ChopChop Magazine

Over the past couple of years Sally Sampson, founder of ChopChop has been sending us issues of the magazine. We have been sending them out to the students and staff of the Harlem Childrens Zone, receiving only excellent feedback! The magazine is terrific and we thought it would be a great idea to highlight Sally on the blog.

Sally Sampson is the founder of ChopChop, The Fun Cooking Magazine for Families. ChopChop is a quarterly magazine and website that aims to help kids make educated choices about the food they eat. ChopChop is published by ChopChopKids, a Massachusetts non-profit corporation. With big time supporters such as First Lady Michelle Obama, basketball player Grant Hill, and The White House chefs featured in recent issues, ChopChop is quickly growing toward reaching its goal of getting a copy in the hand of every child. The Harlem Children’s Zone uses ChopChop in our after school programs. Sally answered a few questions for HCZ about ChopChop Magazine and healthy holiday eating.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for ChopChop?
A: I am a cookbook writer, and had become very involved in healthcare because my daughter has a rare chronic illness. I wanted to work in the healthcare world, and found that I could use my skills as a cookbook writer to help fight obesity. I approached doctors with the idea of “prescribing” recipes to kids who were obese or at risk for obesity-which is one out of three American children. They welcomed the idea and the idea transformed into ChopChop. ChopChop aims to prevent childhood obesity by encouraging a change in behavior-a love for fresh, healthy food and cooking. We want to make cooking cool.

Q: Where is ChopChop distributed?
A: ChopChop is primarily distributed by pediatricians but also by schools, after school and community center programs, the YMCA, Boy’s and Girl’s Clubs, food banks, kid’s cooking classes, Indian reservations, and of course, the Harlem Children’s Zone. Yearly subscriptions are also available at chopchopmag.org.

Q: What kinds of winter recipes will be featured in the upcoming issue of ChopChop?
A: In the winter issue, which will be released in December, we have a feature called, “Warm Soups for Cold Nights.” We feature 4 different soups that kids can make with the help of an adult and either eat right away, or freeze so they can have access to homemade soup all winter. We also have other foods to fight the cold including homemade oatmeal and biscuits. And though it’s not warm, our Eggnog Smoothie is definitely a winter treat.

Q: With all the school celebrations, parties and holiday events coming up, what’s the best way to make sure kids are still eating healthy while surrounded by so many treats?
A: We absolutely support eating treats but 1. be sure that your actual meals are healthy and hearty and 2. don't go overboard.

Q: What should our country’s food resolution be for this New Year?
A: Cook, cook and cook.

Q: Of course, cookies are typical holiday present for teachers, friends and family. Do you have any suggestions of a healthier option that kids can make for holiday gifts?
A: We actually have three “Gifts from The Kitchen” featured in the next issue. The Striped Soup Mix (recipe below), Cranberry Orange Walnut Bread, and Ranch Dressing Mix are all great alternatives to handing out sweets. There’s still the same “made from scratch” idea that comes from giving someone homemade cookies, but these three ideas are a change-up from the typical gifts.

Striped Soup Mix
A pot of soup is not the kind of present you can wrap—but a beautifully layered jar of homemade soup mix is! Plus, you can make a lot of presents at once to use up all those beans.

Adult: No
Hands-On Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 30 minutes
Makes: 7 jars

WHAT YOU NEED
7 1-pound bags of dried peas, beans, and lentils (pink, black, white, lima, kidney, navy, red, or pinto beans; green, brown, or red lentils; black-eyed peas; green or yellow split peas)
7 bay leaves
7 pint-sized canning jars (or other clean, empty 2-cup jars with a lids)
Measuring cup

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Carefully layer the beans in the jars, using ¼ cup of each type of bean.
2. Put 1 bay leaf in each jar, and screw on the lids.
3. Add a ribbon and a gift tag that explains how to make the soup:

Recipe Instructions (include on gift tag):
Take out the bay leaf. Rinse the beans with cold water and then put them in a large pot. Cover them with fresh cold water and soak them overnight. Drain the beans, add them back into the pot with 6 cups fresh water or chicken stock, 1 14-ounce can chopped tomatoes, 1 clove chopped garlic, , and the bay leaf. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat to low and simmer gently until all the beans are tender, about 2 hours. Add salt to taste.

Fun and Fit in the City Oct 1, 2011

A big Thank You to everyone that came out to enjoy some great food, learn more about healthy habits, get your bodies moving and just share in the fun at our 3rd Annual Fun and Fit in the City Event! This year the event was hosted at the Armory and it was beautiful--with celebrity chef demos, information for families from fitness, nutrition and farming experts, chances to get moving doing Zumba, Yoga, Trikes, Tennis, Gymnastics, and much more.

The event keeps on getting bigger and better every year! A special thank you to The Food Network New York City Wine and Food Festival and Target for bringing this event to Harlem. To all our friends from Florida including Lee, Ashley and Alex and everyone else thank you for bringing the celebrity chefs to help our community continue to tackle positive transformation through fun food and fitness. You do a spectacular job year after year. Thank you to the HLI team for all of your hard work throughout this event. You guys rocked it!

We heard some great lessons from our celebrity Chef including Rocco, Marcus, Melissa and Andrew that we'll recap here over the next few weeks, but after his demo with Melissa D'Arabian,several of you requested the recipe from HCZ's own Executive Chef Andrew Benson's Stovetop Crumble.  So here it is as promised:

Stove Top Crumble
Serves 4

Ingredients:
Filling:
1 tbl unsalted Butter
1 lb apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1/8s
¼ cup sugar in the raw
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp vanilla extract
Pinch of table salt

Topping:
2 cups crunchy, lightly sweetened granola (almonds, dried fruit, etc..)
1 tbl maple syrup

Directions:
1.Melt butter in a 10” skillet over medium high heat. When the butter is melted, add the apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and salt. Mix thoroughly until well blended. Continue to cooking over medium high heat, until the sugar is melted and the fruit just begins to caramelize, about 5 minutes. Cover the skillet with a tight fitting lid and reduce the heat to low and continue to cook for approximately 10 minutes longer. While the apples are cooking, mix the granola and the maple syrup together in a bowl and set aside. After 10 minutes of cooking remove the lids and spread the granola mixture over the top of the apples. Cook for an additional 2 minutes uncovered.

2.Serve the crumble straight from the skillet hot, warm or at room temperature. Accompany with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream, if desired.

Recipe by Andrew Benson

Fun and Fit in the City Event: Saturday, October 1, 2011

To everyone who is part of the Harlem Children's Zone and Promise Academy community, we would like to invite you to join us at the Fun and Fit in the City Event (presented by Target and the New York City Wine & Food Festival) Saturday, October 1st, 2011 at the Harlem Armory. There will be celebrity chefs, culinary demos, nutrition education, and fitness activities for the whole family.

News from the Armory

Do you love to dance? Do you want to get into shape while doing something you love? Are you ready to dance yourself into shape? If you answered yes to any of these questions then ZUMBA is for you!

The Harlem Children's Zone Healthy Living Initiative, in partnership with the New York Road Runners Foundation, is pleased to announce that they will be offering adult Zumba classes at the HCZ 369th Harlem Armory. Zumba classes will workout your muscles and burn calories with fun, easy to follow, Latin-inspired dance movements.

Classes will be held every Wednesday starting June 1st and ending on August 24th.
For the month of June classes will be from 7:30pm – 8:30pm. For July and August, classes will be from 6:00pm-7:00pm. All classes will be held at the HCZ 369th Harlem Armory, 40 West 143rd Street between Lenox Avenue And Fifth Avenue.

If you have any questions, please call Shaka Kinard at 212-281-5431 or e-mail hli@hcz.org.

Asthma Education

With higher childhood asthma rates in Harlem than in any other neighborhood in NYC, the Health Promotion Learning Lab is taking preventative measures by leading workshops on how to manage and control asthma. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, New York ranks number three in the list of most challenging metropolitan areas to live in with asthma because of the abundance of asthma triggers. An asthma trigger is a thing or condition that can cause inflammation in the airways. How they affect people with asthma varies from person to person but can include cigarette smoke, air pollution, dust mites, cockroaches, and strong odors. It is important to keep your home, workplace, and school free of these triggers.

For the past two weeks the Health Promotion Learning Lab (HPLL) has been in UPK classrooms to teach young students about how their lungs work and what it means to have asthma. With the hands-on exploration of a lung and diaphragm model even the youngest students are able to visualize and internalize how lungs fill and deflate with every breath they take. By listening to their own breath sounds with stethoscopes, talking about asthma triggers, and stressing that exercise is the simplest and most effective way to care for lungs, students gain a tangible understanding of asthma and how to decrease the negative consequences related to asthma. The HPLL stresses that just as bodies need nutritious food to be healthy, lungs need exercise to be healthy. It is important for people with asthma to understand their own asthma symptoms and find an individual exercise plan that takes into account their own body needs. Asthma can be controlled and should not hold anyone back from taking part in the activities they enjoy!

HCZ participates in Revlon Walk

New York City if full of great opportunities that combine two important things: support important causes and participate in social exercise. This past Saturday, on April 30th, 2011, a group of Senior leaders from HCZ participated in the 14th Annual Revlon Run/Walk for Women.

These woman decided to do two important things this past Saturday morning and we celebrate their achievement and encourage you to follow their lead! They decided to join the fight against woman's cancers, at the same time as they were improving their own health.

Exercise is one of the most important ways to maintain good health. Add eating well and getting enough rest and you have a winning formula. Exercise not only helps reduce your risk of many diseases, it can reduce stress, and in this case can be a great way to connect with friends and colleagues. Making exercise fun is a great way to ensure that you fit it into your busy schedule.

So congrats to Team HCZ! Let's follow their lead.
Thank you all, Anne Williams-Isom

The Educated Eaters Project

The Educated Eaters Project works to transform how the HCZ community engages with food—through improving our nutrition environment and thinking more sustainably about what we eat through hands-on nutrition education in the garden and the kitchen, in the classroom and the boardroom. 


Find out more about our ongoing projects here.

_________________

We all must eat. Our work is to educate our community around how to eat better. We are not all called to work as gardeners, chefs or farmers, but eating is one of our most basic instincts and needs. We need to eat throughout our lives. We participate in the food system, to some degree or another, every day. But as the world has become busier and more complex we’ve grown increasingly disconnected from our food sources and our eating habits. Our neighborhood and our nation is currently struggling with a food identity crisis and the resulting health problems are costing us not just in terms of years of our lives, but in terms of quality of our health.

The Educated Eaters Project is committed to teaching the next generation how to feed themselves better. To achieve this goal, we’ve got to have comprehensive community support on all levels—from parents and students, to staff and policy makers. Eating may be one of our most basic instincts, but we believe it needs more focus and attention that we’ve been giving it.

The Educated Eaters Project strives to empower our community to eat more responsibly, more carefully and more sustainably. This work takes many forms and venues—as it should—since food is culture and culture change is slow work. We must first understand what better food is, then make better food more accessible through education, collaboration and outreach, and all the while remind ourselves of the truth that eating healthfully is a key component of living well. The changes will come through baby steps that over time will have a huge impact.

The conversation about food is connected to every area of scholarship and society. Together let’s rediscover how to grow, cook, eat and engage with food in a healthy, sustainable and responsible way. Transforming what we eat is crucial to HCZ’s larger missions—in the classroom, the future and beyond. The better we eat, the better we learn and the better we live. So, join us as we create a community of Educated Eaters.