The Urban Harvest program supported BCCF’s virtual March Break Camp by hosting daily food segments as well as food waste reduction/diversion awareness. A total of 28 (12 kids; 16 adults) participated in the workshops where they were given the option to cook along. We were delighted to have Chef Bashir Munye, our Value Added Product Coordinator, lead 2 cooking workshops with the kids and their families. In an engaging way, he laid down the foundation for cooking in the kitchen with his easy-to-remember principle of “Putting your SOC on” – always exercise and be mindful of: Safety, Organization, and Cleanliness in the kitchen. From there, kids were shown basic knife skills and kitchen tips and how to cook simple foods such as boiling eggs and making rice to more elaborate and zero-waste dishes such as leftover pasta frittata, leftover rice-turned-congee, freestyle stir fry, family favorite cornbread and much more!
Urban Harvest Community Leader, Vidula also facilitated 2 sessions on “Plastic-Free Snacks” and why we need to reduce plastic, and what we can do to help. Her second workshop focused on “Easy Refrigerator Pickles” to extend the life of vegetables. Along with this, she showed the value of keeping a vermicomposting bin to throw in any vegetable and fruit scraps in the kitchen. She showed how the red wiggler worms consume food scraps and turn them into vermicompost food for garden plants.
We wrapped up the cooking sessions with a “Quesadilla Party!” where we demonstrated variations of quesadillas using pantry staples, accessible ingredients, and even vegetable odds and ends in the fridge. Alissa Gallizzi, one of our placement students, led the families in making healthy and easy smoothies especially suited for kids!
To bring all things together, and show the full cycle of growing food, each cooking session ended with tips on how to divert their food scraps into compost, vermicompost, or feed for the chickens to demonstrate that everything goes back to nourishing the land that feeds us.
