Cooking in the Garden program provides fresh perspective to Steel Valley students

Summer is the time for cookouts, festival feasts, and savory sweets.

But in the Steel Valley Grows Garden, summer is also the time to introduce a new crop of students to the delicious dishes made possible by home grown produce.

The summer "Cooking in the Garden" program is back in full force this year. Under the tutelage of Mrs. Christine Schott and Mrs. Holli Bobick, students in third through eighth grade can spend a two-hour session harvesting fresh produce, learning how to cut and chop their vegetables and fruits, and helping to cook a delicious meal using the ingredients.

The Steel Valley Grows Garden has a wide range of fruits and vegetables growing throughout the year. The "Cooking in the Garden" recipes are designed to take advantage of what produce might be in season at the time of the lesson. During the three sessions in June, students made a strawberry salsa along with a noodle dish. In August, the recipe will center around what should be a bountiful tomato harvest.

For July, it was all about peaches and a fried rice dish. Students learned how to cut and dice peaches, which they mixed with squeezed lemon juice and sugar. The mixture was then brought to a boil and allowed to cool to become peach jam. The lemon juice is a nice alternative to the traditional use of pectin to make jam.

While their jam boiled, the students cut up kale, chopped carrots, diced some onion, and minced some garlic. They added some olive oil and scrambled eggs, tossed in some rice, and stirred it all together. With some peach jam on crackers for desert, the meal was a hit.

The third session of "Cooking in the Garden" will be August 15, 16 and 17. Each session is limited to 10 students in grades 3 through 8, plus their parents/guardians. If interested, please sign up for just one session - each session throughout the week features the same content. The sessions typically run from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the garden between Franklin and the Middle School/High School complex.

For more information and to sign up, please check out the forms on our web site.

For more photos from a July session of "Cooking in the Garden", visit the gallery on our web site.