A short week

A short week this week (Professional Development Day and Good Friday). We made:

 

Pasta with Carrot and Cumin

Arroz Verde

Pumpkin Pizza

Thai Carrot Salad

Fried Green Tomatoes with Yoghurt

 

Since next week will be a short week too, we will be repeating the above menu.

 

Some photos:

 
 Jennifer and Jed enjoyed chopping vegetables using our new 'super slicer'.

The bricks arrived for the new pizza oven.

 Louise and Liam saved seeds from our giant pumpkins.

Jo did a great job making the carrot sauce for our pasta.

Apple and Cinnamon Pizza!!!

In recent weeks when students have been asked to select what they want to put on their pizzas they have been selecting apples so.........................Apple and Cinnamon Pizza!!!

Everyone loved the pizza – the apple topping was based on the apple and cinnamon recipe that we have used in the past. And of course it provided us with the chance to use yet another machine – the apple slicer is a great tool.

Our menu this week was:

 

Pasta with Herb Sauce

Apple Pizza

Vegetable stir-fry

Salad Nicoise           

Chinese Rice

 

We were able to use lots of seasonal vegetables and the recently harvested Golden Delicious apples from the Huon Valley were as tasty as their name implies. And we were very pleased to receive a gift of a dozen eggs from Jack Green this week – very much appreciated!

 

We harvested corn for our salad and have just about enough to provide for all 5 of our cooking sessions. Next year in our big garden we should be able to produce lots of this very popular vegetable.

Sadly our last two giant pumpkins were destroyed last weekend. We were able to weigh what was left of them so are still able to enter the Tasmanian Schools Giant Pumpkin Competition. Also we were able to save the seeds from the pumpkins so that we will have plenty to grow next year. I think we might send seeds home with students so that they can grow the pumpkins at home – a safer option!

We purchased a Super Slicer this week – it seems to work very well – better for student independent use than our mandolins.

I has been good to have Tracey our speech therapist visit us for several sessions recently. This week she worked with Jason – in these photos Jason is learning the symbol and the sign for ‘help’.

One thousand new worms joined our garden this week! We settled them in to their new home (the worm farm) on Tuesday, giving them some moist shredded paper and some straw and giving them their first feed on Thursday.

 

 



The next four weeks are very broken up with holidays and professional learning days so we are going to run menus for two week blocks. For the next two weeks we will be cooking:

Pasta with Carrot and Cumin

Arroz Verde (green rice)

Pumpkin Pizza

Thai Carrot Salad

Fried Green Tomatoes with Yoghurt

 

And finally a few more photos:

 

 

 

 

Some of this week's stars

This week we made:

Pear and Parmesan Salad

Pasta with Caramelised Onion Sauce

Pumpkin and Spinach Salad

Zucchini and Onion Pizza

Jewelled Quinoa

 

Now that we are into our second year, we are beginning to repeat some of last year’s recipes – the jewelled Quinoa and pumpkin and spinach salads were two such repeats and were just as popular as they were before. The pear and parmesan salad took a little adjusting each day, but by Thursday we felt that we had got it just right!! Thank you Eiluned for the beautiful Nashi Pears.

I did realise this week that we hadn’t quite got our menu planning correct as there appeared to be no room to include some of the donations that we are now regularly receiving. This week we were given fantastic beetroots and tomatoes that weren’t actually needed in our recipes. Of course we found ways to compensate for this – well done to Tom and Amelia for making a delicious tomato and mint salad as well as the pear and parmesan salad that they were supposed to make and also to Shannon who made a wonderful beetroot, walnut and parmesan salad that definitely needs to be included in future meals! In future we must remember to have at least one item that can include a variety of vegetables.

For a change I am going to focus on just a few of our students who have done particularly well this week.

First all I must mention Jaime. Jamie was a little reluctant to come to our kitchen class this week, but quickly became enthusiastic when she heard her favourite music being played (on my telephone) – “The Dingle Dangle Scarecrow”.  She then enjoyed participating in our weather activity that involves dressing our scarecrows to suit the weather conditions (and dressing herself in the scarecrow clothes too!!). Not content with just that job, Jaime was then a great help with watering and with paper shredding.  Jaime’s efforts in the kitchen were exceptional too this week when she assisted with preparing the pumpkin and spinach salad.

Cameron, new to our school this year, has participated really well in both the garden and the kitchen every week. 

Stevan continues to be one of our Master Chefs!

It was very pleasing to see Liam participating so well in the garden this week.

And Stephen did a great job with pizza preparation.

Thomaz continues to be a great help in both the kitchen and the garden – great watering this week and the harvesting and carrying of the very heavy pumpkin was much appreciated!

 

 

What would we do without Brandon? Brandon was assigned to make the Pear and Parmesan Salad this week, but he was also spotted assisting with the pasta and the pizza!!

It was good to have Aaron back in class this week – great work in the garden.

Ellen joined us for a number of meals this week – always a very welcome guest at our lunch table.

 

And Jacob did a really good job with the weatherboard this week.

Great work on the pizza from Tom.

And it was really good to witness Tom's participation in preparing the pear and parmesan salad and especially to see him use a communication device to ask for more food and to indicate when he had finished eating.

Our new garden has moved on in leaps and bounds this week – we will soon be ready to start planting out our raised beds.

 

Next week we are cooking:

Pasta with Herb Sauce

Apple Pizza

Vegetable stir-fry

Salad Nicoise           

Chinese Rice