Tuesday 21 November 2017

October and November


As part of bee month, Mrs Masters made beeswax candles with the children. They loved the feel and smell of the beeswax as well as learning lots about the special creatures!

Mrs Masters, Bob and the gardeners have been super busy moving mulch to cover the paths by the greenhouse, the Pollinator garden, vegetable gardens and in areas around the school like under the marble run. It has been hot work! They have all worked so hard. It is important the job is done with the school holidays coming up and with the heat of summer approaching fast. We want the plants to be protected over the summer break.


The first of the seasons broadbeans are being harvested. Delicious!
Silverbeet is being harvested for Depot as they are using our silverbeet for a dish on their menu this year. Year 5 groups of children are loving the chance to visit!


Year 5 classes made their own pasta and produced some wonderful dishes - all recipes can be found on this blog:
Spring vegetable lasagna
Roasted carrot ravioli
Herbed green polpette with a minted tomato sauce on fettucine
Silverbeet and butterkin rotolo

Year 4 and 5 have made Vietnamese fresh rice paper rolls and Year 5 made a delicious Vietnamese pho.


The last of the seasons rhubarb was used to make a yummy tart by Year 4's and a rhubarb sponge by the Year 5's.



Friday 8 September 2017

Goodbye Winter...Welcome Spring

It has been an eventful couple of months at Garden to Table. We have hosted lots of visitors, cooked some delicious food using some amazing produce from the garden and spent a lot of time in the garden feeding the soil and preparing it for planting the seeds we have been germinating.

Linda Taylor, Al Brown and Andrew Keaney from T and G Global visited the school to produce the video to promote the NZ Young Gardener of the Year competition. We had a load of fun and are putting together our applications now to enter the competition!
 T and G Global donated an apple tree to all GTT schools. The children planted our tree in our new Pollinator Garden which is beyond the Butterfly Meadow. We have been given various types of manure - pigeon poo and horse manure which has been used to feed the soil and we have used peastraw from Matangi School in Tamahere to mulch all our gardens. Coffee grounds from Al Browns restaurants are being used as a fertilizer along with worm tea from our worm farms. Our apple tree will grow a treat! 
We have had many comments on how fertile the soil looks in the gardens and how lush the vegetables look. All our mulching and feeding of the soil is paying off.
Podgardening.co.nz has some great advice on composting and nourishing the soil.

A big thanks to Kelvin from Sunhill Gardens sunhillgardencentre.co.nz who has donated broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower seedlings that we have planted in the Gingko garden and to all those families that have donated lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit.
Chantal Organics chantalorganics.co.nz donated some wonderful organic products - Apple Cider Vinegar, Tamari Sauce and Sesame Oil that we have used in the kitchen. Delicious!
 Quinoa Fried Rice                                     Pot Sticker Dumplings

Year 5 groups and their mise en place pronounced (MEEZ ahn plahs), means to have all your ingredients prepared and ready to go before you start cooking. Translated, “ to put in place.”





Dehydrating wood ear fungus

Chinese visitors

In mid August our exchange students from Ningbo, Shanghai joined in with Room 35 and experienced a Garden to Table session. Harvesting, painting signs and planting seeds. All working together as a team, the language barrier didn't matter!


 In the kitchen we used freshly harvested cabbage, mint, sorrel and parsley to make a Seedy slaw, we baked apples and made a star anise custard and used harvested Jerusalem artichokes, a pumpkin from our garden and kumara to make a Roasted vegetable pasta







Monday 26 June 2017

Visit to Federal Delicatessen and Depot



 Our visit today was fantastic. We experienced what it was like to be in a real restaurant. We were guided through the kitchens - saw where all the dishes are washed, food is prepared and stored, chefs in action and we even got to prepare our own potato skins and eat them! The chefs were preparing for the day and we could watch them slice onions, prepare octopus, chop coriander and check out the amazing wood fired oven they use.

 The fridges are huge we could all fit in! The food and produce are stored in such an organised way.

This will be where the silverbeet we are growing for the restaurant will be stored before it is prepared.

We sat up at the servery and watched the chefs at work. We then prepared some potato skins and got to eat them. We also tried a Depot famous fresh fish slider - delicious!

Thanks so much to Al and his team for inviting us. What an awesome experience we had!




Tuesday 13 June 2017

Winter is here

We have been making soup in the kitchen which has been much needed for the gardeners as they come in to the kitchen from the cold and wind.
Year 5 are making Minestrone with Irish soda bread, followed by a rhubarb shortcake and Year 4 are making a Versatile vegetable soup with cheese and rosemary pastry twists followed by lime shortbread. All recipes are on the blog pages so try some at home!




Chokos!

We have had an amazing harvest of chokos this year. They have proven to be a very versatile ingredient in a variety of dishes across both year groups.
We have braised them and stir fried them with Asian greens, baked them with potato and a cheesy parsley sauce, made a choko fruit curry that we served with cauliflower rice and even used them sweet in mini choko tarts.
Enough were harvested for some children to take home to use as well and we loved hearing how they were used. 
With the last of the seasons crop Year 5 will make a choko pickle.


Serving the choko fruit curry with cauliflower rice and pastry rolling for the mini choko tarts.

Thursday 11 May 2017

May and the start of a new school term


Al Brown and some of his crew from Depot and Fed Deli came in and helped to plant silverbeet which we will grow and then harvest for them. Al and his chefs will design a dish using the silverbeet and put it on their menu at Depot. Keep posted to see what it will be!
They also helped sieve the compost and and feed the plants with worm tea.
In the kitchen we braised harvested choko, bok choy, tat soi and carrots and made a fried rice with our own wood ear fungi found in our gully. Spiced pumpkin muffins were a treat to follow. Al and his crew sat down to share the meal with us and we even had our plates very professionally cleared by the crew. So much energy and enthusiasm it was an awesome morning and hugely productive.