Gingerbread house results

We were not sure if we were going to complete this project this week, class time seemed so short, and making gingerbread houses from scratch is difficult!  We finally allowed ourselves to trim mix-matched pieces (just like in real construction projects) which helped. But there are parts to this that just can't be rushed:  you can't put the entire house together and decorate it all at once.  There was a jewel like moment when a group of students realized that they had eaten too much of the gingerbread dough a few days earlier, and had to race to make more in time to use for buildings.  They got there with gusto even if the final houses didn't look the way some had originally planned.

Still, this was definitely worthwhile. By the last minutes on Friday, everyone was actively into the fray to finish the decorations.  Several other classes stopped by afterwards to view, but I decided to forgo the judging in the final hour, not wanting to jeapordize the satisfaction in our accomplishments in presenting the houses.  This already has me thinking of ways to make this an even better project (whether competing or not) for next time. Tiles, perhaps, to decorate and become a house of cards?

I can recommend King Arthur Flour's recipe if this is your first time. This version of gingerbread is more structural, and it tastes better as it ages, if you don't mind the texture.  It holds up pretty well.  The icing is thin, but dries to concrete.  Some of the structures you see were made with 5 day old gingerbread and are still going strong. In fact, houses that were not taken home are still at school, covered, until after New Year's. I'm curious how they will hold... Happy New Year to Everyone!

5th period Cake Walk

I don't talk much about my afternoon class - we only meet once a week for a few hours. The style of the class is similar in professionalism, just a little more relaxed since we try to cook and eat in the two hour period. There was a recent request to work with fondant, so I managed to get some in the house this week. It is very fun roll to out and lay onto a buttercream filled spongecake and decorate. We also made chocolate leaves using camellia leaves as templates. Two hours sped by quickly.

This is the first version of the cake. After showing it off, we came back and decorated it further with chocolate curls and a dusting of powdered sugar, took pictures, and then promptly cut it up to eat. I am very proud of the students working steadily through the project - even though it is all gone, what a great sense of accomplishment!

P.S. Cake walk is a term that infers doing something is easy ("it's a cake walk") or, if you'll forgive the parallel terms, "a piece of cake." Originally it was a form of group dance that civilized people of moderate means did as a polite activity while socializing. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes not, but you always made it look like it was easy. Just like these students did this week.

Gingerbread House Contest

They each have accepted the challenge. My two classes will compete with each other in gingerbread house making - the class with the most points wins!  We will have pictures next week but I am happy to say that the students came up with this idea and the parameters.  Judging is on Thursday December 17.

Scholastically speaking, it is great to see many of them do things they normally shy away from, like math, double checking measurements and planning.  Even down to the careful counting of the candy to make sure everything is fair and square.

Vocationally speaking, the classes have been more orderly than usual.  I haven't even had to ask anyone to clean!  Thank you Hays House Museum (in Maryland) for these pictures.

It's A Hood!

This may not be the most appealing picture to most of you, but it is definitely appealing to us!  My students have been patiently upbeat about the way we have been cooking in here, using a rice steamer to boil water and a convection oven to heat pans hot enough to simulate sauteeing.  But we all know that those aren't ways to cook regularly.  Thank you, THANK YOU, to all the people who have made it possible to take this next step into real cooking.  The students are noticing.

To see our wish list of initial items we need, please click here.

Soon we will be able to use the range and expose students to more "normal" ways to cook which helps in two directions - the timing and understanding of a range for a professional chef in one direction, and how to cook healthier food choices using your stove at home in the other.  What will we cook first???

Gathering Recipes

This week, instead of telling my students what we were going to make, I let them take a turn. We sat around a cluster of cookbooks based on soul food, cajun and creole cooking on Monday, with my thinking we would use this opportunity to get into menu and "prep" planning.  It turned into the unexpected, which is one of the reasons I was eager to jump into this job in the first place.

The students not only learned that we can't throw it all into a bowl on the last day and have everything we want ready to eat, but more importantly, that all this wonderful cooking they have wanted to do takes experience and attention to detail too.  It brought up the subject on how much of authentic American cooking is at risk of being lost. We have so many recipes, but which one shows you how to make your own family's version?  You have to find out from your own family.  One student in my 3rd period class took the reins on documenting a recipe with her family's real macaroni and cheese, so we documented it while we made it.  It allowed us to get beyond the "oh you just make it" and show ourselves the kind of detail one needs to know to effectively pass along a family recipe.  When she saw the recipe in print (she chose the name "Smackin' Mac N' Cheese"), you could see her pride.  It helped them also realize that while the exact measurements are not that important all the time, understanding how everything goes together so that it will turn out the way you want, is important. And that  it is worth documenting.

For my 2nd period class, we were again lucky, this time with one of our volunteers - she grew up in Louisiana and when she saw the Jambalaya recipe we chose, she offered to write up her own family recipe. Pure gold!  Again, very simple, but it helped the students recognize the value of each of our family's heritage and that sharing recipes is a common ground to relate to people we don't even know very well.

The meals?  They came out well, perhaps not as well as if grandma cooked them, but this time, that made it even better.

Thanksgiving 2009

A school-wide Thanksgiving feast has been a tradition at Ida B. Wells for years.  The kitchen becomes a kitchen again in a different sense and we serve up a classic fare for the student body.   Teachers brought in cooked turkeys, hams, mashed potatoes and salad.

This year, my students contributed a few pies, and did much of the prep work.  While many of them were suspicious of the pumpkin pie we made, there is a magic pride that happens when you see your efforts put on a plate and served to others - and then see them enjoy it.  I had a few students come up to me and say how good it was too.

And this apple pie?  I had to fight people off so those who made it could at least see the results!

Thank you to Mrs. E. & Mrs. J. for carrying the responsibility for this feast for so many years and for sharing those valuable pearls of wisdom into this year. We hope you will be back in full force next year.

Pasta by Hand (and without a stove)

What we learned:

a) Hand making pasta takes a lot of elbow grease.

b) The mortar & pestle is one of the most satisfying pieces of equipment to use. Again.

c) We can do this without a stove, thanks to our rice steamer. Rice steamers can take a little bit of time to boil the water, but ours, which normally burns the rice, was completely up to the task (thank you Martin Aquino for your step by step enthusiasm in your 2007 blog entry about trying this out).

Also, we ended up getting more official and used our Friday cooking, eating and cleaning together combination to really focus on three work ethics:

Positive Response, Pride of Work & Staying within the Team.

It was delicious and satisfying, and reinforcing these practices is valuable for anyone at any age, including me.  Here is a link to the pasta lesson plan since it summarizes many of our efforts and the reasoning behind them.

logo work by student A.G.

pencil sketch...

...pen fill in....

...and neon glow added.

Trust

Tuesday, one of our students had her wallet taken in class. It is not the first time there has been a theft, but it is the first time in awhile. The wallet was found later, without the money, which helped her a little, since there were IDs and pictures more important to her in that wallet. The trust, however, has been broken again.

We are in our 12th week of class, and I've gotten to know and like the students, even (or especially) the ones who sometimes get defiant and tell me directly why they are acting that way. They are usually right on in their reasoning and just need guidance on a better way to express it. But trust is so important in any workplace. A restaurant, probably most enterprises, can't survive without a measure of trust - it is what allows a team to work together and create more than they could individually. It allows the love to come out. You are trusting me to supply you with a good meal, and I am trusting you to enjoy it, see the value in it and to pay for it so I can keep supplying good meals and a good place to be.

We all want more. But the way to more is not in the taking, it is in the giving. I might be getting all lofty-sounding, but experience tells us this and we feel this when we are actively working in a group and contributing - we can feel the fun. Trust is where it starts.

So our first fundraiser is for our class to recoup the loss. I've put the piggy bank out and we will see what happens.

Squash Time: Week 11

"I didn't know squash could taste this good!" - 2nd period student

It is hard to admit that for years, the only autumn squash I handled was the canned pumpkin for pumpkin pie. But, desperate for my own kids to start eating vegetables, I snuck spaghetti squash into the tomato sauce one night - they took it like an April fool's day joke, but ate in anyway, glaring at me and the injustice of it all. With a sigh, I still wish I had warned them, although the looks on their faces were a priceless payment for the experiment.

Then my sister roasted up butternut squash along with potatoes, olive oil, salt & rosemary one night. That was it, I was hooked for good. Now I watchfully wait for those butternut squashes to appear again every year. My kids do too, I'm happy to say.

For class, we made a classic butternut squash soup, baked it up with onions, garlic, a few apples and herbs. Pureed it and added water where needed and a touch of cream. Drizzled a little sage oil on top for accent (made by the students with the mortar & pestle) and then a little sour cream thinned with cream. And yes, we tried the spaghetti squash too (in full disclosure this time!) - and some liked it, others were politely quiet about tasting it. Group respect in tasting takes practice like everything else and warning ahead of time to curb negative responses helps keep the respect.

Prep-wise, it is important to halve the squashes with the students closely, and break down the squash to "hand size pieces" for peeling more easily. Butternut squash is a little more tender than some of the heritage squashes that are re-appearing, but it is still a hard-skinned item to maneuver. I wouldn't start doing this until you are comfortable with your student's awareness with knife handling and that they have developed a willingness to wait and observe while you finish the tougher task for the class, knowing that their turn is ahead.

Starter Wish List

Now that we have gotten through 10 weeks with a lightly filled piggy bank (thank you to those who have donated!) here is an initial list that has bubbled to the surface:

• Washer & Dryer (possibly with rough in)
• Hood    installed December 2009!
• small commercial dish machine set up with sink (possibly with rough in)
• Small dipper freezer thank you CTE!
• plumbed in Water filtration system
• Lexans and Cambros with lids (various sizes)
• simple pos system
• clock in punch system
• eventually, service ware for 50 people for events
• small table gift certificates to restaurants (many students have not eaten at a sit down restaurant and could review it as a reward assignment)
• a scholarship to CCSF's culinary program for Ida B. Wells
• 8-12 passenger mini or micro van, with option to remove back seating
• $100 per week for our food budget

Grains & Beans Overview: Week 10

I wasn't sure how to tackle the world of grains and beans, but it was time to get a sense of the depth and breadth of it.   So we tried a variety of things:

a) We lined up a variety of grains and beans and poured them into origami boxes we had folded together and labeled, then looked at the similarities and differences.  Much discussion on grain vs. bean/legume and the ways that many cultures around the world eat a combination of beans and grains which nutritionally results in more complete proteins.

Origami in a culinary arts class? We needed some hands-on activity, and origami is great as long as you are prepared for first timers.  Often there will be a hidden origami pro in one student which can help too.  I'm already running into students being organized enough to be able to produce a lot of output and it gets challenging to find ways to keep their hands busy without ending up with a 5 gallon bucket of chopped carrots after half an hour.  I was hoping origami would help with this.  It can when you have enough "buy in" and the project is doable.  Having a cutting project (such as trimming parchment circles for steaming baskets) is also good, but you need pairs of scissors.

b) We made hot cereal.  Many students have never had whole oats before and it is close enough in flavor to rolled oats that they could compare and contrast - and several asked when we could have hot oats again.

c) We put things away and organized a grain and bean shelf.  I love watching the discovery that happens as someone takes ownership of their project.  In the picture at right of some of our jars, this student's labeling was essentially correct - it is a wonderful reminder about experience, generations and our changing lifestyles.

d) We got into hummus and pita bread. As long as you have a baking stone and get it up to temperature, pita bread is more satisfying than flat bread because it bakes quickly and watching it puff up in the oven is immediately gratifying.  Roll the circles of dough out paper thin for this result. There was  more discovery as students blended or pounded the "seeds" of chick peas into a familiar spread with garlic, sesame tahini and lemon juice.  Many had never tasted it before and we compared it to classic tomato sauce on our freshly baked pita.  We had to make more pita dough for later in the week.

e) Finale Friday: hummus with pita, chicken soup with quinoa, tabouleh (bulgar is an easy grain to make in the class room), and an onion-pepper relish.  It was a successful meal.

Next time?  This could be broken down into more lengthy projects but for our class these quick glimmers were good ways to expose without over saturating.  It helped keep the curiosity alive in the room.

Potstickers: Week 9

Found it. New May Wah's on Clement Street and 7th Ave. Don't look at the chicken, meat or fish sections. Do look at the fresh noodle aisle and the myriad of bottled sauces. Potsticker wrapper heaven, the thicker ones, that even come in spinach green (don't worry, the flavor is the same, you just get a lovely contrasting color).

We found a recipe for a low meat filling that allows you to pre-cook the meat part of the filling, which helped our timing. We could make the filling itself one day, then focus on filling the wrappers and cooking the next. Potstickers would be a good one for an event, the many pairs of hands caught on quickly and produced almost 100 potstickers in no time. The trick would be to make sure to keep them from drying out and to plan out the cooking of them adequately. But this was voted one of our best "meals" of the quarter.

Visiting NOPA

Laurence in his kitchen as we work.

One Tuesday at the end of last quarter we were able to visit Laurence at NOPA restaurant for our 5th period afternoon class.  Laurence Jossel, one of the owners of NOPA and Nopalito restaurants, has been a wonderful support to our cooking with teenage youth.  From letting us forage in their walk-in to jumping in over the summer with over thirty interested teens without any warning, he has a magnetic way about him and a contagious passion about food and cooking.

I was amazed as he spent a few hours with us that afternoon in his restaurant as we peeled garlic together for one of the spreads used on pizzas.  Amazed at how much value to cooking that could transpire as the students continually peppered him with questions.  I wish I could have taped the conversation. He made peeling garlic a pleasure and the students loved the fact that we were making something people were going to pay for and enjoy, while a number of NOPA chefs made a point of coming over to admire our work.  Our walk back to the high school was full of that excited talking after a wow experience.  "He is a really nice guy," was the unanimous refrain.

How do you measure the value of this afternoon?   We know in our hearts that coming together around food is valuable and when we take it this direction, where community and food can connect with working practice, it opens unmeasured doorways in one's mind.  Thank you Laurence for keeping your door open with a smile.

Volunteer

We do need volunteers! The best volunteer for us is someone who enjoys cooking as well as being a guest, but we also need guest speakers on all subjects of professionalism. On days we cook, plate, sit down and eat, the students particularly love having a guest in the room, so no special experience is needed except a positive attitude and a smile.

For volunteering in a school with minors, there is a screening process and SF School Volunteers (now part of SF Ed Fund) streamlines this process.

To be a regular volunteer, you begin by filling out this form online. There is an orientation and fingerprinting process, and while they will let you know the fingerprinting costs them $66, no one will be turned away.

For a one time visit there is a waiver form to fill out, no fingerprinting required. Please drop me an email and I will send you the form. Even if you are only available for a one time volunteer visit, it helps our ability to connect to what is real.

Back to School Night

"I learned that making a lot of desserts for a lot of people can be fun." - 3rd period student

It was a crazy week. Only 4-6 weeks into school and all the gears are running full speed ahead, you can see the stress in people eyes as they wonder to themselves if they are keeping up and if others know they are behind. I wonder if I have the very same look in my eyes. For me, "When in doubt, cook it out" has been one of the more healing ways to combat stress. Getting ready for the back to school night dinner became more of an invigorator - I feel better today than I have all week.

The students made all the desserts - and the parents last night LOVED it. Today my students were more subtle about asking how it went than I expected - some didn't believe the cheers we got. But hearing from the students who were at the event helped everyone realize I wasn't lying. Here is what we offered:

Chocolate Picnic Cake

Brown Sugar Oatmeal Bread

Vegan Banana Coconut Cake

Apple Tart

Strawberry Tart with Cream Cheese Filling

Lemon Custard Tart

Next? Hard to say, but now that they have conquered dessert, I'd like to get into World Cooking...

sharp knives, hot surfaces and kissing up

So far so good. We have had 4 weeks of classes and even though there are days where things feel a little shakey, you have to keep your sights set on what is going right.

Going Right #1: We've had mostly delicious food as a result of our efforts

Going Right #2: I am managing to remember students names (yes, it has taken me this long)

Going Right #3: I actually get a few smiles at the end of class handshake

Going Right#4: When it comes to the REALLY important parts, the kids still are respecting and listen.

A lot of people were concerned about putting out all these knives, having slippery floors from all that hand washing and hot surfaces. Yes, they are hazards, but it is another example of how we are looking at things factually. It is not a "reactive" position that these students are learning, it is a "responsive" and "responsible" position that we are trying to practice. When you hold a knife in a responsible way, your viewpoint changes. It is interesting how respect is very much understood, just very hard to demonstrate in the cafeteria, where there is little respect left for the food that is regularly served here.

This helps us understand better the position/attitude one can take in the front of house. It is all connected. If they take a responsive and responsible position as a server, they can move out of the "kissing up" stigma and make themselves more available for the server jobs where you can really make money. Higher end restaurants can tell when you are kissing up and when you are being real. You can be real and courteous with someone without having to like them. This is a vital capability in any job.

Thank Yous!

A Super big THANK YOU to these organizations who have believed in us even before we started:

Two Small Farms

The Kaiser Foundation

NOPA restaurant


Buchanan YMCA

Mo' Magic

Week 3: Empanadas & Tasting Apples

We wanted to cook so much this week. We started Monday with making the empanada dough (thank you Edible Schoolyard for the recipe) and then we worked on two vegetarian fillings:

Sweet Potato with Onions & Herbs

Chard with Roasted Corn & Garlic

Wednesday's Tasting? Apples & Asian Pears - they wanted to add salt and compare, I was glad for the input. I cooked some of the apples - most students did not like them, but it may have been because I used just butter and a cast iron pan. Look at me, I'm trying to teach the ability to describe the flavor and I'm concerned with whether they like what we make or not.

Thursday, empanada completion. They took all of them before I had a chance to say "wait." This sense of entitlement & ownership takes on an odd shape. Pride in work and accomplishment: good. Mine: bad. How to we get into the "pride in work" arena and out of "mine?"

And then it was Friday? Sushi & "7up" cup cakes - although we used sparkling pear juice instead. They loved making the sushi and most of them ate it up. It was fun to get their attention and interesting to notice more ability to take direction than they showed earlier in the week. It ebbs & flows and we are still trying to establish a rhythm.

Week 2: Flatbreads

Bringing in the familiar and the unfamiliar, we started off on Monday with yeast and "flat bread" dough. There is a great pizza style dough in Jeffrey Alford & Naomi Duguid's Flatbreads & Flavors cookbook, where you can start it and refrigerate it for even a few days and it develops a wonderful flavor. Man, did they attack the kneading part of it! I forget how fast young people can be.

Tasting Day I brought in melons from the farmer's market. Love watching the students try not to just say "nasty" and also being adventurous as they sprinkled salt or chili powder on the melon.

We ended the week by baking off the flat bread - one with slow roasted tomatoes, the other with parmesan and herbs. It being difficult to time things, we had to refrigerate them and reheat for the next day - they still ate it up. Next time, it would be fun to have much more filling options. We had a lot of dough.

2nd Week: A spotlight on our school lunch

I wasn't hired to witness school lunch, but it has become part of my daily routine, a situation I scratch my head about everyday at lunchtime. How did I get here?

The principal at this high school worked some serious magic to get me hired by the Career Technical Educator arm of the SFUSD and also get an extra refrigerator and a small convection oven for our vocational cooking classes. After working in the restaurant world and then owning my own restaurant, I find myself here wanting to connect these students to their workforce skills through professional cooking and serving scenarios, which I've been doing since roughly 2007. Basically, I treat inner city youth of various ages like my employees everyday, showing them as many aspects of the different jobs in a restaurant as I can, using these scenarios as access points for working skills you need in any job. We are still trying to find the budget funds but for now, just being here is quite a feat.

The logical place to have class ends up being the cafeteria, where the refrigerators live. So my desk (it was my great Aunt Julia's desk) is angled towards the main part of the room, where school lunch is served.

I could get into the details you already know about school lunch. "Prison food." That is how some students term it. What we can say is that it looks clean and that its nutrition is monitored in a way that allows it to be legally served everyday of school for less than $3 per student, including food, labor and travel costs. What I wasn't prepared for was how school lunch actually happens. This high school only has a half hour for lunch, so perhaps I'm seeing an extreme.

I didn't realize how coming together to relax and refuel was so important to me, I just assumed that lunch is breaktime everywhere. In my restaurant, we always knew that the ambiance, the way you treated your guests could save any qualms around the execution of the actual food. The magic in the room we called it, when satisfaction and enjoyment around food was practically contagious, and the room had a beautiful sense of community. I know it is not fair to expect a school lunch room to ever feel like a restaurant, this is just my background on coming together to eat.

But there are no guests or hosts in this half hour. The students gather their required three items so the count is valid and can be reimbursed. I don't want to get into the minute by minute details, but the feeling of the room ranges from hollow to frantic depending on the day. For students who arrive 15 minutes into lunch they often can't get a main course "Sorry, you'll have to come earlier next time." Perhaps I don't understand the big picture of how this lunch room got to this point and the need for this kind of control - but what is all this teaching?

It is easy to explain to a student the justifications around why the food itself is how it is, one could even slant it with the amazement at everything a student gets for the small sum spent(but not really). It is much harder to explain away the devaluation of them as people in this half hour break. As I try to teach the value of host and guest, teamwork and positive professional behavior, trying to make it real, I watch the broken cogs of reality work themselves in this same room at lunch in a reverse direction. Entitlement, lack of respect and lack of care, need to be turned into empowerment, respect and care all around. How do we do this?

By the way, this may be a small continuing education high school I am sitting in, with students who have had trouble completing their coursework for a myriad of reasons, but I've seen more reality in the eyes of these students in these few short weeks than I have in my employees. Every student deserves these values. If we spend the money and begin here, we lay the groundwork for fixing many of the other broken cogs ahead. Experience is our biggest teacher and example our best experience builder, fixing our food and how we come together around food with our youth is the best example we can set.

Week 1

Introduction to my classes this week, but it is hard to not cook in a Culinary Arts class with 25 teens staring you right in the face. After general orientation (names of kitchen equipment, what is professional behavior, pro-hand washing) and having a tasting day with stone fruit (see above) we did a little experiment with cornbread, 4 ways in small pans. The goal was to learn how to read a recipe and to see the difference in leavenings. We all liked the one with the buttermilk and both leavenings the best - fresh corn & thyme threw them a little, but there were no leftovers.

I didn't realize how important "I made this" and "this is mine" is when you are younger.

Progress shows itself in funny ways

Stopped by Ida B. today with Greg, wanting his advice on improving the layout of the room. Our timing was impeccable, the cafeteria was actually unlocked. Planning didn't progress far (the layout has already been set for now) but I did get a key to the room, worn smooth and kept shiny by years of use. Stamped K-1.

I kind of like that.

Kitchen One.

So, I missed the boat, the planning of the room has to wait for covert, completable-in-a-weekend-operations. We'll do it in stages (with the principal's blessing as we go, of course). Right now the room feels like a weird apartment we just got for really, really cheap. Peeling paint and chicken coop frosted windows (do they open?). Get your stuff in there, move it around until it fits or move it out.

Smile a lot.

My restaurant brain wants to turn everything into a warm and welcoming place and Greg's eye can always find the way to do it. But right now there are some stumper questions on that brain. I stare at the 5 rolling carts of various shapes, sizes and "dent stories" to tell and the two microwaves, huddled down in corners (and also on rolling carts). Everyone's advice? Take it SLOW. VERRRYY SLOW.

But I just got here. Barely. It is still not clear when I officially start, although the principal is under the firm assumption I begin next week and that life will go from 0 to 60 miles on Monday.

Slow? Let the party begin.