Pizza and Pasta

The gardeners have been super busy. Planting, mulching, tidying the gardens and plenty of watering. Harvesting of a variety of salad greens, silverbeet, kale, cavalo nero, parsley, mint, coriander, spring onions, chives, sprouting broccoli, beetroot and new seasons asparagus.

 In the kitchen we have made pizza and homemade pasta. It has been a busy term of visitors. We hosted a Garden to Table Open Day and had a large group of interested people through who were amazed by what all the children had been doing. Year 13 Food Technology students from Mahurangi College ventured down to Auckland and spent the day teaching the children how to make pasta.

Citrus crazy and the Root to Tip Competition

Meadowbank School (and Mrs Masters and Mrs Crews especially) are super proud of the 2 teams that made it into the Regional finals of the annual Root to Tip competition roottotip.org.nz open to all Year 5 and 6 children nationwide. The judges were highly impressed with the talents of all the participants and although they didnt make it through to the final they should be so pleased and proud of their achievements. We were impressed with their skills and the the knowledge they have of using seasonal food from the root to the tip!We are also proud of the many teams that entered but didnt make it through. Well done to all.
The citrus fruit this year is amazing. We have lots of lemons on our own school trees and have been gifted lots more lemons, grapefruit, oranges, tangeloes and limes.
We used them in the kitchen to make a delicious lemon curd that we served on homemade mini pancakes. Lemon cordial, crunchy lemon muffins and lime shortbread have also been on the menu.

Braised seasonal vegetables with coconut and coriander rice was popular too. Gardeners harvested 15-19 different vegetables from the garden for this dish!

Welcome Winter

Soup and warming dishes full of our winter harvests have been on the menu. Kumara, silverbeet, coriander, spring onion, Jerusalem artichokes, mint, celery, kale, rosemary, sprouting broccoli, courgette harvested from our garden and pumpkin and choko that we had been gifted.
Versatile vegetable soup with a parmesan twist, Hua whenua soup with pakipaki bread and vegetable biryani with kumara and silverbeet dhal and broccoli flatbreads. We made a Matariki fruit crumble using fruit we had stored in our freezer that had been harvested earlier in the year - peaches, nectarines, blueberries and feijoas. Year 4 children learned about mise en place and should be super proud of their knife and measuring skills!

Junior Garden Design

The garden at the entrance to the junior school has been cleared and plans for an attractive, edible garden for both the school and its community are well underway.
If you would like your ideas considered in the planning, make sure you submit a design to the senior office by Wednesday July 24th.

Pizza

Our fabulous Bob has been in stoking up the wood fired pizza oven for both Year 4 and 5's to cook pizzas. He arrives very early in the morning and stays the whole school day to make sure every class has a chance to cook their pizzas in the outdoor oven. On one of the days when we have 3 Year 4 classes in a day he arrived at 6.30am. So early that no one was at school and the alarms hadnt even been turned off! 

 Delicious produce was harvested for a Autumn harvest pizza and Rosemary and thyme pizza bread.

We talked about the science involved in making the pizza dough. One year group has a question about yeast in their Science Quizathon questions so they will certainly get that question right! Thanks to GTT!

Goodbye Summer, Welcome Autumn

We have harvested the last of our tomatoes and peaches and are now enjoying new seasons feijoas, nashi pears and apples. Coriander, parsley and fennel seeds have been harvested.

We have been so lucky to have lots of volunteers this term. Mums, Dads, Grandparents have come along and we have loved sharing the GTT experience with them. Mr Toomer our Principal joined Room 21 and really enjoyed hearing the wonderful conversations around food. 

We had so much fun using a food processor to grate our beetroot for a salad with carrots, mint, raisins and pumpkin seeds. "Beets" using a grater!

 Broadbean hummus with homemade tortilla chips. We used our stored broadbeans that were harvested at the end of last year. Now there is room in the freezer for the next harvest!

Our beautiful free stone peaches 

Apples from our tree were used to make apple and cinnamon pinwheel scones. Delicious!

 Using our knife skills to produce a Seedy slaw with cabbage, kale, sorrel and herbs from our garden

                                         Super yummy corn fritters with a no cook tomato coulis

Nashi pear and sage tart using puff pastry sheets

                            Jeruslaem artichoke flowers and sage, mint and thyme in our garden