Ideas from Barre City School

Ideas sent in from Whitney Machnick, Coordinator

Tuesday was granola day!! Last week we had strawberries left over from an earlier project and knew that we wouldn’t get around to using them right away so we had the kids load up a dehydrator with the strawberries, sour cherries from a tree on-site, and bananas that Kathi had with her. We dipped the bananas in our lemonade so that they wouldn’t brown. Everything dried beautifully!!

So on Tuesday we used the dried fruits in the kids’ granola and it was great! The initial emotion was shock at how little fruit you end up with after all of the liquid dries up! The next was desire – to eat the fruit before it made it into the mix.

Our recipe for granola is very simple and easy for the kids to remember:
4 cups of rolled oats to 1 cup of sweetener

We used a half cup of raw sugar and a half cup of honey, but you could also use any combination of the sugar, honey, maple syrup, agave, molasses, etc. We heated up our sweetener ahead of time so that it would be more “runny” and easier to mix in. It also transforms the sugar to a simple sugar which is easier to mix in with the oats. Be sure to also include about 1/3 of a cup of canola oil. I’m not sure what this does, but I’ve always included it…

In addition to the oats, we used about a half-cup of sliced almonds and a half-cup of sunflower seeds and mixed everything together. Once the oats, etc. were all covered with liquid, we poured them out on an oiled sheet pan.

This should be cooked at around 275° for 30 – 40 minutes with an occasional stir. We used the convection oven at Barre City Elementary and almost burned our granola after only 20 minutes, so just watch carefully since each oven is a little different!

On Wednesday, we had a very small group due to vacations, physicals, and the rain so our big salad day had to be modified. We had enough greens and vegetables for our entire group, but only a few kids so we had them make up salads for some of the employees at Barre City Elementary. It was great!!! The girls went around first and took orders and then came back and created beautiful organic salads with a vengeance!! They then went back and delivered their creations, even giving people a choice of dressings. We made two great salad dressings using mostly stuff that we had on hand with a few additions:

Gardens for Learning Applesauce Salad Dressing
½ cup chopped parsley
¼ cup white vinegar
¼ cup canola oil
¼ cup applesauce
1 teas honey
Salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients and mix with a hand mixer

Gardens for Learning Raspberry Salad Dressing
1½ cups canola oil
½ cup white vinegar
1 pint fresh raspberries
1 Tbl. Honey
Salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients and blend until raspberries are pureed

Our kids have been so great and have been so eager to learn. Thanks Michelle for coming by on Tuesday. It was nice to meet you and have you see our beautiful gardens!

Whitney