A Garden Party

We are very grateful to have such dedicated organizations in our community who spend their time & talents on helping others.  Every Tuesday, the Community Garden Connections through Antioch University New England, organizes & invites everyone to a "Garden Party" at the Westmoreland Garden Project (which is part of the Kitchen Gardeners International - they had a part is starting the White House Kitchen Garden!)

We took the Community Garden Connections group up on their offer and joined in the garden party fun!  One of the leaders, Ben, gave us a tour of the grounds and showed us the ropes.  We then donned our gloves and got to work:

We helped harvest carrots:

Onions:

Jude pulled up the biggest one:

Cabbage & peppers:

We had a fun time at this Garden Party and plan on joining in next time!

More importantly, we were able to make some connections in order to start our own two community gardens.  The boys start school next week (!) and we hope to push our proposal to start a greenhouse on their elementary school grounds.  Stay tuned!

Arkansas's Asian in Arkansas

Arkansas!  The Natural State.  As we travel across the nation via our 2016 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge cookbook, we are taking on Arkansas's Asian in Arkansas recipe by Lily Radtke. We got to see Lily displaying her culinary skills after our private tour of Julia Child's kitchen at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.  Tanya Steel (Editorial Director of Clean Plates) who organized the majority of the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge, hosted this cooking demonstration with three of the kid chefs.  Lily can be seen on the far left:

Lily's recipe was also featured on the Kids' State Dinner menu!  Asian in Arkansas:

Lily's home state's news station provided a wonderful commentary about her experience, as well as her local PBS station.

We haven't been able to visit Arkansas but from the state's tourism video, we want to pack our bags and check it out now!  We picked up several books from our local library to learn more about this great state.  In "America the Beautiful: Arkansas" by G.S. Prentzas, we found out that there is a watermelon festival in Hope, AR (also the birthplace of their only president, Bill Clinton!)

Little Rock is the state capitol and the capital building looks almost exactly like the one in Washington D.C.! ("Hello USA: Arkansas" by Domenica DiPiazza).

There are a few National Parks and Forests in Arkansas.  In the book "From Sea to Shining Sea: Arkansas" by Ellen Macaulay, it describes all the amazing things located in the Hot Springs National Park, the Ozark National Forest and the Ouachita National Forest.  I love it when the National Park service provides the Junior Ranger booklets as PDFs online.  Our family is really big into the outdoors and it sounds like Arkansas is a must on our bucket list!

Now - on to the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge winner.  To prepare this recipe, Asian in Arkansas, we decided to follow in Lily's lead - this past Saturday, we rode our bikes to our local farmer's market to pick out some of the ingredients in Lily's recipe.

We found a few of those yummy, fresh ingredients such as cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes and basil under the Hillside Springs Farm tent.  This farm is located in the next town over from us.

We purchased our bounty, donned our helmets and head back home with our goodies!

Now, we get the cookbook ready, assemble all the ingredients and get to work:

First off - prep the ingredients.  The average August temperature in Arkansas is about 93 degrees with an average of 72% humidity.  Today in New Hampshire, our temperature is 85 degrees with a 65% of humidity.  So - we were pretending that we were actually in AR!  Shirts in our house were optional:

Adding the dressing to the Edamame Salad:

The kids tried and tried to fold the rice paper but didn't have much success.  :(  So, I jumped in to finish off the remaining spring rolls in time for dinner:

And the final result!  We were thinking what the best drink to have with this asian meal and thought that decaffeinated tea would match it perfectly. Thank you Lily for this very creative, delicious meal - and with minimal cooking on this very hot & humid day!

Arizona's Scarlet’s Southwest Barack-A-Bowl

Arizona!  The Grand Canyon State!  We know a lot about Arizona because we lived there for four years.  My boys were born in New Hampshire but my daughter was born in Tucson.  Chef Scarlet Summers, age 10, comes from the Phoenix area and her recipe can be found in the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge cookbook.

Scarlet received a lot of coverage in the media.  News articles can be found on the Cronkite News, Zona, East Valley Tribune and featured on an incredibly well-done live video presentation through Phoenix 3 TV - just to name a few!  Our family was very eager to get to try Scarlet's recipe because of our own connection to this amazing state.

Normally, I'd have the kids research some key points about the state, but instead, we looked through pictures of the places we visited and the things we did.  It was a bitter-sweet trip down memory lane because we loved the all of the close friendships we made, the culture and the Sonoran landscape.  We decided to move back to NH because Tucson was seriously a hot place to be - and more importantly, to be closer to our extended family.

Here are only a few of the multitude of locations we visited during our time in Tucson.

Jude being a Junior Ranger at Saguaro National Park:

An overnight excursion to the Biosphere 2:

A backpacking adventure to Havasupi Falls:

A visit to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon:

Hiking at the Chiricuhua National Monument.  The angle in this photo wasn't exactly what we were hoping to achieve, haha.  But this place was just a big ol' rock playground with caves and hoodoos abound.  It was seriously a lot of fun!

And now, onto Scarlet's Award-Winning recipe: Scarlet's Southwest Barack-A-Bowl.  First, we gather all the ingredients:

And we get to work!  We live in the southwest corner of New Hampshire, really close to both Massachusetts and Vermont.  My husband actually works in Vermont.  So, we hit up our food co-op for some local ingredients:

And grill them up: 

Jonah is helping to process the cauliflower: 

While Jude helps with some of the cilantro chopping: 

I'm donning my University of Arizona, College of Science shirt (I worked in the Chemistry & Biochem department) while I grill up the chicken & corn: 

And as we finish up the final touches on this dish, we thought we'd make a smoothie.  Scarlet recommends a Prickly Pear smoothie, but we can't get that in NH - and we didn't have too much luck the last time we went prickly pair picking: 

Ouch! Sorry buddy! 

Jude was not a happy camper, that's for sure! 

So, we went for a watermelon (similar taste to the prickly pear juice), peach, blueberry & yogurt smoothie instead.  In this picture, Jude is wearing his Demont Family Swim School shirt and Jonah is wearing his Triangle Y Ranch camp shirt.  Both were great family experiences for us: 

And here is the final, beautiful product: 

Hats off to you, Chef Scarlet!  We all enjoyed this amazingly delicious dish and you represented Arizona quite well.  Thank you for helping us re-live our time in Tucson by making your meal.  

American Samoa's Breadfruit, Taro, and Garlic Chicken Trio

American Samoa!  This recipe from the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge cookbook comes from Chef Amelie Chen, age 9.  She lives in American Samoa, which is a US Territory. My kids don't really understand what it means to be a US Territory, so this is the perfect lesson to learn more about it!  

We unfortunately didn't get to formally meet Amelie but there are some great articles about her and her award-winning recipe that I was able to find. 

Jude had two of his friends over to play and they all wanted to pitch in to help create this recipe and to learn more about what it means to be a US Territory as well as to know more about the unfamiliar ingredients in her recipe. So - we hit up our local grocery store to find the elusive "taro" and "breadfruit" in the produce isle.  

After a lengthy search for these items, we decided to opt for the substitutions for both - we picked up some parsnips to substitute for the taro and plantains to substitute for the breadfruit.  After leaving our local Hannaford's Grocery Store with a cart full of Amelie's ingredients (or rather, substitutions), we searched online to learn more about these unfamiliar foods.  

According to Wikipedia, the taro corms are "roasted, baked or boiled, and the natural sugars give a sweet nutty flavor. The starch is easily digestible, and since the grains are fine and small it is often used for baby food. Young taro leaves and stems can be eaten after boiling twice to remove the acrid flavor and the leaves are a good source of vitamins A and C and contain more protein than the corms".  They have a similar look to a sweet potato: 

We also found information on Wikipedia about the breadfruit.  This food comes from a tree found in most tropical areas of the world.  "Before being eaten, the fruits are roasted, baked, fried or boiled. When cooked, the taste of moderately ripe breadfruit is described as potato-like, or similar to freshly baked bread."  We used a plantain that the kids described as being a big banana.  Here is what the breadfruit looks like as a whole and sliced: 

Another part of our lesson was to learn about the meaning of a US Territory. We checked out the book "America the Beautiful: U.S. Territories" by Sylvia McNair. There is a difference between U.S. Territories that are organized and unorganized forms of government. While American Samoa is officially unorganized, it is still self-governed and has a government. Citizens of American Samoa are not US citizens, but rather are US Nationals. They may live and work anywhere in the US, but cannot vote should they move to the United States. US Nationals may apply for citizenship as if they were resident aliens but do not have the same restriction for traveling and living in the US.  So, their status, especially when it comes to voting, is a little weird… However, I'm glad that the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge did include the 6 US Territories!  

Now, onto the Amelie's award-winning recipe, Breadfruit, Taro and Garlic Chicken Trio.  First, we gather all of the ingredients:

And utensils at the ready!

I took care of chopping the garlic & marinating the chicken, but all the kids had a role in chopping the broccoli, tomatoes, parsnips & plantains: 

After boiling the parsnips & plantains with the coconut cream, we decided to mash it into a consistency like mashed potatoes.  In addition to this meal, the kids wanted to have a tropical-like drink.  So, we blended together some pineapples, mangos, bananas and low-fat yogurt for a delicious smoothie.  My little lady-bug helped with the blending: 

We enjoyed Amelie's meal outside on the picnic table - it was a huge success!  Thank you Chef Amelie for sharing your American Samoa culture with the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge contest - your recipe was definitely a winner!!