Thank you, Chelsea! I can see that the images alongside the text would really help the kids. I wish we had drawers and cabinets for our supplies! Our scale is much smaller and a big part of the challenge, more space would make it easier. Thanks for the recipe! I'm definitely still in the learning curve phase off what I can grow with kids and easily cook in the classroom with them. I just have a little push cart of cooking supplies and I'm a volunteer so cobbling resources together.
Original Message:
Sent: 02-05-2025 12:39:17 PM
From: Chelsea Haslup
Subject: systems for cooking
Hi Nicole!
I don't know if this will be what you're looking for, I can share with you what we do at my school and see if that helps.
We have a classroom that we use for cooking classes twice a week. We have drawers and cabinets labeled with picture/text icons so students can find the cooking tools themselves. We bring in large tables for them to use for cooking on. We also push their desks together for larger table space. I create the recipes each month with pictures and text, which I adjust depending on the students following the recipe. I try to adjust the recipes to have them use whatever materials we are growing in the garden (e.g., green bean fries if we have lots of green beans or egg plant fries if we have a lot of them). I attached a copy of one of the recipes I shared with my students if you need an example. We do the same recipes for one month to give each class several opportunities to make the recipes. There are 5 recipes total I assign students to make and then after making there recipe all the students eat the food dishes, family style, for lunch. I think as far as cooking equipment for a lot of recipes just simply having a blender, cooktop single/double burner, and an air fryer can give you a ton of options for different recipes to make.
As far as seasonings, I have the students growing herbs and got a dehydrator for us to help dry them out and we use the blender (as needed) to help grind them up and store them to use them later. We had a bumper crop of dill this fall that we used in different salad dressings and dips the students enjoyed making and eating :)
I also teach the horticulture class, so I have the students also help with planning the garden so the choose at least one staple crop to grow, a crop they eat all the time like carrots. I then have them pick at least one new crop to try, last years was rainbow swiss chard.
That's a fairly brief overview of what I do with my students. Hope that helps or if you have any questions about what I wrote or how I run my classes with my students, let me know!
Chelsea
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Chelsea Haslup, M.S, BCBA (She/Her)
Head Special Education Teacher
Post High School Program
Ivymount School
Original Message:
Sent: 01-31-2025 09:55:54 PM
From: Nicole Dodds
Subject: systems for cooking
Our school and it's gardens and food forest are in their 2nd year so we are young. We do not have a cafeteria. I am putting together a mini-mobile kitchen to use with the classes to process their harvests into food that is shared in the classroom. Today, we enjoyed raw and pickled turnips and radish, celery, mixed green salad, kale chickpea spread, and green smoothie. It was a fun day with the children and it went well overall but I need to get some systems in place for how to organize myself and all the many food and kitchen items. Wondering if anyone has checklists that could be shared and edited (on my side) for this or a similar situation? or outlines of general processes? Just need to systematize a little and could use a template to work with. Thx!
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Nicole Dodds
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