Recipes From Home Contest!

It is the time of year where we ask your to submit your Recipes from Home! This is a contest where your child can submit their favorite family recipe using at least 1 fruit or 1 vegetable that is grown locally (apples, asparagus, beans, carrots, greens (collards), green beans, peaches, peas, potatoes, spinach, squash, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and tofu). These recipes will be used in the development of new recipes for the MRH school menu. The winning recipe will be prepared by your child with te assistance of the chefs from Les Dames dEscoffier. All of the studends from MRH schools will get to try the winning recipes in their lunches and vote on their favorites in order to determine a grand prize winner. Use the form below and submit your child's favorite Recipe from Home! Applications are due April 15!




Last Year's Winners:

 

 Recipes from Home Contest

Official Entry Form – attach to recipe

Healthy Eating with Local Produce (HELP)

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Name


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Grade                        Home Room Teacher


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Email Address


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Home Phone Number


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Name of Recipe Recipe Category             (Salad, Soup, Main Dish, Side Dish)

Rules of Entry:
1. All recipes must include at least 1 fruit or vegetable that is local. (Apples, asparagus, beans, carrots,   greens (collards), green beans, peaches, snap peas, potatoes, spinach, squash, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and tofu).
2. Preparation instructions are clear, numbered, and in a logical order.
3. All ingredients are listed with common household measure (not metric).
4. Recipe is easy to prepare at home and kid-friendly.
5. Recipe must fit into one of the four main categories: Salad, Soup, Main Dish or Side Dish
6. Points will be awarded for creativity.
7. Students may enter up to 3 different recipes.
8. Recipes must contain no more than 8 ingredients.


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Signature                                                    Date

Farm to School Workshop

 Saint Louis University hosted the University of Missouri Extension's Farm to School Workshop on Wednesday, February 16. It was a great gathering of farmers, school nutrition professionals, and food activists! We had a full house of over 150 people. Healthy Eating with Local Produce was prominently featured in many of the panels, and we were able to pass on many of our best practices.

Farmers Dave Thies and Steve Hamra spoke about their experiences selling to schools.

Dr. Millie Mattfeldt-Beman gave an overview of the HELP grant and was joined by two students from Maplewood Richmond Heights school district, Relissa and Dynique, for a panel discussion about the student's experience with Farm to School. Relissa and Dynique were hired on to work for the grant under the high school entrepreneurship program and were trained in sustainable food systems and food processing.

Chef Robert Rusan, Foodservice Director Carol Kon, distributor Randy Woods, and farmer Adrienne Hunter gathered for the third panel to discuss the logistics of food aggregation and distribution.

A delicious lunch was catered by Fresh Gatherings cafe featuring diary, eggs, meat and vegetables

from local farmers! Eric Hahn from Locavore Foods out of Detroit was the keynote speaker. He delivered an inspiring story with examples of how Farm to School can logistically work.

After lunch, breakout sessions were provided for the farmers and the school nutrition folk. Information specific panels were provided for each. The farmer side focused on food packing, grading, handling, safety, distribution and insurance. School food service focused on bidding, procurement, strategies, handling, processing and training.

Networking abounded, with old friends reuniting and new relationships being built. Everybody here at HELP hopes that attendees walked away with enough tools to start taking small steps towards putting local agriculture in our cafeterias. Many thanks to Bill McKelvey for producing a great event! If there are any questions that we can answer about the HELP grant, please contact the Department of Nutrition & Dietetics at (314) 977-8523 or visit our web page at http://helpgrant.weebly.com/.

Tomatoes Galore!

Production has been in full swing this first week of October! From Mulberry Farms and Trover Farm in Illinois, we received 2000 lbs of tomatoes!! With this much fresh produce, we have to move quickly. About 300 lbs of marinara has been made so far, and there is plenty more to come.

So how do we do it? Well luckily there are no more skinning and seeding tomatoes. As you can see below, we just put whole tomatoes in the kettle. 

 

Here are the lovely and talented staff putting the tomatoes in the kettle

After a couple of hours, and some blending, the sauce has reduced enough to make a great marinara. After the sauce is cooled, it must be sous vide, or sealed in an vacuum sealed bag, to ensure a fresh, safe product for the Maplewood Richmond Height kiddies.

So what’s next you ask? More marinara, definitely some applesauce, baked apples, and other great fall treats!
Have you tried making your own marinara yet? No need for a steam kettle at home!

Apples to apples

Ever played the card game, Apples to Apples?  This week we played our own version: Apples to apples to more and more and more apples.  The game is ongoing, seeing as we are chopping away at 750 lbs of Golden Supreme, Jonathon, and Golden Delicious as we speak, but we have taken significant strides; last week we processed 500 lbs of apples into 362 lbs of product.

They never even saw it coming.

What could we possibly be doing with so many apples?  Two things: baked apples and applesauce.  The former is made by slicing raw apples and tossing them with a sugar n’ spice blend, and the latter is made with a subtle zing of zested lemon.   

Soon to be applesauce!

First, however, comes the manual labor.  The apples for baking are simply cut into sixths, whereas the apples for sauce are cored, peeled, then sliced.  After 500+ lbs of apples, we now consider ourselves professional corers, peelers, and slicers.  We are also quite sticky. 

With visions of apple peels dancing in our heads...

Highly structured taste tests (everyone nearby grabs a spoon and nods in approval) have bolstered our confidence in preparing apples for the masses.  Our product is nutritious, tasty, and kid-friendly.  Motts has nothing on us.      

End of Summer Whirlwind

 We've been crazy busy down in the Salus Processing Center trying to utilize as much fresh local product as possible! Highlights of production include:

Peaches blanched and ready for peeling, pitting and slicing.

Finished product - peach slices for fruit cobbler!

• 700 lbs of peaches were processed into slices for the salad bar and use in fruit cobbler.
• 300 lbs of potatoes were processed into wedges.
• We shucked and halved 400 ears of corn for the August 17th lunch.
• Carrots were processed into coins and sticks for use on the salad bar and on the hot line.
• Stewed tomatoes and peppers are in full production!

Apples are starting to come in, and we've been loving the new applesauce recipe from Josh Goldberg, a 2nd grade student at MRH. He won the 2010 Recipes from Home contest and Josh's Awesome Applesauce will be featured on the school lunch menu throughout the year. He will be at the Maplewood Farmers Market at Bottleworks today from 4:30-6 showcasing his recipe and providing samples.

Tomatoes

Yesterday we worked on  tomatoes that are being prepared for stewed tomatoes. It was about 130 pounds that we did.

Also we did recipe testing. The name of those recipes are Zucchini-corn casserole, Cheddar and Monterey Jack Panini and Pork Tacos. Doesn't that sound good!? Cheddar and Monterey Jack Panini were really good but we all agreed that it would taste better with meat. Pork Tacos meat was the best taco meat ever so it made the whole thing come together. Zucchini-corn casserole it was too spicy, so we may need to adjust that in the future.  All in all, a pretty productive day !!!

Urban Farm Adventure

The Adventures of the Urban Farm were we plant and grow Healthy Food for others. We fed the chickens and then started weeding the area so that the weeds won't harm their fresh veggies. That was about an half an hour. Then we started to lay hay down close to the tomato plants to protect them from more weeds forming. That was about twenty minutes. We started to replant bayleaf from a plant pot to soil. We also planted greens but before that we weeded the soil. We planted them in a straight line. Then we sprinkled them with water after we put a thin white silk cover over the greens. Lastly, we planted peas into small pots and sprinkled water over them. Almost everything the Urban Farm grows will be sold to restaurants.