Cooking and Gardening

Christopher's picture of a beet and people working in the garden.

Winter washes a beet.

Lettuce and cucumbers

Hannah mixing Oatmeal Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars.

Flattening the cookie dough.

Painting garden markers.

gardening and crafting

washing veggies

we made plant labels

                                       

plants out in the garden

                                       

we made snacks for the camp

                                       

Group A Visits Margaret's Garden

The oldest campers in the group are in A Group. We stopped by Margaret's garden after we heard about it from the younger kids who went on a garden tour last week.

 Margaret was working in the garden and invited us in to see what was growing.

Visiting Margaret Gustafan's Urban Farm

We visited the Urban Farm of ceramic artist, Margaret Gustafan today. She lives just a few blocks from the square and filled her city yard with vegetables, herbs, fruit trees, goats, honey bees, and chickens to feed her family. You can find Margaret at the Nelsonville farmers market selling her herbs and her pottery and soap is sold in the Nelsonville Emporium on the square. Margaret designed and planted the camp garden for us behind the First Presbyterian Church the last two years. 

 Margaret teaching about lavender.
Margaret let us pick some lavender to keep!!!

 Over looking Margaret's Urban Farm ;)

 Margaret's chicken coop!

 Margaret's chicken hunting for bugs!!

 Milking Mama Llama.

 Stanley and Zoey munching on yummy food!!

 Margaret getting ready to walk Mama Llama, Stanley, and Zoey for a walk!!

 A wonderful Garden made by Margaret Gustafan!!!!!

Chickens roaming for a little snack:)

The Garden is Ready to Go

Chives, Sage and Parsley 

Beds ready and planted

A big thanks to artist and gardener, Margaret Gustafan, for putting our kitchen garden in for us again this year behind the First Presbyterian Church. A big thanks to the church for allowing us the use of their newly renovated dining room and commercial kitchen for our breakfasts and our snack preparation and cooking/gardening classes.

Cooking and Gardening 2012

This is the third year food bloggers and freelance food writers, Shelby and Wendy Kaho, led the cooking class. The class centered on a beautiful kitchen garden created by local artist, Margaret Gustafan. The theme for cooking classes this year was healthy snacking. The class was responsible for preparing snacks for the program each day using whole grains and incorporating herbs and vegetables from our kitchen garden. They relied on muffin tins for many of the recipes to prepare bite-sized, easy to eat snacks that packed a lot of nutrition into a small package. 

Each class also got a day where they could decide what to make. There was a Mexican buffet with homemade salsa and guacamole on soft tacos with meat and marinated chicken. One class chose a chocolate day with black bean and gluten-free brownies paired with fruit dipped in chocolate and another chose a breakfast menu with omelets filled with garden produce and herbs along with chocolate spelt pancakes.  Every week the class made pickles and pickled vegetables to use up the leftover veggies from lunch and the cucumbers that were growing in the kitchen garden. They picked dill and onions from the garden to include in their refrigerator pickles. The kids ate 20 jars of pickles with their lunches over  four weeks. They made hundreds of vegetable cakes and Broccoli Potato Cheddar Puffs, Pizza Puffs and corn muffins with local grains, homemade cereal bars with oats, breakfast cookies and granola. There were fruit tarts and fruit smoothies and even kale chips made with the abundant kale crop. 

The teaching staff was delighted when served vegetable pizzas for a staff meeting made by the enthusiastic catering team in our cooking classes. The students were so intrigued with the vegetable pizzas they made for the staff that they made some for snack the next week and every slice topped with kale, tomatoes and zucchini and basil from our garden and the extra carrots and broccoli left from lunches was eaten by the kids. With the help of the entire staff a culture of fruit and vegetable eating was created where the students tried new foods and were introduced to vegetables in new ways. 

Each morning they were encouraged to try fresh fruit with their breakfasts and were offered pineapples, bananas, berries, melon oranges, apples or grapes. The watering and weeding of the garden and then the harvesting of the vegetables to create snacks were a part of every week and increased the willingness of the students to try new vegetables or learn to like vegetables they were sure they would never eat. To encourage the children to continue cooking at home with parents, a cookbook of recipes used this summer was created and they added comments and illustrations for their favorite recipes.