Sweet Potato Harvest and A Special Visitor to Our School Garden

This week we were privileged to host a special visit from Chef Marcus Samuelsson and His Royal Highness Prince Daniel of Sweden who were touring Harlem with the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce who were hosting a Green Summit on environmental and sustainable food systems. On Tuesday several students worked along with our Garden and Nutrition Instructor, Mia Littlejohn, and Executive Chef Andrew Benson to harvest the final few root vegetables that we'd grown including sweet potatoes, carrots and beets. It was a full day of harvesting, cooking (glazed carrots), and eating (Sweet Potato Bisque). You can read more about the royal tour and the ongoing efforts of the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce to promote environmental and sustainability issues here.

If you've never had the chance to harvest a sweet potato, this is a really fun and rewarding gardening activity! After we planted these puny looking sweet potato sprouts in the spring, they had blossomed into a cascade of leaves--which are also edible! But of course, as with any root vegetable, you never know exactly what's lurking under the surface of the soil and part of the thrill is having to wait until you are ready to unearth whatever is growing. Mia pulled a few carrots and sweet potatoes to show the students how it was done and they were so beautiful. Here's what they looked like all rinsed off:

Then some of our 8th grades spent nearly an hour digging through the dirt to find the burried treasure of the beautiful sweet potatoes that had grown. A single sweet potato plant will likely grow several potatoes and it's a bit like a hunt to find them. Just like in the kitchen, your hands are your most versatile tool in the home garden. Use your spade to find a potato and then wiggle it out with your hands until it is released from the soil. Here is the big pile of potatoes we grew and harvested:

We're now in the process of shutting down the garden completely for the winter. But it's not going totally dormant just yet. Under the dirt in several bins, we've already got bulbs growing and developing roots for when the sun swings back around and the spring time returns. They'll go dormant with the first hard frost (which is normally around November 10th), but don't worry! They come back to life when the sun swings back around and the spring time returns. It will be here soon enough. First we're looking forward to shorter days and more excuses to stay inside and eat a roasted sweet potato or some glazed carrots or some braised cabbage.

High School Food Interns Garden and Cook

This summer we have been so fortunate to have a small group of dedicated High School students work with us in the garden and cooking clubs. We've tackled all kinds of different projects from writing our own personal food stories to keeping a food journal and setting goals for making one healthy change to our eating habits. We've weeded and watered and harvested in the garden. We've made smoothies and salads and Kale Chips. Each student has a different reason for wanting to learn how to eat better--whether it is to loose or gain weight or simply learn how to take better care of themselves--we've discovered during group conversations that opinions and experiences which have shaped our relationships to food vary widely. Here are some links for you (whether you're a student or a grown-up) to start thinking about what's shaped your own relationship to food and also some resources for helping you set yourself up for making healthier choices. Let us know if you take advantage of them and what your experience is.

Evaluate Where You Are:
1. Calculate and Assess Your Body Mass Index (BMI) here.
2. Track Everything You Eat for 1 Week Using this Online Food Journal's (Free Trial Version).
2. Monitor How Much Exercise You Get Daily. Adults need about 30 minutes a day and kids need about 60 minutes a day.

Set Some Goals
1. Based on your weight, your food diary and your daily activity what changes do you need to make? Do you need to gain weight, loose weight or increase your physical activity? What does being healthy look like to you?
2. What are two small lifestyle changes you are willing to make to help you achieve a healthier you? Write them down. Enlist your friends by sharing your goals so they can support you. This guide to a healthier you is great!

Learn to Cook and Enjoy More Fresh Whole Foods
1. Most of us are comfortable cooking the foods we grew up with or have eaten throughout our lives. In the Standard American Diet this unfortunately often doesn't include many fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, and lean proteins. (Not familiar with what the Standard American Diet is? Check out this great interactive timeline about how it has evolved from the NYTimes.) There's still a place in your life for fried chicken, but you'll achieve a greater balance if you seek out and learn how to prepare for yourself some healthy and delicious options.
2. Become an Educated Eater.
Learn to read labels, ask questions at the grocery store and the farmers market, plan your meals and use your network to find out what other people enjoy eating. Avoid empty calories and instead eat a diet rich in various plant foods. Make meat more of an occasional treat or flavoring agent than the main event.

Lessons in Sustainability From a Harlem School Garden to a Local Farm

Tomorrow a group of 6th grade students from Promise Academy will celebrate the last day of the regular school year (they attend a modified program through the summer), with a visit to Stone Barns a non-profit farm and education center located just 25 miles north of Manhattan in Pocantico Hills, New York. According to their website, "Stone Barns operates an 80-acre four-season farm and is working on broader initiatives to create a healthy and sustainable food system."

In preparation for the trip, the students spent some extra time this week in our own school garden talking about what a sustainable food system means, understanding pollination, sampling and comparing Swiss Chard to Dinosaur Kale, and defining our own local food system. We even created our own set of sustainable vocabulary words to study on Dictionary.com. One thing that came up continually is the distinction between the food that's locally available and the food that's actually local. If you walk down 125th Street in Harlem you'll encounter nearly every national Fast Food chain serving up $1 Cheeseburgers and buckets of Fried Chicken. Several students were curious if this counted as local food?

Local food is actually food that is GROWN within a 100-mile radius of your home. Food that's available right outside your front door is not necessarily local. In fact, most food served at national fast food chains (besides being heavily processed, high in all kinds of questionable ingredients, calories and fat) travels pretty far to get to that storefront in Harlem. This is where the concept of "Food Miles" is helpful. Students learned to ask the question, how far has something traveled to get to my plate? As we chomped down on fresh Kale from our own school garden, we smiled at the sweet taste of fresh food that had traveled just an arms length from the ground to our mouths!

Eat Local. Think Global.

Today is the Summer Solstice in New York (hello, longest day of the year!) and in the garden we've been talking about several key terms that relate to the change of season. Yesterday we discussed what it means to "Eat Local. Think Global." This catchy phrase has been circulating around the food world for years now (if I knew it's origin I'd give the person some serious props!) and it's a concept that we want our students at Promise Academy and HCZ to really understand. In fact, it's one of the headlines on our cafeteria posters which we promised to do a follow-up series of blog posts about...so, let's get started.

First let's make sure we understand the terms we're using. What does it mean to "eat local?" Local food comes from your region. If you live in New York City, eating "local" means that you get most of your food from farms in the nearby counties in Long Island, Upstate New York, New Jersey and maybe even Pennsylvania rather than raising it yourself. Imagine yourself as the center of your world (probably not that hard for some of us!) and draw a 100-mile radius around yourself on a map. This is your local food region. If you manage to "eat local" you'll be considered a locavore. (You may be surprised to learn that most of the food we serve at Promise Academy including all our produce, dairy and meat is locally-sourced. Find out more about the food in the Cafeteria here.)

So, why eat local? From the posters our students, learn that local food is fresher, seasonal, and more nutritionally dense. It hasn't traveled thousands of miles to get to your plate which means it tastes better and its better for you and for the environment. Plus eating local food supports your local community and the regional economy. Pretty cool, right?

So what about eating seasonally? This is actually probably a little more challenging for the modern America. We're so used to having access to everything all the time, it's hard to reign in our habits back to what nature is serving up according to our local season. This has contributed to the fact that we eat fresh tomatoes (or bananas) year round that are shipped in from distant countries. It has also made us less connected to the joys of the cycle of the season. Eating seasonally actually can save you money, because the produce that's in season is usually the least expensive. Eating locally and seasonally actually go hand-in-hand, if you start by trying to eat more local foods, you almost can't help but eating more seasonally, which brings us finally to the last point: the big picture.

Thinking globally means you engage the big picture. (Remember that map of you as the center of your own local food community? Picture now that you are zooming out from your local community, keep zooming so far out that you disappear and now you've got an astronaut's perspective on this beautiful blue planet.) In the grand scheme of things, you are just one small part of the whole system of the world, the universe. That doesn't mean you aren't important or can't make positive change, but it just puts things in perspective. Surprise! The world revolves around the sun, not around you. Still your actions are significant, because while you may just be one person you are one of nearly 7 billion people on this planet. To maintain balance with our environment, we all have to consider how our actions impact those around us and the planet. Together we can create a sustainable future.

And that gives us much to look forward to as we celebrate the Summer Solstice here in Harlem! So go outside today and salute the sun and consider how you can eat in a way that is more in step with the earth's seasons and your unique place in the world.

Radish Harvest!

The garden is full of excitement and anticipation once things start to really take off and grow to maturity. Today the Garden Club harvested a medley of delicious radishes just as the raindrops started falling on our heads. Radishes are often considered little more than a condiment or something spicy to throw into a salad, a sandwich or a taco. While we love radishes for the crunch and their kick and often enjoy them these ways ourselves, we're hoping to discover some new favorite preparations in our class.

So, we will be sampling radishes three ways in our cooking class on Wednesday: raw, pickled, and roasted. If you've never had a roasted a radish, it's definitely worth the effort (minimal) to taste the remarkable transformation that this tiny little veg undergoes in the bathing warmth of the oven--it actually because kind of rich and sweet, or even "succulent" to borrow the word from a recent New York Times article. Several of the food blogs we read compared a roasted radish to the flavor of a turnip, something the students will be tasting later in the harvest this summer so we'll have to make a mental note and compare the flavors ourselves. We are going to roast the radishes with their greens to add even more nutrients to our little After School snack.

Here are a few of the best recipes circulating around the web for roasted radishes:

• Roasted Radishes with Radish Greens
• Roasted Radish Salad
• Roasted Radishes

Before you can roast a radish you've grown yourself, you have to pick. Be careful of the leaves which can be a little prickly, grab the base of the greens just about the root, wiggle the radish in the soil to loosen it, and then simply pull it up. You'll want to wash these babies off before eating them, but they are great for snacking just as is, or with a sprinkling of salt. Radishes are related to cauliflower and broccoli and are a nutritional powerhouse--despite the fact that they are very low in calories. They are very high in Vitamin C. The greens are also a great source of iron, thiamin and calcium. So, find yourself a radish, eat up and enjoy!

What's on the Menu? May 25th 2011

Tomorrows Menu will feature Tomato and Cheese Quiche for breakfast and Beef Lo Mein with Sesame Broccoli for lunch.

The term lo mein comes from the Cantonese lōu mihn (撈麵), meaning “stirred noodles”.
The Cantonese usage of the character 撈, pronounced lōu and meaning "to stir", differs from the character's usual meaning of "to dredge" or "to scoop out of water" in Mandarin, in which case it would be pronounced làauh or lòuh in Cantonese (lāo in Mandarin).In Mandarin, the dish is more typically called bàn miàn (拌麵), not to be confused with bǎn miàn (板麵).


In American Chinese restaurants, lo mein is a popular take-out food. In this setting, lo mein noodles are usually stirred with a sauce made from soy sauce and other seasonings. Such vegetables as bok choy and cabbage can be mixed in. Meats like roast pork, beef or chicken are often added. Shrimp lo mein, lobster lo mein, vegetable lo mein, and "House" lo mein (more than one meat) are sometimes available.

Join us for a meal.

Pak Choi

This graceful vegetable with Chinese origins has spread throughout Asia and beyond, developing a wide range of varieties. The most typical Pak Choi features dark green leaves atop white spoon-shaped upright stems. Stems vary considerably in thickness and shape, and in some varieties they are green. One variety produces a rosette of dark green leaves close to the ground. There are specialty pak chois that have frilly leaves to light yellow-green color. The slight mustardy flavor of Pak Choi makes it a delightful addition to stir-fries, soups, noodle and meat dishes, and salads, if the young leaves are used.

Health Benefits:
It is one of the rare vegetable that is very low in calories. However, it is very rich source of many vital phyto-nutrients, vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants.

Pak choi is very good source of vitamin K, provides about 38% of RDA levels. Vitamin-K has potential role in bone metabolism by promoting osteotrophic activity in bone cells. Therefore, enough vitamin K in the diet makes your bone stronger, healthier and delay osteoporosis. Further, vitamin-K also has established role in curing Alzheimer's disease patients by limiting neuronal damage in their brain.

Friday May 13th menu will feature this delicious vegetable. The pak choi was just picked by our farmer and delivered today.
Menu:
Teriyaki Fish, Sesame Pak Choi and Rice. Fresh baked Bread, Fresh Fruit and Soup Du Jour.

Enjoy.

The Dirt

Our after school Garden and Cooking Club got into the dirt this week, literally. From tilling the soil to starting our first compost pile (pictured) to building our own Worm Café to some simple pH tests to figure out how to feed and replenish what was used up by last year's plants, we've been hands deep in the dirt (and the weeds) for the last two weeks! Along the way, we learned what a wonderful rich story every square inch of soil has to tell and we thought we'd share a few of the most fascinating facts with you.

What exactly is dirt?
According to our book on soil, soil is "the naturally deposited unconsolidated material which covers the earth's surface whose chemical, physical, and biological properties are capable of supporting plant growth." Huh? Deposited unconsolidated material, eh?  We love the SAT-worthy words, but we wanted to find a simpler definition so we surfed over to Websters Kid's Dictionary and found this:

soil (noun):
i. firm land
ii. a : the upper layer of earth that may be dug or plowed and in which plants grow
b : the superficial unconsolidated and usually weathered part of the mantle of a planet and especially of the earth
iii. country, land <our native soil>
iv. the agricultural life or calling
v. a medium in which something takes hold and develops

Definitions 2 and 5 seemed closer to what we think of when we talk about the soil in the garden. Still they still did not quite give us the simple straightforward definition of soil we were hoping for--and maybe that's because soil is so much more complicated than we give it credit for! It's literally teaming with life and essential to helping new life translate sunlight into usable energy. Soil is a crucial part of nature's recycling system and critical to the food web that we all rely on. For now we're consider soil as the living, breathing outer layer of the earth that's made from all kinds of materials (plants and rocks and vegetation and animal matter) in various stages of decomposition that provide habitat for new plants and animals.

Soil as we know it today has developed over an extremely long period of time; in some cases even thousands of years. It's one of the earth richest resources and it's also one of our most renewable. But it does require some care, especially when we put it through rigors like farming and remove its natural rehabilitators (like forests) from its surface. So, we've been testing the soil in our 39 rooftop planters and are getting ready to feed it with…you guessed it…worm poo! Feeding the soil is on our "to do list" for next week's gardening club.

So until then, we'll leave you to contemplate this chart that shows how soil fits into a complex food web plus a link to some great further reading about the basics of soil from CXI. We really like how they define Soil as "a complex habitat where plants and microorganisms live together. Healthy, living soil is alive with a diverse population of microorganisms including bacteria, fungi, algae, protozoa, and nematodes. These organisms create a web of activity that decompose organic matter in soil to ensure that nutrients are usable by plants and crops. This results in continuous soil development, maintenance of soil structure, nutrient cycling, and various beneficial interactions with plant roots."

Pumpkin Patrol!

We continued the process of getting the beds ready for the first spring seedlings and plants enlisting help from as many community members as possible! One of Mr. Sander's 3rd Grade Science Classes at Promise Academy 2 has been growing Pumpkin Seeds in their classroom and brought them over to the garden to find more space to grow. Traipsing down Madison Avenue with the spindly pumpkin plants in tow, they happily dubbed themselves "The Pumpkin Patrol."

Transplanting seedlings can be a tricky process. Even if you are careful you may lose some of your hardiest plants along the way. For fledgling sprouts that have grown up in the comforts of a classroom, sudden exposure to the elements can often be too much. Be as gentle as possible and if you've got the time "harden off" your plants off by slowly taking them out into the fresh are. This process simply means that you gradually expose your plants to the outdoors in order to help them acclimate. When your plants are coming from one school building to another, you can't always create the ideal conditions. The harsh reality of the outdoors, combined with the fact that our roof can get very windy and we knew our pumpkin plants would have to be packed in well for good soil-to-root contact in order to have a fighting chance in their new setting. For more about transplanting your seedlings outside in your own garden, read this article: http://bit.ly/j13Wfm

We have had some surprises this spring in the garden...like the carrots and beets that survived through the winter! We've also got several herbs that have self-seeded and sprung back to life including oregano, thyme, sage and parsley. Thanks so much to the group of students and teachers who came over to help us start transforming our garden from winter's fallow ground to spring's sprouts. We have had a mysterious arrival of loads of Pansies in many of our vegetable beds which are beautiful and unexpected joys. We've been working to move them from the vegetable bins to a few flower boxes and pots where they can be enjoyed by everyone. We gave the Pumpkin Patrol several potted pansies to take back with them to beautify their own school and enjoy. Stop by the 5th Floor Terrace Garden to see the flowers for yourself.

We've got seedlings!

There's always a lot of excitement in the air (not to mention allergens! Achoo!) as the plants and trees that have survived with us through the long winter start to bloom and blossom. Walking around New York the past few weeks it's been impossible not to notice the Pear Trees and Cherry Blossoms showing signs of life from Harlem to Brooklyn. Meanwhile, here at HCZ we've been incubating our own set of seedlings for our Kitchen Garden...and after a few days and weeks of patience...we've got sprouts!

These seedlings will grow up to be some deliciously fresh fruits and vegetables. Plus along the way we'll get to learn about the amazing scientific processes that go on in the soil and the systems that support turning sunlight, air, and water into edible energy. So far we've started lots of tomatoes (Tiny Tim, New Yorker, Fox Cherry, Green Zebra, Goldie), some cucumbers (Big Munchers and Pickling Cucs), Eggplants (Apple Green and Black Beauty), Peppers (Big Jim and Hot Chili), Herbs (Thyme, Tarragon, Dill), some melons (Banana, Iroquois, Jerry Lind), some squashes (Patty Pan Squash and Pumpkins) and some cruciferous vegetables (Broccoli and Brussels Sprouts) to transplant into the garden.

We love the artist illustrated seed packets that we got from the Hudson Valley Seed Library and are excited about the heirloom varieties donated by John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds! What about you? Are you starting to think about growing your own balcony or fire escape garden now that the weather is turning? Or do you want to get your hands dirty in our garden? We would love to give you a tour of what's growing and we're always looking for volunteers to help us with our latest project. Let us know if you want to get involved. Until next time, keep growing and learning and eating well!

Happy Earth Day!

Since 1970, April 22nd has been celebrated around the world in ways big and small as "Earth Day." This unique holiday promotes awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment. The Harlem Children's Zone recognizes what an important idea this is and we're excited to be in the process of preparing our own school garden for yet another year of connecting our students and community members with the process of growing and harvesting their own food. In honor of Earth Day, we got out in the garden and cleaned up what was lingering from last season so that we could kick off our compost bin and get the beds ready for the new seedlings that are started.

According to the Earth Day website, "planting a garden at a school or at home is recognized universally as one of the best ways to teach children of every age the life sciences, to inspire a greater desire for whole foods and generally to reconnect them with Nature." We could not agree more and we are looking forward to enjoying and honoring our garden and this beautiful planet we call home, not just on Earth Day, everyday throughout the coming seasons.

You can participate in this day by making your own pledge at www.earthday.org

Help Us Get our Garden Going!

Every year as winter thaws out into spring we get giddy thinking about returning to our work in the garden. We've ordered the seeds and are gearing up to start planting once the risk of frost has passed. Everyone who's a part of HCZ is invited to join in the fun of getting the garden ready to go! In fact, all next week, April 18th-22nd, we are hosting Community Garden Work Days from 1-4pm in the 5th Floor Terrace Garden. We'll be outside, unless there is rain, and you can come and help us:

• Test the soil PH
• Feed the soil
• Clean up from the long winter!
• Start our compost heap
• Turn and till the soil to prepare it for new seeds and seedlings
• Weed out any stubborn plants that have found their way into the planters

It's going to be a great week of garden prep and we hope to see you there. If you have any questions or want to schedule a specific time to come with your class or group, please email our gardener, Miss Mia, at mlittlejohn@hcz.org. See you in the garden!

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.