Week 6 Term 4 2013

A new menu this week:

Waldorf Salad
Pizza of the Imagination
Pasta with a Vegetable Sauce
Bashed Neeps and Carrots
Sicilian Toast

It’s really hard not to say that this was the best menu ever – I think I have said that a few times now! But it really was delicious!!

The salad was crisp and tangy; pizzas varied each day (as they should have ,being “of the imagination”, and included leeks, eggplant, asparagus, tomatoes, kale, ricotta and mozzarella and to my delight some fresh basil on one occasion; our pasta dishes that have a tomato based sauce always seem to work our better than our creamy ones – lots of broccoli in this week’s ones and really tasty; the bashed neeps and carrots (swede and carrot) continue to be amazingly popular – not surprisingly really as it tastes great; and the Sicilian Toast was a great new addition. An extra note about the Sicilian Toast – they come from a book called Rosa’s Farm, written by chef and author Rosa Mitchell – a bit like French Toast, but with parsley and parmesan. I attended a pasta making workshop that Rosa ran at a Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation event last year – it was brilliant, as was a visit to her restaurant (Rosa’s Kitchen) in Melbourne later. If ever you are visiting Melbourne and have a Saturday morning to spare I can recommend going to a SAKGF Workshop – their program is available at

http://www.kitchengardenfoundation.org.au/

I have already booked for three and will no doubt get tempted to do more!

As well as being delicious, all of the recipes were selected to provide lots of good learning opportunities for our students and as usual they rose to the challenges.

My request for more information about what happens on my non-teaching days was successful – it was good to hear about some of the great achievements made by students in Red Class and Blue Class. Both Jayden and Kylen experienced a full kitchen garden cycle by collecting eggs from our chooks, using them to make asparagus quiches (last week’s menu) and then enjoying eating them. And at the end of the day when Red Class reviewed what they had been doing Kylen responded to Colleen's question of "where do eggs come from?" by signing "chicken" - fabulous work Kylen!!

 

I don’t have a photo, but Warwick made great steps forward in table setting last week – very determined about having grated parmesan on the table to accompany the pasta dish!

We continue to be very grateful for our wonderful volunteers – Megan and Doris are treasures! I think they have fun too!

 

Good work done by Jack and Steven using the pasta machine.

 

An excellent visit from Timsbury Green, who, together with White Class, cleared the broad bean bed, worked on the compost bed (well done to Jordan in particular) and then later covered the ex-bean bed with a layer of compost ready for planting next week.

Lovely harvesting of parsley by Patrick.

 

We have been getting up to 3 eggs a day from our chooks!

 

 

Wireless switch work is becoming a regular feature of our cooking classes now – in fact I have successfully begged for a second one! Pete and Jobe displayed great teamwork in whisking eggs this week – Jobe whisked and Pete operated the switch (sorry, Pete’s photo cannot be included). We set up a “Blending Station” this week. It consists of all that is needed for students to blend their own food – blender, bowls, photos of the foods to be blended, spoons, cloths, etc. I have usually done the blending in the past, mainly because it has been located in the kitchen. Blending cannot happen (obviously) until the food is cooked and this coincides with a very busy time in the kitchen – plating up, getting items from the oven, draining pasta, etc. - not a good time for extra students to be present for blending. Louise R very cleverly suggested a ‘Blending Station’ outside of the kitchen. This worked really well on a couple of days, but isn’t perfect yet – mainly because of lack of space in our dining area. We will continue to work on this as I believe it to be a really valuable inclusion in our program. A trolley to put everything on would probably work better. Will have to look at our budget next year!

We always include a photo of the un-blended food when blended food is served
 



Photo of pasta and bowl of blended pasta
 

 

We have continued to encourage students to plate up their food – it gives a great sense of ownership and the look on our students' faces when they place what they have cooked on the dining table is priceless. 

One of the reasons for including Bashed Neeps and Carrots, apart from the great taste, was to see if Sam would eat it – the only item that he has eaten with us in the program! And yes, he loved it again!!

Regan is developing in leaps and bounds at the moment – excellent work once again, this time with the Waldorf Salad.

Rochelle is so consistent with her cooking skills and beautiful table manners that I sometimes forget to even mention her – but here she is excelling once again!