Harvest Day
At the schools that Slow Food Noosa sponsor, the members
of Slow Food will come along and prepare meals with the
students.
First thing in the morning the students harvest the produce from
the garden and wash the produce.
In 2007 the chefs that came to our school were Matt Golinski and
Katrina Ryan, below is the menu that they prepared with the
students.
While many of the students were learning from famous chefs how to
use sharp knifes and cook food, other students were preparing the
tables decorating with plants and flowers, and collect arrowroot
leaves to be used as plates to be eaten off this way we had no
disposables involved and the plates/leaves could be composed
afterwards.
The students thoroughly enjoyed the fruits of their
labours...
Photo above: Matt Golinski chef from Rolling Dolmado and TV
celebrity chef arrives with tools in hand. Groups of students
rotate in half hour shifts cooking with Matt.
Meanwhile we are busy in the garden picking arrowroot leaves for
plates and decorating tables with large leaves (paw paw, banana)
and flowers.
Our Lady of The Rosary Harvest Day
The highlight of the year is our Harvest Festival, this is the
2nd time we have had the festival and all classes wanted to be
involved this year that posed a new challenge for me, an event so
large approx feeding 400 students, teachers and some parents and
families, but I do like a challenge and Our Lady Of The Rosary
has an enormously supportive teacher/parent team so I was
confident that we could do it successfully. Harvest Day is
one of the most important days of the program because it to
showcase to everyone that children will eat fresh food if they
have grown it, that we don"t need disposables (we grow arrowroot
leaves for plates and buy "real" knifes, forks and some (real)
plastic plates and cups etc from Op Shops), we share and we work
as a community. It is also a time to be grateful for the
organic food we have grown and cooked and how lucky we are to be
in Australia. There are so many unspoken lessons in that
one Harvest day. After harvest day we discussed how
much it would have cost if we brought disposable plates, cups,
forks, spoons etc and I was shocked at just how expensive
disposables are, not to mention the environmental
impact they have for many years, but with the way we did it
buying real (second hand) cups, forks etc, not only was our money
going back into the community to support those that needed
assistance but we now have Harvest Box Supplies for all the other
times we have festivities. Many lessons.
Leading up to harvest day, the students put signs up around the
garden asking people to not eat any food from it as we needed it
for our harvest day. Classes started making recycled
decorations, creating dances and songs. We had a team of
Mums that took control of the menu for the day we had no kitchen
facilities due to new building work, so we had to organise 12
workstations around the school with approx 120 students preparing
food for the whole school and community of around 400. Good
planning equals success and that it was. The teachers
and students also decided they wanted to dress up for the day, so
we ran a competition for the best "Little Leonie" and the best
"Costa". The day was a buzz from the second the
students arrived all getting into the spirit of the
day. I think that day was the only day it
hadn"t rained that week, a good sign. Teachers had already
placed all the tents up around the oval before school started and
Mums were busy in the staff room sorting out recipe
ingredients, I was in the garden with students and parents
harvesting all the food for our feast - such a hive of
activity and all before 9am. All the food from the garden
had to be washed and then distributed to relevant recipes.
Students were allotted their workstation and parents assisted
students with creating the recipes, it seemed to take no time at
all and all cooking was completed. Then it was celebration
time songs, dancing and judging of the "Little Leonie and Costa"
look-alikes, there were so many good copies.
The food was distributed evenly between the 8 tables on the oval
and with all the food (all vegetarian) set out it looked
like a rainbow the colours were so enticing. I was very
proud of the students as they tried and ate so much of the food
which they had either been involved with growing, or had
experienced the progress of the garden - there was real pride and
ownership and of course - I was the proudest person there.
I am extremely grateful to the Qld Gambling Community Benefit
Fund for sponsoring this program and making a difference to so
many students eating habits and turning a bare dirt patch into a
productive organic garden for students to eat from. There
is so little funding out there to support these programs of
independent School Garden Programs/workers, and Qld Gambling
Community Benefit Fund took that risk to fund us and we are
pleased to say, it has been incredibly successful.
Slow food cooking with kids 2007 MENU
Matt Golinski Guest Chef Day
Silverbeet leaves stuffed with Saffron Rice, Pinenuts and
Herbs
Pickled Turnips
Mixed Salad Greens
and also some falafels were brought along for students to
taste
Chef
Matt Golinski The Rolling Dolmade Products, and TV
chef Ready Steady Cook programme
Katrina Ryan Guest Chef
Day
Suffed zucchini, stuffing used silverbeet, thyme, fetta, pinenuts
and raisings
Asian stir fry : chicken, cabbage, spring onions, green
beans, khol rabi, celery and sesame seeds.
Nasturium Salad : fennel, lettuce, rocket, nasturtium and
parmesan cheese with lemon & olive oil
Chef
Katrina Ryan : Spirit House Restaurant
We have the pleasure of having Slow Food Noosa as a sponsor and
partner. Slow Food Noosa has world renowned
chefs who are passionate about teaching kids about fresh food and
cooking.
When we have a Harvest Day we pick the salads, herbs and vegies
first thing in the morning so that they are at their
freshest. We have basket loads of fresh crispy produce
which we take inside to wash. Of course there are no
chemicals on our food as its organic but maybe there are some bug
droppings to clean off.
Our Lady Of The Rosary MENU (August 2010)
Taboulleh and Madagascar patties in pita breads
Fried Rice
Minestrone Soup
Rice paper rolls
Salad wraps
Toasted Turkish bread sandwiches
BBQ/Roasted veges
Pesto, tomato and basil, hommus
Mini Pizzas
Pesto, rocket, tomato and cheese
Potato and rosemary
Pesto and pasta
Dips and veges and corn chips
Beetroot
Eggplant
Hummus
Pasta sauce etc (by Dominique Rizzo)
Banana mini muffins
Yacon mini muffins
Herb Potions (herb cordial)
