We started this week with our first wet gardening day. Some of our students stayed in class and started to work on their kitchen and garden journals; others started to make a mosaic table. We have an old table in our shed and plan to decorate it with mosaic tiles.
The weather brightened by Monday afternoon and Red and Orange Classes were able to come down to the garden. Everyone was very excited to see how much our plants have grown over the Easter break. Jed was especially pleased to discover that the corn has ripened!

We harvested a wide variety of vegetables for cooking this week:

• green tomatoes
• cabbage
• basil
• tomatoes
• capsicum
• corn
• parsley

As well as harvesting we did the following:

• planting carrot seeds
• weeding
• removing dead plants
• composting
• paper shredding (for the compost)
• watering
• feeding the worms in our worm farm

Nick harvests a cabbage for coleslaw



Jackson harvested a cabbage for coleslaw

Regan harvested green tomatoes

And a third cabbage was harvested by Nick for coleslaw

Billy shredded paper for our compost heap

Jo and Billy (that's Billy behind the paper!!) put the shredded paper onto the compost heap

Shannon discovered that the sweet corn has ripened

Litiani inspected the harvest table

Patrick enjoyed using the food processor to shred vegetables for the coleslaw

Litiani making coleslaw

H

Liam whisked eggs for frittata

R

Stevan made ravioli

Darcy made mini frittatas and carried them very carefully to the oven

Rochelle made mini frittatas

Ryan cooked fried green tomatoes

Ryan enjoyed his fried green tomatoes!



Hugo cracked eggs for frittata

Rochelle cracked eggs for frittata



Our menu this week was:

Fried Green Tomatoes with Yoghurt

Coleslaw

Pizza Scrolls

Mini Frittatas

Pumpkin Ravioli

 As usual everyone enjoyed most of the food. Green tomatoes were a 'first' for just about all of us and we were pleasantly surprised by their delicious taste. The filling for the ravioli was particularly tasty - we think we might use the same recipe for a dip later on.

This was our first week of making ravioli - a bit tricky, but successful!

Next week we will be cooking:

Sweetcorn and artichoke fritters with crisp sage leaves and herb yoghurt

Pizza Scrolls

Mini Vegetable Frittatas

Salad of the Imagination

Ravioli with spinach and ricotta filling

Like the green tomatoes, I think the Jerusalem artichokes will be a first for many of us - Sally kindly donated them to us. Our salad will be a little different next week too - students will be provided with a range of ingredients and will select what they would like to use.

Our fourth week and we have yet to find something that our students don't enjoy eating!! This week we cooked:

Mediterranean vegetables stuffed with spicy rice

Beetroot pasta with herb sauce

Pizza of the imagination

Leafy Salad

Apple Crumble with low fat Natural Yoghurt

Litiani rolls the dough for pizza



Regan is making apple crumble



Shannon using the food processor for the apple crumble



Josh making stuffed vegetables




Ellen tasting the salad



Ryan making stuffed vegetables

Billy doing a great job making pizza

pink and green class enjoying lunch

Jo cutting the pizza

Jo was very proud of his pizza

The stuffed vegetables included zucchini, squash, tomatoes and pumpkin and all were thoroughly enjoyed. The beetroot pasta was fun - a great colour (until it was cooked!) and of course provided an opportunity to use the ever popular pasta machine. We had some lovely flowers to add to our leafy salads this week. Pizza and apple crumble enjoyed too of course.

In the garden we have been busy building scarecrows – our latest is a lady who we have called ‘Libby’ – a very glamorous lady with long eyelashes and painted nails!!

Stevan harvested some peas

Ellen did a fantastic job cleaning our the trailer

Cameron did some mulching with Regina

Riley moved compost from one bay to another

Our new scarecrow

We have planted pak choy, mizuna, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, beetroot, pea and onion seedlings and broad bean seeds.

We were very excited to see that our garlic is sprouting already and some of the broccoli that we planted a few weeks ago has started to flower!

Our menus for the last four weeks have been similar so that all students could take a turn at each type of dish, after Easter we will start a new five week rotation and have a slight change of styles.

Another great week!

This week we cooked:

Dolmades with silver beet

Pasta with vegetable sauce

Pizza of the imagination

Leafy Salad

Pumpkin and spinach salad

Pizza and pasta were as popular as ever, but we were delighted to observe our students tuck in to the dolmades and the pumpkin salad also. The vegetable sauce for the pasta changed each day depending on what had been harvested and on the choices of the students and staff doing the cooking - it is great to observe the choice making that is going on here!

Litiani adds some salt to her pumpkin salad



Stevan grates cheese for the pizza



Shannon wonders what the dolmades will taste like



Josh cooking the pumpkin for salad



Jo loved making pasta!



Nick cooked his favorite food!



Rochelle makes pizza



Leafy salad is really very tasty!!



An enjoyable lunch!



Ellen enjoyed the pasta



Stevan enjoyed the salad



We completed lots of jobs in the garden - preparing beds for planting, planting seedlings, harvesting, watering, worm farming, composting and making scarecrows.

Ryan's Harvest

Mmm that smells good!

Planting celery

Michael helps with preparing a bed after it has had a green manure crop in it

Up-dating the weather board

Shannon investigates the sunflower seeds








Litiani checks the rain gauge

And next week's menu:

Mediterranean vegetables stuffed with spicy rice

Beetroot pasta with herb sauce

Pizza of the imagination

Leafy Salad

Apple Crumble