Creating Food Pedagogy in Early Care and Education

Do we give a child a vegetable, or do we teach them how to grow and cook the vegetable?

I believe food programs must be integrated into the school day. We must move away from believing that the food programs are simply an add-on that brings food to the children in our care. Children need to understand gardens and farms, and they need to understand how to transform ingredients into flavorful meals. Cooking and growing food are supporting cultural processes that help children understand healthy eating. We need to widen the circle and invite the farmers into the classroom, go out to the garden and dig in the dirt and reach out to chefs to help our children and faculty to join each other at the cutting board. Classroom environments need dishes and dish washing. These should be self service areas that are facilitated by faculty and managed by children. Young children need compost buckets and worms to understand the difference between landfill and food for our soil. For the youngest children we need to model until they are able to set the table and wash the dishes including them in the processes as they grow into them. The farmers, the self service areas in classrooms and the landfill and composting are foundation bricks in my own food pedagogy.

Why do I believe you need these bricks in your early care and education program? “Spaces are typically created with some kind of purpose or intention, whether or not this is evident. Every environment implies a set of values or beliefs about the people who use a space and the activities that take place there.” (Curtis and Carter, Designs for Living and Learning, pg. 13) As educators we need to examine the environments we are creating to understand what we are doing that makes one in four of the children in our care obese. We need to ask, why is it if you are one of our Black, Hispanic or American Indian students you have a one in two chance of becoming obese? By thoughtfully planning food programs for young children we have the power to end childhood obesity.

Corn Tortillas: From Garden to Table

In early care and education we need to encourage food construction and deconstruction by children.

As children participate in making tortillas they begin to understand that tortillas don’t just show up on the grocery store shelf as part of their taco. They begin to understand that there is a process of mixing and transforming ingredients that creates the food they eat.

As they eat their burrito, they learn that it is made up of many parts. When little hands unroll that tortilla and the filling falls out, they can learn about color; black beans are glossy black, the corn is yellow and the zucchini is green.

When children also plant, nurture, harvest and see these foods growing in their garden, they further discover and interact with the origins of their food.

Ranch Dressing & School Garden Salad

As promised here is Chef Katrina's ranch dressing recipe!

School Garden Salad with Ranch Dressing
Yield: one large salad

Ingredients
Yogurt, plain ¼ cup
Buttermilk ¼ cup
Lemon Juice 1 tablespoon
Agave 1 tablespoon
Green onions 2 tablespoons
Garlic 1 large clove
Parsley 1 tablespoon
Dill 1 tablespoon

From the school garden:
Lettuces, about one medium size bowl of fresh picked greens
Soft Herbs, 1 small handful
Edible Flowers, 6 each
Radishes, 4 each

Method:
For the Dressing
1. Measure the yogurt, buttermilk lemon juice, and agave into the Mason jar.
2. Have the children snip the green onion tops, parsley and dill and then add the measured amount into the jar.
3. Add the minced garlic and a pinch of sea salt.
4. Shake to combine. Reserve in the fridge until ready to make the salad
For the Salad
1. Wash the greens until squeaky clean. Dry with salad spinner. Place greens in large mixing bowl.
2. Wash the herbs and edible flowers and pat dry in a tea towel; snip the herbs and add this to the greens in the large mixing bowl. Gently remove the edible flower petals from the stems and add these to the greens and herbs.
3. Wash the radishes until squeaky clean; top and tail and cut into half moons. Add the radishes to the greens and herbs.
When ready to serve
1. Pour the dressing along the inside of the bowl
2. With clean hands toss to dress
3. Gobble it up!

School Garden Salad

We planted the salad seeds in mid-May with the help of our Eagle Scout volunteer. We also planted 10 other types of seeds over the course of the five Saturday morning we shared together in the spring. These seeds sprouted into our summer school garden.

Today we harvested our salad greens, edible flowers and herbs.

Then it was off to our culinary arts learning center where we created our school garden salad.

After we dressed it with the ranch dressing we made; we gobbled it up with our classmates.

In case you feel motivated to make your own school garden salad I will share my ranch dressing recipe in my next post!

Mixing Food Memories with Nutrient-Dense Foods

In the spring, I met 63 four and five year old children who would become my summer culinary arts students. Most of these children did not attend early care and education programs. This innovative six week summer program is designed to help these young children gain the skills they need to enter kindergarten in the fall. My role is to create a linked educational opportunity through garden, culinary arts and farm.

Giving children the life skill of nutrient-dense eating is my goal as a chef educator to young children. The cycle of healthy eating can be understood simply as: pause, taste and learn! My culinary arts programs are designed to use food in the form closest to how it’s found in nature. The foundation of these culinary arts programs is based on teaching children to recognize and prepare foods that have a high nutrient/low calorie ratio—meaning they are rich in nutrients when compared to their calorie content.

Through the school garden, culinary arts and the twice weekly tastes from Webb Ranch, I encourage these children to eat from the rainbow while enjoying local seasonal organic fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes.

We have harvested from our school garden: zucchini, beans, lettuces, basil, parsley, chives, nasturtiums, marigolds and radishes. We have tasted from our farm partners: white nectarines, apricots, strawberries, blackberries, cherries, blue lake beans, Santa Rosa plums, summer squash (patty pan, zucchini & crock neck), Roma tomatoes, cucumbers, long beans, bok choy, onions (green, red, white and yellow), carrots, edamame, garlic, ginger, yellow pear tomatoes and watermelon. We all went riding on the big yellow school buses to Webb Ranch to pick raspberries one glorious day in early July. We have cooked with oats, whole wheat flour and flakes, masa harina, buckwheat, barley and rye. We have sorted, soaked and cooked our dry beans—and in the process we have mixed food memories to last a life time.