Different cuisines, chefs from Depot and the school gala

We have been trying recipes from Vietnam, China and Italy
Year 4 children tried dishes from Vietnam. They made fresh rice paper spring rolls, nuoc cham - a fish dipping sauce and banana fritters. Carrots, radishes, lettuce, edible flowers, coriander and mint were harvested and knife skills were put to the test as carrots and radishes were julienned for the rice paper rolls. Bananas from our school tree were used to make deep fried banana fritters by some classes.

Year 5 made pot sticker dumplings with cabbage and wood ear fungi harvested from the garden. They were delicious! A range of vegetables were harvested to make a vegetable stirfry with a Chinese sesame sauce. Bok choy, silverbeet, carrots, kale, cabbage, and choko.

Our pasta machines were put to the test and Year 5 have been making fresh pasta. So much fun! With the pasta sheets we made a spring vegetable lasagna using freshly harvested asparagus, broad beans, peas and carrots and a roasted pumpkin rotolo. All recipes can be found in the Year 5 recipe link on the home page.

We were very lucky to have chefs from Depot volunteer last week. The rhubarb was tended to and is growing well. In the kitchen the children made tagliatelle and ravioli with help from Nikki, Al and Chris. It was so much fun and the pasta was delicious! We served the tagliatelle with herbed polpette and a tomato sauce. The ravioli were filled with a carrot puree (with carrots harvested from our garden) and served with a thyme brown butter sauce. A very yummy no bake citrus slice finished the menu.

Our school gala was a success and we sold all our marmalade and tamarillo chutney. The herb salts were a hit and our sorrel, yacon and jerusalem artichoke plants were popular. The citrus slice and brownie were delicious and there were a few faces that came back for seconds. It turned out to be a fantastic day weather wise too and the iced tea went down a treat. Well done Meadowbank school!

Tamarillos

Last term we ordered lots of tamarillos from tastytamarillos . Lots of children hadn't tasted these unusual fruit and were keen to try. We used them to make a delicious tamarillo and date cake, we grilled them in the pizza oven and made loads of tamarillo chutney. The smells wafting from the kitchen were amazing. We tried the chutney with garlic and herb pizza bread and it is so good we are going to sell the chutney at the Meadowbank School Gala on the 13th November. Make sure you come and buy a jar!

With help from our volunteers, we cleared the gully of branches and twigs and got them ready for the pizza oven.

Al Brown visits Meadowbank School

A huge excitement has been Al Brown and his teams visit to begin a new Garden to Table project aimed at partnering restaurants with Garden to Table schools. More than 30 rhubarb plants were planted and when they are ready to harvest, they will design a dessert to go on the menu at Depot with all proceeds going to Garden to Table.
It was such an exciting and invigorating community involved day where everyone was working towards a common purpose and realised the value in what was being done. Well done team!

Spring

We are finishing winter harvesting and getting our garden ready for spring and summer planting. A lot of tidying and clearing of garden beds and surrounds has been done. Our boundary picket fence has been finished and other constructions to support peas and protect plants have been made.

Feeding the soil has been a priority using sheep manure, leaf mold, compost and worm castings, topped off with pea straw mulch to keep things warm and moist. For families starting gardens at the moment we recommend the podgardening website which has lots of seasonal tips and month by month recommendations for planting and harvesting.

Thanks to Gill and Kevin Adshead at Mataia who supplied the sheep manure from their farm!

In the kitchen we have had a wonderful amount of citrus fruit donated, to add to the lemons and mandarins from our own school trees. We have been very busy making marmalade to sell at the school gala. Our knife skills have been put to the test!

Over the past month we have had lots of superb volunteers, a huge thankyou to those parents and grandparents who come every session and to those who have taken time off to make it along. We love having you.

August

Yummy Maharajas spicy filo parcels. The recipe is on the Year 5 recipe page.



We have had so much fun making authentic corn tortillas using the tortilla press. The dough is so lovely and soft and for those who are gluten free it is great because the corn masa flour has no gluten. We purchased our flour and the presses from Tio Pablo who were very helpful.

We made refried beans, a lime and chili mayonnaise and a fabulous salad with lettuce, parsley, mint, edible flowers and yacon dressed with lime and lemon juice. So fresh and so good!

July

Winter is here and we have battled with some cold and wet weather in the garden. The children have been harvesting in some not so pleasant conditions but always with enthusiasm and big smiles on their faces when they bring the produce in to the kitchen. Some handiwork using drills and saws have made old unused bbq stands excellent for using to pot containers of sorrel we are going to sell at the school gala.

The children had fun foraging for wood ear funghi and harvesting jerusalem artichokes.

In the kitchen Year 4 children have made a Vegetable biriyani, pakoras and a mint raita as part of our Indian inspired menu. Year 5 made a wonderful Mandarin and poppyseed cake with mandarins from our tree, a fried rice with wood ear funghi and mung bean sprouts and braised vegetables served in lettuce cups with loads of wonderfully fresh vegetables from the garden - bok choy, choko, rainbow beet, cabbage, silverbeet, jerusalem artichokes and kale.

June antics

In the kitchen we have been learning how to wash and prepare all the wonderfully fresh vegetables and herbs harvested from the garden. Our knife skills have been put to the test as we have been busy preparing a green herb pilaf, braised vegetables (bok choy, rainbow beet, choko, kale) served in lettuce leaves, persimmon bliss balls and a winter salad with toasted pumpkin seeds and a honey and lemon dressing. Roasted pumpkin and silverbeet calzone, spiced baked apples, silverbeet pizza and margherita pizza with feta and kawakawa herb pesto were cooked in the outdoor pizza oven.
Bananas from our tree were used to make icecream that was served with apple and feijoa crumble. The sorrel pesto and pea pasta was a hit and we enjoyed slicing choko to make a choko and cheesy parsley bake. Lots of fun was had preparing these wonderful dishes as well as sitting down together to eat them. Delicious!

A huge thank you to Bob Wright who is still helping us, even tending the pizza oven in torrential rain. Thank you to everyone who comes in to share the Garden to Table experience. Hooray for volunteers.

Also thank you to people who help by sharing extra produce, collecting coffee grounds, etc and now donating a marvellous food dehydrator. We are busy peeling, slicing and drying persimmons from the Masters' garden ,which usually end up as bird food. They will then be used in recipes over the year.

This month has been focussed on setting the gardens up for winter and feeding and mulching any bare soil. We have made some fantastic compost since the beginning of term and also found that all last year's autumn leaves bagged up and left under the trees had turned into beautiful leaf mold. Classes have been busy sifting the compost pile and spreading this onto garden beds and sneaking worms to the hens who are back for their weekly visits.  Before the holidays arrive there will be a compost heap rebuilding session with lots of comfrey leaves, coffee grounds, grass clippings and general garden waste layered with cardboard, shredded paper and tree mulchings in the hope of cooking up some more free sustainable fertiliser for our gardens.

It has been exciting to watch how quickly self sown plants have germinated after the compost has been spread and an opportunity to learn how to recognise edible vegetable seedlings we want to save.
The sorrel pasta recipe earlier in the term caused one family to have a long shopping trip in the hunt of fresh sorrel. For all those who would like to try this recipe at home we will be potting up sorrel plants to sell on the school plant stall. A very easy plant to grow and an interesting sour lemony flavour. We will have to remember to pot up unusual vegetables for everyone to try out!
Great to finally have chokos to harvest after years of trying to get them growing at school. We have used the stem shoots  ( Dragon's whiskers in Thailand) in stir fries along with the fruit. Eating those tips might be a good way to keep the vines under control! Amazing to see how the chokos grow from almost pinhead size to large shiny fruit in just a few weeks.
The broad beans are up out of the soil and we have also sown or planted beetroot, carrots, kale, radishes, leeks, garlic, lettuce, peas, shallots, bok choy, edible chrysanthemums, collard greens/ Dalmatian cabbage ,daffodils and Sparaxis (for spring flowers). We are experimenting with various types of sprouting broccoli and cauliflower which can keep growing lots of little heads for a year or two.
There are also citrus (lemons and mandarins) beginning to ripen and we have some around the school but are always very grateful for any extras. So it has been a month of soil building, sign building (so everyone knows what our plants are)  painting pickets to finish our fence, garden tending, harvesting , planning and team building. It is great to hear children shriek with excitement about giant worms they have dug up, as this shows that all the composting and mulching is really making a difference to the fertility and structure of our soil. It is also marvellous to hear children sharing their gardening experiences and to see the way groups work together as a team to complete a task.