. The kitchen is a comfort to many of them, and they don't seem to mind doing dishes, putting away equipment, or even cleaning before we leave for the day. I like having them around. They're funny and weird and self-assured in ways that only kids are. Sometimes I think I can see glimpses of their future selves. It's tempting to try to tell them what I see, but I know they won't understand and will look at me like I'm a three-headed squid, so instead I just observe and enjoy.

And because of this sort of sentimentality (sucker!) occasionally get roped into letting them make something crazy like doughnuts and soft pretzels.

Henry P., who has matured so dramatically over the past three summers that it caused me to experience some sort of mental break, was the catalyst. He mentioned how much he loved the soft pretzels we made last summer and asked if we could do them again this summer.  I acquiesced, which only served to empower him to make a more outrageous request. He then said that he wanted to make glazed doughnuts, which are not something we'd ever normally make because they fall a...ahem...tiny bit outside the guidelines for what I think of as a healthy treat.

Nevertheless, he kept asking until one day I finally gave in. BUT! There was a catch. These weren't going to be your average run of the mill deep fried doughnuts (What?! Doughnuts are deep fried?! Most of the kids had absolutely no clue about this and expressed great shock before falling to their knees muttering "but they're sooooooooooooo good!").

I told Henry the doughnuts would have to be baked.

He was thrilled that I'd given in, but I wasn't 100% sure he'd be happy with the final product. I'd never tried baked doughnuts before. At best, it they would taste wonderful. At worst it would all make for an interesting experiment.

I chose an enriched, yeasted dough--the same we used for French Toast earlier in the week, because it was soft and sweet and rose well. We made a big batch of dough and then rolled and cut the doughnuts with the doughnut cutter. The kids were surprised to learn that doughnut holes actually do come from the hole of the doughnut. 

We laid them out on sheet pans, waited for them to rise again, baked them, and then glazed them. They were fantastic!

Some of our other creations last week were barbecued chicken (in the oven) with corn bread (made with agave syrup), and more vegetable samosas, mainly because it just tickles me that the kids will devour something so spicy and foreign to their taste buds.

The garden is in full swing and we've harvested beets, onions, tomatoes, all sorts of herbs, a couple of really hot peppers, and of course lots of zucchini and yellow summer squash. My biggest surprise of the season so far, however, has been the cantaloupes, which are growing like crazy! I planted them but didn't expect much and right now we've got at least a dozen growing out there. Amazing! Hopefully they'll make it to full ripeness. When they do, you can be sure there will be pictures here!!

From the Ground Up

I've been busy these past few weeks getting the garden ready for the summer program! Since I moved the CCA to a new location I had to start the garden anew, and at first the task seemed incredibly daunting. It's hard to leave a garden behind after putting so much work into it--even harder to start again from scratch.

PAL had given me a great space to work with, but, as a former preschool playground, it was covered in nearly equal parts grass, wood chips, and sand, so there was a lot of prep work to be done.

My husband and  a mid-sized rototiller made pretty quick work of the grass. While the grass was being shredded and moved, my son, daughter, and I shoveled an enormous amount of wood chips out to the edges of what would eventually be the garden space.

The sand was a little more difficult. We couldn't decide whether to spread it evenly over the entire garden space or dig it out and move it to an entirely new space. 
When we discovered that the earth beneath the grass, wood chips, and sand was clay, I muttered something about drainage and, for better or worse, we decided to spread the sand around and work it in with the tiller. We'll see how that works out for us as the season wears on.

That effort was nothing by comparison to what had to be done next. An entire dump truck load of soil had to be moved into the garden. The only catch was that the soil was about 100 yards from the garden space. I will admit that I only moved three wheelbarrows full before I gave up and started shaping beds and creating paths out of wood chips. (Hey, that needed doing too!) My devoted and tireless husband is the one who moved all that soil. Every last speck of it. Without his herculean effort I would still be out there willing the soil to 
move itself. 

The planting was the easy part. 

Now we wait...and weed...and create fun kid-style garden art, the likes of which weren't appropriate for our original location. We've started already by creating some adorable garden signs ("Please stay on the paths,"  and "Welcome to the Children's Kitchen Garden"). One of our first garden art projects during cooking camp will be to make garden markers out of wooden spoons, and we've already got some flowers growing out of rubber boots and watering cans!

In short, we're ready and raring to go!

See you all in a couple of weeks!