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!

​

​Remember that lettuce we planted back in April? Well, it grew! In June, we had the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders at Litwin, Streiber, Stefanik, and Bowe come out into the garden to harvest their lettuce and plant fall crops including carrots, beets, and potatoes as part of our Salad Days and Harvest Days program. The program, created by Backyard Growers in Gloucester, gives every student involved a total of three garden visits and two seed-to-fork experiences over the course of the year. In April, each class comes out to the garden to plant lettuce seeds. The lettuce grows until June, when each class returns to harvest what they planted and sow the fall crops: potatoes, beets, and carrots. The next day, we all enjoy a student-grown salad taste test in the cafeteria. Each class returns to the garden in the September to harvest the fall crops, which are then roasted and taste-tested in the cafeteria.

​Each class comes out to the garden for just 30 minutes to harvest and plant. First, they have to wash their hands. Then, we take them to the half of the bed that they planted and give each student a pair of scissors and assign them a square. Molly, Greta, or I will then demonstrate how to grab the top of the lettuce and snip it off with the scissors just above the soil, so our lettuce stays clean. We also show them how to snip off the roots of the lettuce if they accidentally pull them out and explain that is not the right way to do it because it gets dirt everywhere.

​Once the lettuce is dried, we put it in a big bag so that we can put it in the refrigerator and serve it in the cafeteria the next day! Then, we head back to the bed and each student has to remove the lettuce roots and any weeds from their square, otherwise the lettuce will keep growing and choke out our fall crops! When the square is completely clear, we ask the students who are planting potatoes to dig a hole in the middle of their square. We give each student a potato and remind them to plant it with the eye (the sprouting part) up, so that the plant can grow. Finally, they gently sweep the soil over the potato.

At Stefanik and Bowe, we tried 88 Acres’ recipe for ranch using their Pumpkin Seed Butter. I’ll admit, I was skeptical of ranch made out of seed butter, but once I tried it, I was hooked. The kids seemed to like it too! At Stefanik, 33 percent of students disliked the salad, while 67 percent liked it or loved it! At Bowe, the results were even better; only 18 percent of students disliked it, while 82 percent of students liked it or loved it! ​

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.
   

 

Our very own School Food Service Director, Joanne Lennon, received the prestigious 2018 Local Hero Award from CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) for outstanding leadership in partnering with local farms. 

Each year, CISA presents Local Hero Awards to farms, businesses, or individuals who exemplify their mission of strengthening farms and engaging the community to build the local food economy. All award winners are applauded for their hard work, social responsibility, and many contributions to sustaining local agriculture.

Mrs. Lennon gratefully accepted the award and dedicated it to the hard-working staff and managers in our school kitchens and farm to school program coordinators.

CISA's profile on Mrs. Lennon notes that she and her talented staff built a farm to school program in the Chicopee school district that stands as a model of how public schools can introduce food sourced from local farms into their menus and integrate farm and garden education into their classrooms. When she took over as Chicopee’s Food Service Director in 1991, the district’s lunchrooms were serving mostly convenience foods: “from the freezer to the oven,” says Mrs. Lennon. Improving the quality of the food by reintroducing scratch cooking was the first order of business, and luckily the schools were still equipped with fully functional (if outdated) kitchens and run by staff with cooking expertise.

Although Joanne’s farm to school work goes back 15 years, it remained a relatively small part of the school district’s purchasing until several years ago. “I always tried to buy a little more local every year, and then four years ago Chicopee Public Schools got a grant from the Kendall Foundation for ChicopeeFRESH, a new program that enabled us to make more connections, set up systems that could be copied by other school districts, and do this work on a larger scale. We went from 1-2% local to 15-18% local because we were able to hire someone to concentrate on this process,” says Mrs. Lennon. “It’s clear to everyone—the administration, parents, staff, students—that this work is a huge asset to the whole community, so now we have a permanent Sustainability Coordinator!”

Read the rest of CISA's profile on Mrs. Lennon and ChicopeeFRESH on their website: https://www.buylocalfood.org/2018-local-hero-awardee-joanne-lennon-chicopee-public-schools/