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:

• The same amounts as above of beans, cocoa powder, sugar/dates, and oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Pinch salt
• 2 flax eggs OR for non-vegan, 3 eggs (for flax eggs, mix 2 tbs flaxseed meal with ¼ cup hot water and mix well. Let sit for 5 minutes or until thickened)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Optional: 1 tsp coffee grounds
• If needed to blend: milk of choice or water
• Optional: ½ cup chocolate chips or walnuts

For sauce:

• 1 15 oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
• ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• ¼ cup packed brown sugar and ½ cup pitted dates, OR ½ cup packed brown sugar
• 3 tbs vegetable oil
• ½ cup water

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!

​

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. 

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:

• 3 cups whole wheat pastry flour or 1 ½ cup whole wheat flour plus 1 ½ cup all-purpose flour
  
• 1 tbs baking powder
  
• ½ tsp salt
  
• 1 ⅓ cup sugar
  
• 1 ½ cup butter or butter substitute, room temperature
  
• 4 large eggs
  
• 1 tbs vanilla extract
  
• 1 cup milk or non-dairy milk
  

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line 2 cupcake tins with cupcake liners or spray the tins with non-stick cooking spray.
   
2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt and stir to combine. Set aside.
   
3. In a second large bowl with an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, ~ 2 minutes.
   
4. Add the eggs one at a time until mixed.
   
5. Add the milk and mix until smooth.
   
6. Fill the cupcake liners until ⅔ full. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
   
7. Remove from oven and cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing from pan to cool completely before frosting.
   

 

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. ​

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. 

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.