In the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program at Margaret River Primary School, we get to spend time in the garden and cook in the kitchen together. We grow a variety of fruits, vegetables and fresh greens including Lettuce, Kale, and Beetroot.
We don’t like to use chemicals like pesticides on our plant, and so we pick the snails, caterpillars, insects and other pests off by hand! When we gathered a handful each we love to feed them to our garden’s three resident chickens. They love them!
The program is a wonderful experience for the year four and five students at our school. The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program is such a treat as we get to grow and harvest our own produce and then prepare and share our own food together in the kitchen.
This is what our students had to say:
Will said:
Today we had Kitchen Garden and were cooking together – it was great fun. Each group has a different task: some groups made Cauliflower Soup, Kale Slaw Salad with Vinaigrette Dressing and others a Leek Broccoli Tart. When we made Leek Broccoli Tart we learnt how to cut the broccoli into “florets”. We also learn other useful cooking and safety tips like how to handle knives correctly and safely.
Sofia said:
The cauliflower was put in a blender and whipped up so you had no chunky bits in the soup – it was yummy! My group made the Kale Slaw Salad with Vinaigrette Dressing. The kale is completely fresh (with no chemicals) from our garden. We had to chop the red cabbage, white cabbage and kale very finely. The dressing had honey, vinegar and lots of other delicious things in it. At the end of our lesson we sit together and reflect on what we are grateful for. There are loads of things to be grateful for here at our school, such as having our Kitchen Garden Program and sitting down to end the day with a meal at the table together.
Written and photos by Richard Dowling and Will and Sofia; Posted by D. Veary
Canteen