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The Farm to School Committee is a volunteer opportunity at CTES. We seek to connect our children to their food by visiting and purchasing food from Vermont farms, welcoming farmers into our school, and learning about nutrition by growing, preparing and trying new foods, new flavors, and old favorites.
We also produce food in our school garden. Help us out by working with us in our school garden. We apply organic gardening priniciples and welcome donations of vegetable seeds and starts, fruit bushes/plants, native perennials, composted manure, or gardening tools. We especially welcome enthusiastic gardeners. No experience necessary!
Fresh from the Garden News |
4th Grade Makes Maple No-Bake Cookies
As part of our states of matter unit in 4th grade, students located maple trees on the school property, tapped the trees, gathered the sap, and boiled it down to syrup in our classroom. This year was a very short sugaring season for us, but we were able to make just under a gallon of syrup. In the upcoming weeks we will be enjoying buttermilk pancakes and our syrup, tasting some soft maple sugar, and finally making the remaining syrup into maple candies.
We decided that it would be delicious to share out the taste of maple in a cookie form to all students and staff of CTES, so we purchased from the Vermont Country Store some bags of granulated maple sugar and made Maple No-Bake cookies. Here is the recipe and some pictures of the school enjoying the treats at lunch. |
No-Bake Maple Cookies 2 cups maple sugar 1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup shortening 1/2 tsp. Salt 1 tsp vanilla 3 cups quick oats 6 tblsp. peanut butter
Bring the maple sugar, milk, shortening, salt and vanilla to full rolling boil,stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in oats and peanut butter. Drop onwaxed paper by spoonfuls. Let set about 1 hour or until firm.
Check out the pictures of the students and staff of CTES enjoying the No Bake Maple Cookies. |
A great way to show your support for the positive changes we are making to our school food system is to take hot lunch or salad bar on days when we are serving up fresh, local cuisine! Show Melissa and Lori that you notice the new items and give your kids a chance to try something new, along with the old favorites! If you would like to be involved in our Farm to School committee, please contact Sara at 226-7439 or sarastowell@tds.net |
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Training that our Cafeteria Crew Attended |
Stories from the Field Hannah Marshall, Vermont FEED intern shares her experience at a District School Food Service Training
There is something so rewarding about sharing your passion, especially when it's something as tangible and, well, nutritious as healthy food. On September 30th, Vermont FEED, Upper Valley Farm to School and Southern Vermont Area Health and Education Center held a district school food service training. We packed up coolers full of grains and veggies and headed off to Springfield to share our knowledge and hopefully impart some excitement about cooking tips, tricks and techniques.
Sixteen food service professionals from around the state gathered at Springfield School to learn about a handful of ways to cook a virtually limitless number of things. Abbie Nelson, director of Vermont FEED, helped them whip up four different beans to make a delicious dip. Peter Allison, director of Upper Valley Farm to School, introduced several new (to some) kinds of grains - quinoa, rice, orzo and whole-wheat couscous - and showed how to make easy, tasty and colorful salads. Nancy Schaefer and Daylyn Finnegan explained the wonders of squashes, and stuffed an incredible amount of veggies into two fabulous lasagnas.
I was amazed at the grazing and appreciative 'yum!'s coming from the women as they munched on cold but perfectly cooked broccoli, green beans and carrots. I also roasted several root veggies - beets, turnips, parsnips, rutabaga and carrots - and gladly handed out spoons to the eager tasters. Finally, we all tucked in to our healthy, low-fat, nutrient-dense feast - and the smiles on everyone's faces proved that we had done our job well. |
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