Week Nine at "Food, What?!"

The ninth week at FoodWhat is field trip week! The crews that normally work the FoodWhat farm swapped places with the Wednesday Live Earth Farm crew to give everyone a new experience. Not only does this give the entire FoodWhat crew an opportunity to see where the other crews work, but it gives the week an exciting twist. 

We kicked off a day at Live Earth Farm with a unique game of tag. People clustered up within the circle, touching feet. To be safe, you had to run to another group in the circle and stick to them, which made someone else in that cluster at risk of being "it"!

Next we made our way over to the field to start some work in the sun. To our surprise, sowing pumpkin seeds was on the agenda today! The pumpkins planted this week will be used in FoodWhat's harvest festival in the fall. It's important to get them into the ground early to make sure they're plump and orange by the festival. Abby explained how to plant these giant seeds deep enough and with enough space for the vines to have enough space to grow and produce over 200 pumpkins!

Then it was time to start making our fluffy, delicious lunch for the day: oven-baked pretzels, made by us every step of the way! The first step was to get the wheat berry from the wheat plants that were grown, harvested, and dried on the FoodWhat farm. Who knew a piece of a hose is the best handmade tool to get the job done? We sat in a circle around the dried wheat plants and began pounding them apart.

 
To separate the nutritious grain from the broken up plants, we used wind!  In partners, one person dumped the mixture into a bowl while the other used a cutting board to make wind, blowing away the light pieces of the plant and leaving us with only the heavy grain left behind. 

We brought our fresh grain into the kitchen to grind it up into flour using a traditional hand-crank grinder (a workout!) as well as an electric grinder for speedy processing. Seeing the whole grain wheat directly transform into flour really showed what whole grain flour is and how delicious freshly ground flour smells. We added yeast and a little bit a sugar and made a team effort to start kneading our dough. Now we know why bakers have big muscles: kneading dough is hard work! We put the dough together in a bowl to rise while we made our way over to a workshop to learn more about the grains we eat everyday.   

 

 First we made a diagram of a grain and its different parts: bran, endosperm, and germ. Then we talked about how the bran of the grain helps clean our intestines, the endosperm gives us a little dose of sugar and carbohydrates, and the germ is full of protein, vitamins, and minerals. Whole grains are pretty balanced! We shifted gears and talked about grains that aren't whole, like white rice and white flour, because they're processed to get rid of the bran and germ. This leaves only the sugary, carbohydrate-packed endosperm. What happened to the balance? It now made perfect sense why whole grains are the healthier option against processed grains. We looked at food packaging to learn how to decode advertising claims and look for the word "whole" in the ingredients. We now have a choice when choosing our grains!  

Then it was time for a lesson on straight talk with Doron. He taught us how to effectively balance our feedback to others with positives and improvables. He also taught us how to listen, take in, and process others' suggestions to us. We gave straight talk a shot first by evaluating our own performance at FoodWhat, making sure to balance our areas for improvement with our strengths. Because youth's opinions are crucial to keeping FoodWhat functioning as fantastically as possible, we did some straight talk about our nine weeks so far at FoodWhat and learned what others loved about the program and what might change in future years. 

Our dough finished rising just in the nick of time and we jumped up to start twisting it into all kinds of of doughy creations. We boiled each pretzel for a moment and then transported them outside to the cob oven (which gets hotter than 800 degrees!).

With the pretzels baking, we got to know some other hard workers at Live Earth Farm: the goats! And they were just as hungry as we were.

 
The pretzels were done in no time and it was our turn to feast. Each pretzel was fluffy, golden, and delicious. We added a little cinnamon, salt, or mustard for some extra flavor, but the most satisfying part of devouring these treats was enjoying to final stage of what started our as dried wheat plants!

 

We talked about our day's triumphs, which ranged from making the pretzels to planting pumpkins, before we loaded up the van and thanked Live Earth Farm for the field trip!

Week Eight at "Food, What?!"

A game of "lighthouse" kicked off the eighth week on the Food What farm. We teamed up with someone we trusted and pulled out the blindfolds. With the obstacle course before us, we led our partner safely through using only verbal directions as guidance. Success! Everybody made it through.

Then it was time to hit the fields. We planted leeks and sweet pepper seedlings ready to thrive. Soon after the seedlings were taken care of we planted summer squash seeds into the ground. We ended up with rows upon rows of little plants and newly-planted seeds promising tons of veggies for summer!  

 

 

Then it was workshop time! This week was all about writing resumes, which is sure to come in handy as we start applying for summer jobs. Doron gave us specific examples of what to include ranging from education and work experience to awards and volunteering. He even taught us how to use sophisticated wording to make our resumes even more impressive and professional.

Then it was veggie pesto pasta time! We got to choppin' onions, kale, and carrots to saute for some extra color in our meal as the pasta boiled on the stove top. When the pasta and the veggies were nice and soft, we mixed in pesto made with the basil grown by FoodWhat's summer crew! We mixed it all together and enjoyed. Our delicious meal ended as we shared our triumphs with the rest of the crew and called it a day.

 

"Dig Day" Alumni Reunion

Over the past seven years, FoodWhat has served over 300 youth through Youth Empowerment and Food Justice programs and this year we decided it was time to get them together! Since Alex (our new Associate Director) began with the organization in November, she has been diligently working on creating a plan for how to best engage and serve Alumni and the “Dig Day” event was the first opportunity to really kick it off. “Dig Day” was planned by Alex and two Alumni Planner interns, Chris and Connor. Together, they created an incredible event that truly spoke to the spirit of FoodWhat and got youth excited about getting back involved.

The alumni began trickling in around 11:45 AM on Sunday morning and started off by writing name tags, munching on farm fresh snacks and receiving their “Food, What?!” Alumni wristbands. Youth who hadn’t seen each other in years were hugging, reconnecting, and swapping stories of their recent accomplishments with Doron and Abby. Everyone was stoked to see familiar faces and share about their lives. We knew right away that this would be a fun afternoon!

After a few minutes of mingling, Abby got us going in the fields with a lofty list of tasks to get the farm ready for the season. We started by grabbing forks and hitting the FoodWhat field to start skimming cover crop, double digging beds and adding compost. The alumni dove right in and we built up enough energy to get all the work done in an hour! When we finished, Abby stepped back and breathed a sigh of relief as she assessed the work, knowing that her farm load had just gotten a little bit lighter.

In keeping with classic foodwhat style, after farm work we headed over to the circle tent to play some games. Chris and Connor led us through “Sprout Ball”, “My Biggest Fan”, and “Opinion Line”. The “Opinion Line” game asked questions such as, “Who thinks applying to college and jobs can be confusing and kind of hard” and then we followed up with answers like, “That’s OK! Because as an Alumni you have access to support on college applications, resume writing, and more!”. This gave us an opportunity to introduce what the Alumni Association is all about in a meaningful and engaging way. At the end of games, Doron and Alex distributed Alumni Evaluations so that we could gather information on how FoodWhat has affected lives and the choices youth have made since leaving the program.

Finally, it was time to eat - and we all know what a big production eating is at FoodWhat! FoodWhat Junior Staff Deonte and Crystal had spent most of the afternoon cooking and they prepared a beautiful spread of beans, rice, meat, veggies, tortillas, agua fresca, fresh fruit, and cheeses. As alumni finished their evaluations, they made their way over to indulge in some organic, healthy, fresh food to complete a fun day on the farm.

As people finished up eating and starting pitching in to clean up, we all remarked to each other what a fun, successful Alumni Reunion “Dig Day” had been. We were able to reconnect with old friends, get a ton of farm work done, learn about everyone’s lives, AND eat amazing food -- not bad for 3 hours on a Sunday morning! We can’t wait to see everyone at the next alumni event.

HUGE THANKS to Chris and Connor for helping make this event happen!!

Week Seven at "Food, What?!"

Week seven at FoodWhat was potato week! Before getting into potato business, we warmed up with a game of "Look Up, Look Down." We stood in a circle looking down and when we looked up, we stared directly at one person within the circle. If that person was staring back at us, we switched places.

We headed over to the fields and learned about how potatoes grow. Roots and shoots sprout out of a potato "eye"and then that one original little potato piece continues to grow into more and more potatoes as we layer soil over them. We dug deep trenches and planted the pieces of potatoes into the ground to start the process.

 

Meanwhile, Doron pulled people aside to interview them for the FoodWhat Summer job! With the interviewing tips we learned in last week's workshop, everyone was well prepared for their interview.  For many of our crew this was their first job interview in their life.

Then we turned out attention to our beds growing cilantro, beets, spinach, peas, and carrots. We worked hard to weed the beds and paid close attention making sure not to pull out any of our baby seedlings!

Then it was time for a workshop on food systems. Doron helped us trace the journey of our food through a few different food systems--buying food directly from a farmer at a farmers' market; the path of a strawberry in January from South America to the grocery store; and a local strawberry going through all the steps to become a pop tart.  We used cards to map out the order of the process our food goes through before it gets to our tables and how this long process effects the environment, the nutrition of our food, and farmers' earnings. After being grown by the farmer, transported huge distances, packaged, transported again, stored, and finally sold, our produce can be worn out and our small local farmers are struggling to make a decent living! This workshop directly showed us the importance of buying fresh, local produce when possible, especially from farmer's markets.

 

After the workshop we headed over to the kitchen where we got started on making latkas! First, we harvested fresh onion to chop up into our savory potato pancakes. We shredded the potatoes, mixing in eggs and whole wheat flour to make our batter. Shaping the potato mixture was difficult but we mastered it in no time to serve up delicious, golden latkas for lunch. After enjoying our lunch, we discussed our many triumphs and called it a day!