Baking at School: Part 2

Special thanks to Choices Market on Cambie for donating fresh, quality ingredients!

The mysterious chef known as Dude made a Sweet Coconut Pumpkin Soup. I cut up a raw sugar pumpkin, peeled it and sliced it into bite sized pieces. This is a challenging bit of prep that I recommend you leave for an adult. We had about two cups of pumpkin and put it in about 3 cups of boiling water. Once the pumpkin is soft, add 1 cup tapioca strings, 2 cups of coconut milk, and a jar or two of coconut jelly squares. Soup for dessert? Yes! I have developed a real taste for the sweet "soups" of India with a strong cup of authentic masala chai.

Now for more muffins! Extremely Inconvenient Banana and Chef Bobula made Browned Butter Pumpkin Muffins, the first of three different pumpkin muffin recipes the students baked. The secret to this recipe is melting and then browning the butter on the stove (careful not to burn it!) which gives the muffins an extra rich, nutty flavor. (Note: We cut out some of the sugar in this recipe by at least half a cup.) Chef Vanilla Icing and Chef Icer made pumpkin muffins that were dense and moist and Make it Mika and Chef Chocolat made Muffin Tops which were light and delicate. I really liked Chef Vanilla Icing and Chef Icer's recipe because of its simplicity--another potential bake sale recipe.

Chef E W made Chocolate Pumpkin Swirl Brownies which are a bit more complicated than the other recipes because it involves dividing the batter in half and mixing one half with melted bittersweet organic fair trade chocolate and the other half with pumpkin puree. It takes a bit more time and effort, but it's certainly worth it. These brownies are absolutely decadent!

One recipe that was a bit too fussy for us to make at school was the Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake chosen by El Gwaco, Chef Majipe, and John Redford. I made this at home (omitting the pecans) and we had a taste of it at school because it takes a long time to prepare, bake and chill. Cheesecake was the most expensive recipe we tackled, because the cost of the cream cheese really can add up. I halved the recipe to make it more affordable. I also used light cream cheese to cut down on the calories which tastes just as good as the full fat cream cheese. Besides, wouldn't you rather be able to top up the decadence factor with some whipped cream on top? Oh how I LOVE whipped cream on cheesecake! Not to mention some caramel sauce. Sigh.

Finally, we made some Old Fashioned Pumpkin Cookies with Chef Lenie and Chef C. Canned pumpkin is perfectly acceptable in recipes like this one. These cookies are soft and cakey in texture and Chef Chef made an icing with icing sugar, vanilla, buttermilk, and melted butter. El Gwaco, Chef Majipe, and John Redford and drizzled the icing over the cookies while they were still warm.

I hope you try some of these recipes at home with your family.

Bonne Chance et Bon Appetit!

Baking at School: Part One

A Baking Marathon with Zucchini Mama at Simon Fraser 

Special thanks to Choices Market on Cambie for donating fresh, quality ingredients!

This week we Division 3 baked with the Curcurbit family. No, the cucurbits are not the quirky next door neighbors, they are a family of squash, including zucchini, which is a summer squash and pumpkin, which is a winter squash. Cooking with squash adds fiber and nutrients to your baked goods and has the added benefit of lending moisture and flavor to the recipe. Our local zucchini season is pretty much over so be sure to have one last go at adding them to salads or cupcakes. Leaving the skin on adds extra fiber to the recipe. Chef Renie Zucchini and Chef Coco made a delicious Apple Zucchini Salad with an apple cider vinaigrette. They worked with E W, patiently cutting up the ingredients into pretty, uniform pieces, making the salad look as good as it tasted. Chocolate Discovery Man made my favorite Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes from the popular rebar cookbook. S and N made Zucchini Cupcakes with the addition of chocolate chips. As Jamie Oliver would say, zucchini and chocolate are best mates! I liked this recipe because the product is moist, light, and incredibly easy to make. It is the perfect bake sale recipe.

Every Saturday this winter we are lucky to have a winter farmer's market at Nat Bailey Stadium. Every week I look for the last sugar pumpkins of the season. These pumpkins are especially good for baking because the flesh is dense and tasty. I found a sugar pumpkin on sale for just two dollars, so I took out the seeds, cut it in half and rubbed it with sunflower oil. I baked it until it was soft and the skin started to separate from the pulp. This yielded about 3 1/2 cups of pulp, which is a good deal, considering that a 15 oz. can of organic pumpkin (about 2 cups) is about 3 dollars or more. Chef Death rolled out a pie crust which the students cut into circles for tarts.  Chef Lemon Head made the filling for my favorite (Zucchini Mama's Awesome) Pumpkin Pie recipe, which is sweetened with maple syrup. Chef Lemon Head's secret is to put some freshly grated lemon rind in the pie filling to give it some extra zing.

Next, we had Luchandor, Mr Chef and J make another pumpkin pie recipe which is sweetened with honey. We used buckwheat honey for a deep, rich flavor. The honey, and the fact that we used some canned pumpkin made a darker tart. Both recipes tasted sweet and rich. I hadn't made enough pie crust so we used some silicon muffin cups to bake the rest pf the filling which worked just fine (and saves on calories). Silicon muffin cups are a worthwhile investment because it saves you from buying boxes of cupcake papers. They'd make an awesome Christmas present for the baker in your family! It is recommended you season the liners with a bit of vegetable oil the first two or three times you use them to prevent the cupcakes from sticking. 

M "Biscuit" C made a scent diffuser by pushing whole cloves into the lid of a pumpkin we'd hollowed out and made square-shaped widows in. She rubbed pumpkin pie spices into the flesh of the pumpkin and put a tea light in the bottom. As the spices warmed up, it filled the room with a lovely aroma. This is an idea from our old friend Martha Stewart. (BTW, I ended up removing the top of the pumpkin because it was so small that the lid started to burn, so if you're using a small pumpkin, just leave off the top.) Next, Mercedes covered the pumpkin seeds with oil and sprinkled them with sugar and baked them at 250 F until they were toasted. (We later cut up the pumpkin diffuser and baked it to use in a recipe.)

100 Mile Afternoon Tea

Pumpkin tarts and apple pies are definitely in season, so we decided to drink chai and make pie on a grey November afternoon.

 It's more fun making pie in a group, and we chatted and caught up on the news while we made the pastry dough, rolled and cut out the circles.

 

I got  to take some tarts home, so guess what we had for breakfast during the week? 

Pressure Canning Beans

Bawk! Welcome to J's canning workshop for baked beans and bacon. Bawk!

J had generously purchased top quality ingredients, including applewood smoked bacon cut into chunks she calls "queen beans." She soaked and cooked the beans, then baked them for a half an hour with all the ingredients. The beans finish cooking in the canning process.

I like the way she keeps track of the cost of ingredients and any notes that are relevant for the next time you go to make the recipe.

Beans makes me crazy!


We snacked on salmon that J had canned earlier and her amazing homemade dill pickles!

This is a special canning element J bought which can hold the weight of the pressure cooker.

We filled the jars, leaving two inches of head space and covering the beans with the cooking liquid.


Here's the first rack for one layer of 500ml jars, then you put another rack on top and another layer of jars.

We followed the steps in the canning manual very carefully.

Checking for steam.

While the cooker sputtered away we chatted and drank rooibus chai. IIRC we did 18 jars in total and there were beans left over in the pot so we had weiners and beans for dinner and they were sweet and delicious. Thanks J, you are the queen bean!

Zuke Tube: Lesson for Grade 5/6

Zuke Tube: How to Grow and Cook Zucchini aka Courgettes

Lesson Length: One Hour

Learning Objectives:

To teach students about the growth cycle of the zucchini, facts about the plant structure, pollination, and harvesting.

To show the students a variety of cooking show styles.

To teach the editing and storyboarding process.

To teach the students media critique and media literacy.

To use the "expert game" to teach improvisational skills, to gain confidence in public speaking and interview skills (giving interviews and being the interviewee.) To prepare students for the exercise of creating their own cooking shows.

Introduce the idea of creating a class cookbook.

Homework: Students can look over magazines and choose one or two recipes they would like to cook in their cooking show. For this exercise one of the ingredients must be from the squash family: ie pumpkin, zucchini, spaghetti squash, etc.

In the next lesson students will list the ingredients and the cooking tools they need to make their recipe. I will need a copy of each recipe. Eventually the students will be broken down into groups of three, so if more than one student like a recipe, that's a good thing. We will then improvise our cooking shows, and then create story boards and scripts.

1 min BBC Dig In: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSsFixgoAA

2:24, Time lapse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_lGLBCwkKE

2 min, Pollinating zukes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x1crwrsxj8

6 min, River Cottage good tips on growing zukes and a grilled courgette salad: http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5449374/14343716

3.5 min, video for people who sell veggies, The Produce Lady: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhv6pcg-A0c

5 min, Gordon Ramsey, Stuffed Courgette Rolls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7z8vAwdt_M

Jamie Oliver (start the video at 2 min 25 seconds): Deep fried courgette flowers 11 min.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o1mwGb-wNU

4:45, Griddled Yellow Pepper, Courgette and Tandoori Paneer Salad: PATAK's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsFQ6pG1qUE

4:30, Mixed salad: http://www.youtube.com/gardengirltv#p/search/0/2ahKHAaDDCc

1 min: tuna and courgette fritters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yv57ENHVh0

Alton Brown: Chili Peppers, Scofield index, DVD

Optional:

3:20, Deep fried courgette flowers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43w6O7tWjjo

3:47, Zucchini Fritters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nBeY8Y-PrE

Improv Subjects:

how to grow a giant pumpkin

salt

carrot juice

chocolate bunnies

healthy smoothies

junk food

miniature cows

giant gingerbread houses

pancakes

zucchini furniture

banana splits

lime jello made in bathtubs

marshmallow mattresses

chocolate covered grasshoppers

how to make a giant pumpkin pie

Peas School

The grade 4/5 class worked with the grade ones to plant seeds and here we are transplanting the seedlings. They got a bit leggy, but we'll see how they fare now that they are in direct sunlight. In the future we'll have to use the courtyard to produce sturdier seedlings.

These are shelling peas and they will be on the north side of the garden.

One of the community gardeners asked if we were going to throw away our seedling tray because he uses them to make wire worm traps with a flour and water dough. Ughh. Wireworms are a big pest at UBC farm, so I hope they aren't a problem in our bed. The gardener said it was from the sod that they pulled up and then added to the bottom of the garden beds. Not a good idea. Wire worms attack root and bulb crops.


The wish flags are hanging up in the garden, helping to enclose the place and make it cheerful. I really felt wonderful in that garden today. I think they're helping lift the spirits of that site.

We've got some tasty kale blossoms for the students to nibble on and the bees were loving them too.


Mushrooms and star fruit in the centre, with celery on the border.







This is one of the beautiful new benches. A tourist visiting from Ontario came by and asked us all about the garden. It was a pleasure to act as proud tour guides for a green city!

A Pot Washing Party!

Hey, let's have a pot washing party! What images does this conjure in your mind? Well for the Two Block Diet club it's a group of gardeners getting down and dirty to re-use our plastic plant pots. It's mid April, the lilacs and cherry trees are blooming and it's time to get serious about seedlings. (Well, actually we're a bit late, but who's counting?)

Garden experts used to tell people not to reuse plastic pots because they might carry plant diseases but now in the era of ecological awareness they admit if you wash them out properly and sterilize them with a bit of bleach (9 parts water to one part bleach), it's better for the planet to reuse your plastic pots. Sterilization is particulary important for those plants that are more likely to carry diseases such as tomatoes and brassicas. The prospect of scrubbing my 70 or so small pots was very daunting so I was very happy when Kate and Dawn picked a time an a place and we did it together. DIT as opposed to DIY. Any pots (with a number 5 recycling rating) that were broken beyond use ended up in the plastics recycling depot that Kate has set up for things that can't go in our regular recycling stream.

Another neighbour lent us a big black basin, I brought some rubber gloves and Kate got out her bleach. A few of the neighbourhood girls set up an impromptu sidewalk sale and mostly bought from and traded with each other. The older kids set up a giant game of manhunt. We washed and scrubbed and caught up each other's news. It was hard work. My back was strained, I must admit I was in pain, but it felt good to bond together over dirty pots and to get the job done.

In fact a couple of days later Dawn helped me do another job--cleaning bags of used clothing, books and toys out of my front porch that needed to go to the thrift shop. I don't have a car, so we used her mini-van. What does this have to do with food? Well, not much, but it's an example of how the two block diet meetings and events improve the quality of our lives.

Blue School

While teaching yesterday and I noticed some students being hypnotized by the sink--running the water over their hands and squeezing the sponges, watching the riot of colors disappearing down the drain. It was hard to get the kids to take turns because the sink was such a coveted location. I told one girl to move on and she just nodded her head with a dreamy look in her eyes and stayed right where she was. As I saw the students enjoy the sensation of the water running over their hands as they cleaned the brushes and rubber stamps I wondered if students are getting enough "tactile" time at school. They sit in desks and touch paper and pencil all day, but what about all the other thousands of textures life presents to us? During gym they feel the pebbly surface of the basketball, they might jostle the polyester and cotton of their fellow players' clothing, but maybe they need more texture, more color, and more environmental stimulation

This morning I thought about books I've browsed through on Italian educator Reggio Emilia. He made sure that preschool students explored the world through their senses in creative ways. In fact he saw the environment as the "third teacher." What a simple but stunning concept. Imagine classrooms built on these basic Reggio Emilia principals:

--The aesthetic beauty within the schools is seen as an important part of respecting the child and their learning environment
--A classroom atmosphere of playfulness and joy pervades
--Teachers organize environments rich in possibilities and provocations that invite the children to undertake extended exploration and problem solving, often in small groups, where cooperation and disputation mingle pleasurably.
--Documentation of children's work, plants, and collections that children have made from former outings are displayed both at the children's and adult eye level.
--Common space available to all children in the school includes dramatic play areas and work tables for children from different classrooms to come together.

As the Campbell government squeezes funding for education and libraries my mind boggles how the education of children could be made so much more stimulating if the system received the proper funding.

Now imagine what would happen if a bunch of performance artists created and school. The Blue School, an innovative school for young children was created by members of The Blue Man Group in New York. Don't you wish you could have let your creativity run wild in a place like that? Part of what I found exciting about the school is that it welcomes parent involvement and it attracts the kind of parents who want to be involved in the process of their children's education. It certainly looks like a stimulating environment--maybe not the best place for kids who need a more calm and settling space, but finding a balance would have to be a major part of the educational practice in a place like that. Kind of like life outside the classroom.

Olympic Sweeties

Butter Baked Goods is a pastel-painted bakery on Dunbar that sells old-fashioned sweets. They made some special treats to celebrate the Olympics and a couple of days ago I spotted a table where each goody was priced at one dollar each. I love a bargain, so I snatched up some novelty cookies and s'mores.

I love these sparkly red mitten cookies. Authorized by VANOC? I think not. Maybe that's why they had to sell them so fast. My son was happy to eat the incriminating evidence. So was I.

There are two kind's of s'mores here. Butter Baked Goods makes their own marshmallows, and these were sandwiched between two soft and buttery maple ginger cookies. One version had chocolate on the insides of the cookies and the other had maple fudge. I loved both of these (the chocolate was my favorite) and hope they make s'more!

Tea for the BBC

Last Friday Aboriginal Tourism of BC hosted a sampling of first nations food and culture at the BC Showcase Centre at Robson Square. While crowds seeking family entertainment at the Olympics packed the underground ice rink to watch skating mascots, jugglers, and native dancers, we snacked on muskox and pemmican and drank labrador tea. The showcase center is a compact series of rooms that has been outfitted with natural and/or recycled materials as well as a series of videos and interactive displays. Polished wooden planks hanging from the ceiling have all been chosen from specific regions around the province. By choosing a region on a computer screen you can find the plank from that region, including one or two pieces of the distinctive blue pine beetle-affected wood.

While chatting with provincial MLA's and other writers in attendance we were served a refreshing drink made of cranberries and elderflower juice toppled with "hoshum" or soapberry foam. Nisga'a Nation dancers from the Nass valley in Northern BC welcomed us into the presentation space by drumming in four part harmony. Chills went though my spine as I passed the drummers in their beautiful button blanket capes and woven cedar hats. We passed through a hallway which illuminated by a series of screens that show symbolic images of BC industries which are affected by the body heat of the people passing next to them.

We were made to feel welcome by more singers and dancers and invited to eat the lovely food that had been prepared from ingredients used in first nations cuisine prepared by chef Daryl Nagata who is currently executive chef of the Pan Pacific Hotel Vancouver. I remember him as one of the first chefs I read about in Vancouver having a garden-to-table relationship when had a rooftop garden at his former job in the Waterfront Hotel. I thought it a bit strange that the event hadn't been catered by an aboriginal chef, but I'm guessing they're all busy at the other Olympic pavilions focusing on first nations culture. (Speaking of which, Cassandra Anderton, who writes for her website Good Life Vancouver tipped me off to the fact that the Kanata Cuisine Aboriginal Feast is now on for half price (originally $245) and with pairings from Nk' Mip winery, it looks to be a good dinner. See the web site for details.)

The food was presented buffet-style on carved wooden paddles and slabs of slate. Everything was delicious, and the plates we used were thinly sliced rounds of alder. Since learning about pemmican in grade five, I've always wanted to taste it, and finally my dream came true with Nagata's woodland buffalo and cherry pemmican on Leslie Stowe crackers. Sweet and rich, it's a good food to put fire in the belly. Equally hearty was the bison and wild boar sausage and the juicy and tender slices of herb-crusted musk ox, another first for me. The musk ox (which was my favorite) is sourced from Basin island in Nunavut, which has a carefully managed population of the wild animals. The hides are sent to Peru to be processed where the underfur, or qiviut is made into a fine wool which is claimed to be "stronger than sheep's wool and eight times warmer than cashmere," according to the Nunavut Development Corporation's web site.




The traditional Salish Cedar Salmon had a deep, smokey flavor, and the meat was moist and tender. The farmed smoked sturgeon served with its jade green roe was beautifully presented and equally tasty as the salmon, although I wonder about the ecological implications of eating sturgeon, whether it is wild or farmed.

The Aboriginal Tourism Association of BC is actually a not for profit organization that seeks to give professional development and support to existing and budding aboriginal entrepreneurs. The current focus of the association is on providing authentic aboriginal cultural experiences to tourists. The organization even goes to far as to try to develop a set of criteria of what authentic means--a contentious task, I would think. The website gives tourists an interesting set of options for those seeking tours of native art galleries, museums, interpretation centers, wineries, salmon feasts, etc. It's a good tool to use when you are planning a holiday in British Columbia and you want to support Aboriginal businesses. (I know I do my bit in Vancouver by drinking our fair share of In' Mip wine and Cherry Point Vineyard's blackberry port.)

Half Moon Woman showed us how to do birch bark biting by folding the bark into a triangle and biting down on it to create patterns. Pat Bruderer is self-taught and has been passing the tradition down to successive generations so the art will not be lost. In fact, this is the theme of Aboriginal Tourism of BC: "Our story. Your experience."

One of the directors of Aboriginal Tourism of BC, Dr. Linnea Battel says that the aboriginal people have a history of generosity and sharing in their culture, and she fully endorses the pride of promoting the excellence of aboriginal history and contemporary cultural practice in BC. She is one of those people with a warm, open face that one is drawn to so it is appropriate that her given name means "She Who Brings the Sun," and so we have her to thank for all this fabulous weather!


After the welcoming speeches, we are invited to have tea prepared by Douglas Green who harvest native medicinal plants from the Chilcotin region of BC. He has brought Labrador Tea leaves, which are more potent because they have been harvested from a high elevation. He breaks the dried leaves up ahead of time so they will steep a bit better, and recommends a fifteen minute steeping time. The tea has a sedative effect and it is good for congestion, among other health benefits. However, there are toxicity warnings--all the more reason to trust an authentic native medicinal expert.

I had been looking for any press besides those from Canada at this event, and noticed only one sullen looking German writer. However, suddenly the room is abuzz because the BBC camera is in the building and the camera is rolling. Much fuss is being made over whether or not the Labrador tea is ready to serve. It seems we're still firmly entrenched in our colonial past, anxious for the loyal subjects to serve tea to the BBC. La plus ça change....