JULY 6TH, 2010
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Growing Chefs partnered with the Garden School in Jackson Heights, Queens this past winter and spring to teach a grow-it, eat-it gardening and cooking class. As part of our culinary curriculum, we focused on simple, locally available seasonal ingredients, adapted into easy, kid-friendly recipes that taught new kitchen skills with each week. We installed and built a school yard garden for under a thousand dollars just in time for graduation and planting.
For our summer partnership with Garden School, our staff is leading the Math and Science program. Focusing on kitchen chemistry and garden-based botany, the class uses the new garden to explore plant life cycles, soil sciences and ecosystems and insects. In the kitchen, we’ve explored the properties of oil and water, how yeast works to make bread rise, and the basics of nutrition.
Our first week, we asked: What makes healthy soil? Why do we need seeds? What can we do today to be more sustainable? These are big questions for children and adults alike. If we remember our school days correctly, what marked the lazy days of summer were long bike rides, swimming in the best and closest lake or ocean, and reading the books you wanted to read all school year and didn’t have time to enjoy while scrambling to make good grades. Approximate those wonderful experiences with an incredible new outdoor classroom (schoolyard garden), beautifully adapted excerpts from Carl Sandburg, Henry David Thoreau, and Wendell Berry, and you’ve got Growing Chef’s take on summer school.