By Molly Burke, FoodCorps Service Member Looking for a healthy twist on the desserts your kids love? Here are two, tested and approved by Stefanik Stars! We experimented with healthy substitutions in this delicious brownie batter recipe, which, with a few ingredient omissions, doubles as a vegan ice cream topping or dipping sauce for fruit. These brownies are made with black beans instead of flour for a fudgy texture and a big dose of healthy fiber and plant protein. You can also substitute fiber-and-vitamin-rich dates for half of the sugar without sacrificing sweetness. The best part is that you can’t taste the black beans--even in the raw chocolate sauce! It’s almost too good to be true.
Ingredients For brownies:
For sauce:
Procedures For brownies: Preheat oven to 350F. Add all ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Add all ingredients except chocolate chips or walnuts to a blender and blend until smooth. Add milk or water a few tablespoons at a time if mixture is too thick to blend. Fold in desired toppings and stir with a spoon to combine. Pour batter into a greased baking dish and bake at 350F for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick or knife comes out clean (if you added liquid, cook time may be longer). Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then serve. Makes about 16 brownies. For sauce: Add all ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth, adding more water if too thick. Can also use a bowl and hand mixer or potato masher. Serve over ice cream or as a dipping sauce for your favorite fruit. We tried it with strawberries and bananas!
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By Molly Burke, FoodCorps service member Much has happened over the past academic year with FoodCorps! Here is a look back on some of the fun that happened at Stefanik, Litwin, Lambert-Lavoie, and Bowe with Molly and Kelly. ![]()
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By Molly Burke, FoodCorps service member Tuesday morning, Mrs. Gelonese’s class of first graders and I set out from Litwin for Luther Belden Farm, in Hatfield, to enjoy a dairy farm field trip donated to us by the New England Dairy and Food Council. Darryl and Lucinda Williams, the farm’s owners, introduced us to their many adorable calves and surprisingly large dairy cows, showed us how their cows are milked by a very precise robot, and made sure we left with a healthy appreciation for local food systems and goodies like stickers and Cabot cheese. When I returned to Litwin, some 5th graders helped me put together tomato planters made from Home Depot buckets. McKinstry Farms and Harry Brandt from Bowe School generously donated the plants. Thanks, Harry and McKinstry! Wednesday was one long exercise in self restraint as I prepared four dozen whole grain, lactose-free cupcakes and frosting for two end-of-year class parties for Litwin fifth graders. When people think of plant-based foods, what often comes to mind is savory recipes, like tofu stir fries and veggie burgers. I wanted to show students that they can incorporate vegetables into sweet dishes, too. A few years ago when I was interning at Whole Foods Market, I learned that the in-house bakeries use only natural food dye in their desserts; their vivid green, purple, and pink frostings had been achieved using things like spinach, blueberries, and beets. So I did some research and found natural food dye tutorials online to use with my students. In February, Mrs. Gelonese’s class made pink heart pancakes with beet-derived dye. It had worked pretty well, so I decided to do more colors for the parties. On Tuesday night, I made a fresh batch of the beet dye, plus green, purple, and yellow dyes, made from boiled spinach, blueberries, and turmeric powder, respectively. I had the fifth graders mix frosting with a few drops of dye in snack-size ziploc bags, then squeeze the colorful concoctions into the cupcakes. The dye made the frosting a little runny at times, but the end result was a rainbow of beautiful, naturally colorful cupcakes! On Thursday, the Stefanik cooking club made whole-wheat pizza from scratch, topped with herbs from the school garden. I’ve been using this dough recipe (which I wrote about in the previous blog post) both at home and in cooking club meetings, and it’s a crowd-pleaser. It’s made with rapid acting yeast and doesn’t need rising time, so it takes only about 10 minutes to prepare, and when rolled thin, only about 12-15 minutes to bake in the oven, depending on how crispy you want it. While the yeast activated, we went outside to the garden to harvest some fresh basil, chives, and oregano from the herb beds. We experimented with both the sweet Genovese and the purple varieties of basil. The kids each got their own dough ball, rolled it out, and topped it with sauce, cheese, turkey pepperoni (lower in saturated fat than traditional pork), and herbs. I forgot to steal a bite, but the kids said it turned out delicious and it smelled heavenly! On Friday, the Litwin 5th graders planted more buckets, this time with bell peppers and strawberries. Some of the strawberry transplants already had pale green berries growing. We’re all excited for a great June harvest.Back at Stefanik, I put up the garden signs the students painted earlier this month. Some of them are crop markers, and some of them display the many garden mottos I asked students to think up in class. To represent the many cultures that make up Chicopee today, these mottos were written in different languages. Here are some of my favorites.
By Molly Burke, FoodCorps service member As Chicopee students know well by now, whole grain flour is healthy for us because it has fiber, unlike enriched flour, and the vitamins and minerals it contains are retained from the whole grain itself, and therefore better for our bodies than eating enriched flour fortified with micronutrients during processing. The fiber helps slow down the digestion of sugar in our meals, putting us at a lower risk of high blood sugar. Meals with whole grains instead of enriched give us a greater feeling of satiety and a kind of slow-release dose of energy for hours, versus a quick spike in energy that leaves us hungry again soon after eating it. It's a good idea to stay away from enriched flour in general, but that doesn't mean swearing off baked favorites like pizza and cupcakes. It simply means making smart substitutions to incorporate whole grains. The following recipes for whole wheat cupcakes and pizza dough are easy and delicious ways to make our favorite foods healthier for us!
Whole wheat vanilla cupcakes (adapted from simplywhisked.com Makes 24 cupcakes Ingredients:
Directions:
By Molly Burke, FoodCorps service member This month, the Mass Farm to School harvest of the month is dairy. As dedicated plant lovers, Kelly and I did not let this get in the way of serving kids fresh veggies. Time and again in lessons and taste tests, our students have proven smoothies to be the perfect vessel for getting in the all-important 5 servings of fruits and veggies a day--they’ll drink spinach spinach, beets, or a combination of the two so long as they’re blended into liquid form. Following that logic, we decided to test out a carrot-infused smoothie for the March taste tests. As much an homage to the cute fuzzy cows at McCray’s Farm in South Hadley where we source our local milk, this cheery, bright orange beverage is a nutrient-filled toast to the oncoming spring season. Lachanophobes rejoice: the warm spices and creamy yogurt in this recipe make the smoothie taste less like vegetable juice and more like a frozen bakery treat. The resounding cafeteria chorus of “this is good!” from Bowe kids last Wednesday is as good a testament as any to how effective smoothies are at converting veggie skeptics.
This recipe also uses high-protein yogurt and anti-inflammatory cinnamon. It’s as good for snacks as it is for a healthy breakfast. You can make it vegan by using non-dairy milk and omitting the yogurt or substituting vegan yogurt or nut butter. Try it at home! Carrot Cake Smoothies Serves 2 Ingredients:
Add all ingredients to a blender and mix until smooth. Add more milk to thin as needed. By Molly Burke, FoodCorps service member The next time your kid is bored with their breakfast, why not let them play with their food? Kids love to get artsy with what they eat, and a healthy way to encourage that creativity is to let them decorate fruit-and-veggie-packed smoothie bowls. A smoothie bowl is just what it sounds like--a thick smoothie poured into a bowl and eaten with a spoon instead of sipped through a straw. Smoothie bowls started gaining popularity in 2015 on social media and food blogs due to their eye-catching color combinations and health benefits. In Instagram posts and fitness magazine articles, they’re pictured lavishly topped with rainbows of chopped tropical fruit, stripes of nuts and seeds, piles of granola, and sometimes generous dustings of chocolate chips. Common smoothie ingredients include nutrient-dense produce like spinach, kale, acai berries, and avocado. By all accounts, a smoothie bowl for breakfast is a great way to get a bunch of fiber, vitamins, and minerals in your system before you start your day. If you’ve never had a smoothie bowl, this may sound and look like an expensive, time-consuming, possibly not tasty mess; there are too many toppings to keep up with, and you’re not so sure about vegetable smoothies. Fear not--there’s no need to break the bank to make a beautiful and delicious smoothie bowl. The best smoothie vegetables are spinach, shredded carrots, beets, and kale. Instead of more expensive fruit, opt for frozen bananas, strawberries or peaches. It’s easy to mask vegetable flavors with fruit--just add a larger amount of fruit than vegetables, and you won’t taste any bitterness. For affordable toppings, try whole grain, low-sugar cereal like Cheerios, puffed rice, or shredded wheat, and other items like peanuts, almond slivers, and sunflower seeds. Baking your own granola at home with rolled oats, honey, and cinnamon can be cheaper and healthier than buying super sugary, pre-made granola. Or try sprinkling broken-up granola bars. Save this for a weekend breakfast or after-school snack until your kids find their favorite combinations. They’ll be smoothie bowl building pros in no time. Here’s a recipe for mix-and-match fruit and vegetable smoothies. For smoothie bowls, use less liquid so the consistency stays thick. That way, it won’t melt by the time you’re ready to eat. Last week, a class of 5th graders at Stefanik had a lot of fun decorating beet and spinach smoothies. They used Cheerios, sunflower seeds, and nut-free 88 Acres granola bars as toppings and left class with bellies full of a healthy, satisfying snack. Experiment with this at home and see what your kids come up with! Send us pictures at chicopeefresh@gmail.com.
By Molly Burke, FoodCorps service member No, not a human baby--Litwin's first sage sprout! Like clockwork, this little guy just popped up in one of the planters made by Litwin students three weeks ago. Visible are its tiny stem and cotyledons, or first leaves. Along with embryonic roots, cotyledons first form inside the seed and spring out above the ground once planted. Their mission is to begin the cycle of photosynthesis, so the baby plant gets energy from the sun to grow to maturity. Cotyledons look different from a plant's true leaves, which we use to tell different plants apart. Once these round and stubby baby leaves soak up the sun, the plant will grow its characteristic long, gray-green, fuzzy true leaves and give off its trademark peppery scent. Yum! We are well on our way to a flourishing indoor garden.
By Molly Burke, FoodCorps service member Outside the Litwin cafeteria windows, the school garden beds hibernate, sometimes under an icy blanket. But that isn’t stopping the fifth-graders from honing their green thumbs; throughout January and February, they will seed herbs in mini planters made from from recycled water bottles collected by the Litwin kitchen staff. Working in teams, students will learn what a seed needs to grow, assemble their indoor garden, and observe its progress daily as they pass through the lunch line, past the planters hanging in the sunny windows. In the spring, they’ll harvest enough herbs to brighten up their scratch-made school lunches with savory basil, fragrant rosemary, and bright thyme. Indoor herb planters are a fun and healthy way to keep antsy kids busy at home during the long winter. Research shows that engaging children in gardening yields a wealth of benefits ranging from enhanced social and emotional skills to an interest in healthy eating, positive attitudes toward learning, and a dedication to environmental stewardship, according to a report by the University of Colorado Children, Youth and Environments Center for Community Engagement. The article, which sourced nearly three dozen studies on the effects of gardening on youth, also cites that children who have participated in gardening activities show significantly improved abilities to work in groups, are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables, score significantly higher on scientific achievement tests, and exhibit “proenvironmental attitudes (Robinson & Zajicek, 2005; Canaris, 1995; Klemmer, Waliczek, & Zajicek, 2005; Skelly & Zajicek, 1998).” Now may be a more expedient time than ever to foster the skills gardening helps build. Speaking from experience, teaching kids to work in the garden can be a deeply rewarding exercise, all about stepping away from our overstimulated digital lives in favor of some old-school nature exploration. Who doesn’t like getting their hands dirty in the name of delicious, home-grown food? Many herbs grow well indoors (watch out for finicky cilantro), though your plants will need a well-lit window or a grow light to simulate the sun’s rays. A good way to keep a kiddo engaged from seed to sprout is to create long-range goals or rewards; for instance, you can plant a “pizza garden” with basil, parsley, rosemary, and chives, and within a few months you should have enough yield for homemade pizza! Have your child keep a weekly garden photo and data log to monitor inches of growth, watering frequency, and sunlight conditions. Later, your child can make a graph of their plant’s progress to show off their gardening skills! Below is the lesson plan I’ll be using with the fifth graders at Litwin as they build their own indoor garden. You can adapt it as you see fit for your home. As this activity is designed for groups of 4 kids, I’ve broken up the planter assembly steps into specific roles, assigned randomly by selecting different-colored cards that denote gardening materials such as soil and water. These cards tell how each material is to be added, as well as their purpose and some fun facts. For improved soil drainage, I’m using horticultural charcoal in the bottoms of these planters, but since the planters have drainage holes, this step isn’t necessary and can be omitted at home. Planters need between 4 and 8 hours of direct sunlight and should be watered when the soil feels dry to the touch. Herb varieties like basil, thyme, and chives sprout from seed between one and three weeks and can be harvested after two to three months. Happy planting! Share your planter creations with us at ChicopeeFRESH by tagging @chicopeefresh on Instagram or emailing me at molly.burke@foodcorps.org. Photos below were taken by Kelly Zimmerhanzel. Materials: Horticultural charcoal Potting soil Herb seeds Empty plastic bottles String Masking tape + permanent marker for labeling bottles Spray bottles with water Prep Making the bottle planters: Collect empty plastic water bottles or soda bottles with their caps. They can be as small as 16 oz water bottles or 2L party soda bottles--really any plastic bottle will do. Cut the bottle horizontally, starting about a centimeter or two below where the top of the bottle begins to taper into the spout. You should now have two pieces, with the cap piece shorter than the other. Poke several holes in the bottom of the bottle with a knife, scissors, or nails. Flip the cap piece upside down, make sure the bottom piece fits into the top piece, and secure with super glue. You should now have one piece again, with an opening at the top and a cap at the bottom. Let dry for at least an hour before using. Punch two holes in the top of the planter and loop string through for hanging. With a permanent marker, draw a line an inch below these holes; this is the soil fill line. Setting up the activity:
Set up a planter-making station. You can do this indoors or outdoors. You’ll need a clear counter surface or space on the floor with a garbage bag, towel, or drop cloth spread out to catch stray soil. Assemble the soil, planter, labeling materials, seeds, spray bottles, and optional charcoal. Print the Procedures and separate the steps into 4 cards. Give each child a card--that is their role for the activity. Have each child read their card aloud to the group so everyone learns why we need each material in the planter. Warm up questions:
Procedure:
Wrap-up: Label each planter with the seed type and gardeners’ names using masking tape and a marker. Decorate your planters with stickers, paint, or Sharpie doodles, hang in a sunny window and watch them grow! By Molly Burke, FoodCorps Service Member When you’re at your wit’s end trying to get a kid to try a new vegetable, you resort to the Trojan Horse method: hiding the offending food in other dishes. The logic goes as such: you love Little One, Little One hates healthy food, but you’ll be darned if Little One isn’t eating healthy, whether they know it or not. Thanks to generational wisdom (and Pinterest), we all know a million different ways to hide a whole range of veggies from picky eaters. My mom was no stranger to pureeing eggplant into my lasagna. I, too, once took secret joy in sneaking beans into meals cooked for a legume-hating but fiber-poor ex boyfriend. From butternut squash stirred into mac and cheese to meatballs packed with tiny mushroom chunks, invisible veggies just go down easier with those who can’t even look at a cauliflower floret without gagging. This includes many of my students, who won’t hesitate to proclaim that the turnip greens I’ve just harvested and lovingly prepared for them look “absolutely disgusting. YEEUUCHHH” Part of my job as a FoodCorps service member is to encourage these pint-sized naysayers to try healthy foods in a fun and controlled environment so that they’ll actually eat the vegetables on their school lunch tray instead of throwing them away. I do this by conducting taste tests of locally-sourced produce on a monthly basis with my co-service member, Kelly. My goal when selecting a taste test recipe is to ensure the veggie appears prominently in the dish, so the kids can recognize it and eat it when it resurfaces in future meals. This is especially important when the vegetable is brand new to them; whereas nearly every kid knows what carrots look like before they’re mashed up into a souffle, fewer have encountered an intact beet or radish. Admittedly, it’s hard to reconcile this vision with veggies so brazenly healthy that they scare kids away on sight. Is it a coincidence that the veggies with the worst reputations for flavor tend to be dark green? Broccoli, collards, and green beans each incited horror among my sisters and I at our childhood family dinners. Those scary green mounds were the visual embodiments of sheer, unadulterated nutrition! There was no way stuff that looked like that would taste good! So, with kale on the docket for November’s Harvest of the Month taste test, Kelly and I considered our options: mask the leafy green threat in fruity smoothies? Blend up some kale hummus? Try kale pesto pasta? Each of these recipes would render the original kale leaves unidentifiable, but we guessed that with its big, fluffy leaves and deep green hue, it’d be a tough sell if left raw. But kids can surprise us. Before the monthly sampling kicked off, I had tested a kale salad recipe with some of my Stefanik Elementary students. Each kid picked their own leaf from the beautiful purple kale plants growing in the school garden. They watched, some eagerly, some with heavy skepticism, as I tossed the leaves in orange juice vinaigrette and passed them out like leafy popsicles. Overwhelmingly, the students told me they loved it and picked their stems clean. Armed with those positive preliminary reviews, Kelly and I decided to buck kid-friendly kitchen logic and serve raw kale salad to everyone. This salad had no frills beyond its sweet and tangy dressing--no croutons to distract from all those frighteningly fresh greens, nor Craisins to incentivize both chewing and swallowing. Right before our kickoff taste test at Bowe Elementary, I got cold feet, panicking that the Stefanik kids were only jazzed about eating raw kale because they’d picked it themselves. To my shock and delight, a majority of the Bowe students who tried the salad voted that they’d either liked it or loved it! We went on to tally a 69% positive response on average at Lambert-Lavoie, Stefanik, and Litwin during subsequent taste tests. I loved the kale taste test because it proved that, while having your kid help prepare their own healthy food (picking kale, dressing a salad, stirring a pot, whatever) is a sure-fire way to get them to taste it, kids won’t always balk at a food based on looks alone. It helps that Kelly and I bring lots of energy to these events and reward brave tasters with stickers. But at the end of the day, kids will face their ultimate food foes on their own and decide they aren’t so disgusting after all. Now hopefully, when they see kale again in their school lunch, they won’t be afraid to dig in.
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Authors:The ChicopeeFRESH team is a group of creative individuals who are working to feed Chicopee students healthy, local and FRESH foods each day. Archives
September 2022
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