Winter Challenges

Back when I was first researching FoodCorps sites in Oregon, I skimmed the paragraph on North Powder, laughed and said, “Hell, no!”

Once I read through the sites in more detail, however, the main reason which made me laugh was the thing that brought me here in the end. I knew from my Montana experience that I was uniquely qualified to live- and thrive in- a small, isolated community.

My placement here has been a fantastic success and I’m having a blast, which means that encountering new challenges has been a disorienting surprise.

This weekend I was supposed to attend a FoodCorps Oregon training in Tillamook, but I couldn’t make it across the Blue Mountains thanks to a heavy snowfall. I joined my peers through conference calls and Skype, which was helpful but also a harsh reminder of how isolated I am out here, and just how long winter is going to be.

 I’ve coped by baking an inappropriate amount of cookies and cupcakes for a healthy food educator, and I’m also lucky to have a high-maintenance dog that constantly needs to be walked or taken to the vet (she’s currently healthy).

Although it is hard living in such an isolated place, I am grateful when I remember all of the advantages I have that Montana lacked: a wonderful supervisor, supportive and friendly colleagues, a fantastic housemate, a puppy and a working heater. These are all things that will make this winter much more enjoyable!

Why Aren't there more Brussels Sprouts?

Brussels sprouts, the scourge of dinner tables everywhere. There perhaps isn’t a vegetable that has been more characterized as inedible by children everywhere. When I saw they were on our lunch menu last week, even I wasn’t sure how to make them a success. My first effort was to advertise lunch as “Beef stroganoff with brassica oleracea.”

Middle school eats first, and every student tried to bypass me and my spoonful of Brussels sprouts. I chased them down, and even threw a couple of the veggies around, but knew this wasn’t sustainable persuasion. My final solution was to take the silverware tray and not let students take a fork until they let me put a sprout on their tray. They were grumpy, but the idea of eating beef stroganoff with their fingers was powerful motivation.

Elementary students were almost as reluctant. “What is that?” “It’s brassica oleracea,’ I told them. ‘It’s related to kale, and we cooked it the same way as kale chips which is why it smells so good in here.” Some nodded, interested, while others shouted out accusatorily, “Brussels sprouts!”

While the elementary students ate, I wandered the cafeteria asking kids to taste the veggie. When they saw the high-fives and crazy dance that was dispensed upon the consumption of each sprout, the cafeteria started to ring with shouts. “Ms. Estrem, Ms. Estrem, look at this!” as they popped sprout after sprout into their mouths. “Look, I ate three!” “Can I have some more?” The kitchen staff giggled as we served seconds and thirds, and students begged for more as they walk out the door to recess. It amazed even me at how easy it was to get them to eat this most despised of vegetables. It was a reminder that in today’s culture eating food often isn’t actually about food- commercials tell us that eating a specific food will make us happy, win us prizes, make other people like us. It turns out watching me boogie absurdly around the cafeteria is enough incentive for our students to chow down on Brussels sprouts.

When the after-school kids were serving up the leftovers from lunch, I heard one second-grader ask plaintively, “Why aren’t there more Brussels sprouts?” I told her they had been finished at lunch, and asked if she could make it until the next time we served them in the cafeteria. She nodded, grudgingly. Imagine, looking forward to Brussels sprouts day!

Roasted Brussels sprouts

Toss Brussels sprouts in olive oil and salt, and bake at 350 until outer edges are crisp.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

It has been a quiet couple of weeks, dominated largely by my puppy eating a bottle of ibuprofen and spending a great deal of time and money with the vet. She is mostly recovered, which is what I am thankful for this year, along with my wonderful job and living once again in Oregon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjKF7aQthcQ

Everyone Needs Goats

I probably believe this because I spent most of my childhood playing with the family of goats at Arbor School or at home milking our own herd of dairy goats. Goat cheese is one of my absolutely favorite foods, so when I learned that one of the students I work with in the kitchen at North Powder has dairy goats, I immediately started thinking. Amid my own ambitions to purchase milk, cheese and butter, I had plans for Food Day.

 October 24 was the second annual National Food Day, which is an opportunity to celebrate good quality, local healthy food. With astonishing ease (because of extensive help from my amazing supervisor) I developed a number of activities for North Powder students to think a little bit more about where their food comes from and what that means.
The celebration started at lunchtime with a glorious meal of roast beef, baked potatoes, mixed beets, Brussels sprouts and onions, and whole wheat rolls. The beets and onions were from the school garden while everything else came from local farms. The kitchen staff was lucky enough to have several incredibly skilled servers that day, including two little girls who accomplished the previously-thought impossible task of getting high school students to meekly submit to spoonfuls of veggies with emphatic glares and stealthy moves. Students were joined during the meal by several of our farmers as well as Representative Greg Smith (who got an earful on the new serving size regulations).

Following lunch, kindergarten through 6^th grade students spent two hours rotating through several stations around the school manned by an incredible crew of parent volunteers. Each class spent a half hour milking goats, pressing apple cider, making apple pies and reading apple books in the library. For the past week the classes had been competing to see who brought in the most apples (by weight) for these activities, and I had anticipated a healthy competition but not the 670 lbs. of apples collected (thanks to total domination by the 2^nd and 5^th grades who tied with 180.5 lbs each!) The day culminated with everyone once again gathered in the cafeteria for warm pie and cold cider, and the “rolling of the oatcake.” When I was a student at Arbor, every year we heralded winter with this Irish tradition of marking an oatcake with an ‘X’ on one side and an ‘O’ on the other. The school gathered as it was rolled down a hill, and depending upon which letter landed up determined whether the winter would be mild or harsh. I remember everyone chanting “X,X,X!’ because naturally we wanted a snowy winter where school would be canceled. I made an oatcake for North Powder’s ceremony, but managed to break it to pieces before it ever made it to school. I assumed we would simply cancel the event, but at the end of the day my supervisor pulled out a gorgeous makeshift oatcake for the principal to roll across the floor. Unlike in the Willamette Valley, students here groaned when the ‘X’ landed right-side up and complained that they had wanted a mild winter. Perfectly enough, the day after this prediction was made we woke up to a light blanket of snow covering the town.

Even More Compost!

I love compost. I believe recycling food scraps is one of the most worthwhile projects that schools can adopt outside of the classroom. I spent nearly a year in Montana fishing silverware out of garbage cans full of carrots, apples cores and lettuce, and have again found myself with the nicknames “Compost Lady” and “Dirt Lady” here in Powder.

Last week the 6^th grade students looked like they hardly shared my enthusiasm as I told them they were going to move the garden compost pile.

For the last several weeks we have been collecting fruit and vegetable scraps in the cafeteria as students learn the rules of composting and we see how much waste the school produces on a daily basis. New school lunch regulations require that students have at least one serving of fruit or vegetables on their tray. Although well-intentioned, even if a student tells me that it is going straight into the garbage, I am required to make sure it is on their tray. As a result, I collect about 60 pounds of compostable waste on a daily basis.

The school garden has long had a collection of dead plants, excess cabbages and rotting tomatoes we’ve called a compost pile. Slowly I am working to get it actively decomposing into fertilizer to enrich our massive school garden. One part of this plan is to replace this single pile with three composting “bays” which we will be able to rotate filling with scraps throughout the year.

The 6^th graders are here because I want the new bins to go exactly where the existing pile sits. They look at me dubiously as I distribute shovels, pitchforks and hoes. Several students hold their noses and stand back while others hesitantly pick up the stinking cabbages and carry them to the new pile.

Students with hoes start to hack the vegetables to pieces, and enthusiasm immediately grows. The boys with pitchforks dig into the pile to remove the top layer and expose the decomposition beneath. Because there are not enough tools for everyone, one of the girls climbs up in her muck boots and starts grabbing handfuls of compost with her bare hands and piling it on waiting shovels. Others soon join her.

Suddenly there is a shout. “It’s warm! It’s steaming!” The girl reaches down into the pile as others crowd around. They pull handfuls of grass clipping covered in white mold out of the pile. “Hey, this smells good!” I explain to them how heat is an important part of compost, and they excitedly dig deeper into the pile. Some comment on how it will be a great spot to hang out in during the winter.

We are all filthy, with decomposing organic matter coating arms and shoes, and I am sure we reek as well. Their teacher carries armfuls of cornstalks from one pile to another, grinning and only slightly cleaner than the rest of us.

We run out of time when we are only halfway done, and I have to pry students away from the compost to hose them off. They head back to their classroom as I put tools away before following them. It’s not hard to do, since there is a distinct trail of dirt leading from the garden to the school.

Lunch Lady

I have never entertained the thought of being a lunch lady. In my mind, the job holds no glamor or fun, but only long hours and limited budgets. The past couple of weeks, though, have helped me see it differently.

First, the kitchen is the only place at school that can blast music during work hours (always a plus for me). At lunch time, we come up with crazy and creative names for what we’re serving in an effort to get the kids excited about eating healthy. “Superhero Veggies” were a hit along with “Muscle Plums,” I heard requests for seconds of “Cowboy Beans” and even the high school students were willing to try “Eyeball Berries,” better known as Kiwi berries. I’m starting to get to know the students and their preferences, like the one third grader who makes a dramatic and painful show of eating his fruit before I will give him seconds of the entrée, and the high school boy who asks every day if we have more kohl rabi.

Elementary students have been helping to serve lunch, and extra hands and enthusiasm are always appreciated. Lately several boys have taken to volunteering even when it isn’t their turn to work! The one day I didn’t get the compost bin set up I was severely chastised by multiple students, and I get regular reports on the status of our compost collection throughout lunch time. Our compost worms are in the mail this weekend, and teachers are lining up for the chance for their classes to meet them, and eventually get their own class vermiculture projects (in exchange for garden labor!).

On Tuesday afternoon the cafeteria was full of 24 weeping fifth graders. Responsibility for the tears fell not on me but on the onions that several kids were dicing which filled the small room with their potent smell. Students peeled boiled eggs, cut up celery and pickles and I helped others peel forty pounds of school-garden potatoes for the potato salad we will serve at Open House. High school students in shop class made coleslaw (and a mess), and finally started to make a dent in the enormous amount of garden produce we’ve been struggling to dispose of.

Cooking with kids is turning into my favorite thing to do; my ideal schedule would consist entirely of playing in the kitchen or the garden. The brilliant thing about North Powder is that this is entirely possible! Next week- students and I hope to make a quinoa carrot salad, we’re already scheduled to make bean salsa, and in our free time play with worms!