Harvesting + Recipes

On Thursday, the club came out to the garden to harvest the kale we planted last Spring. It was great to harvest some of our produce (there are recipes for kale listed at the bottom of this post).

...and here is our new composter from Metro Vancouver! We used the money we received from the PAC to purchase it, and it's already taken up all of the excess yard trimmings and food scraps we couldn't fit in our first one. Thank you, PAC!

Lentil Soup with Kale

Ingredients

*Note: these are flexible - you can mix and match as you like

1 cup dried lentils [brown or green], rinsed

1 Tbsp quinoa (if available)

1 medium yellow onion, diced

2 carrots, diced

1 rib celery, diced

1 garlic clove, minced

2-1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth

3 cups water

5 cups torn kale leaves—discard thick center stems

1 tomato, diced

salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Directions

1. Rinse lentils and quinoa under cool running water. Place in a large pot.
2. Add chicken broth and water.
3. Add onion, carrots, celery and garlic to pot.
4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cook until lentils are tender.
5. Stir in kale and tomato. The kale will quickly wilt and reduce in volume, so don’t panic. Cook until kale is tender.
6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Sautéed Kale With Garlic

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds young kale, stems and leaves coarsely chopped
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic finely sliced
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock or water
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

Directions

1. Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat.
2. Add the garlic and cook until soft, but not colored.
3. Raise heat to high, add the stock and kale and toss to combine. Cover and cook for 5 minutes.
4. Remove cover and continue to cook, stirring until all the liquid has evaporated.
5. Season with salt and pepper to taste and add vinegar.

Kale Chips

Ingredients

1 bunch of kale, washed and stems removed

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar or lime juice

1-2 tablespoon olive oil

sea salt or seasoning blend to taste

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Chop or tear kale into pieces.
3. Mix oil, salt and vinegar (or lime juice) in a bowl, mix well with kale and massage into kale pieces.
4. Spread onto baking sheet.
5. Bake for 10 minutes or until crispy. Take kale out immediately if it changes colour to brown.

Updates!

Hi everyone!

So it's been a very busy month for us volunteers, both at school and in the garden! First and foremost, we have purchased a new composter from Metro Vancouver, photos of which should be up shortly. This will help reduce the stress we have on our current composter.

Secondly, the Garden Club will be attending Climate Change Conference 2011 (C3) at Windermere! This is a great opportunity to participate in some form of action and to build networks of sustainable education with other students. Visit http://c3vancity.wordpress.com/ for more information.

Finally, we will be harvesting the remainder of our kale at the next meeting, so be sure to come with a bag, and be prepared for the weather!

PAC Recap

Our presentation to the PAC (in case you couldn't guess from the title of this post) went extremely well! Thanks to all the members (and Ms. Chung) who came to help out! No word yet on whether or not our application was approved, but the parents were really enthusiastic about the garden, so hopefully we'll be starting on some of our bigger projects very soon!

Here's a basket of veggies and fruits from the garden that we brought to the meeting

Going over our presentation

Old concept drawings of the garden (I'll post about these in more detail)

A few carrots. Or a metaphor for togetherness. Nice one, Danielle.

Last-minute prep

Mission accomplished! Unfortunately, No photos of the presentation, but it went really well.

October 24th PAC Meeting

We have a spot to present at the Oct. 24th PAC meeting! We will give a ten minute presentation to the PAC and hopefully make a good impression by having as many Garden Club members there as possible, so mark it in your calendars :) This Thursday's meeting will center around getting ready for the presentation and we will have more details about meeting time etc. so please try and be there.

Kale, Chard, and Canada Geese

We had another very productive meeting today at the garden. A dedicated group of gardeners showed up to help us plant some kale (brought in by Ms. Chung) and some Swiss chard (brought in by Danielle) that will grow over the winter. We also got a chance to use our compost, which has been over two years in the making, and it is as healthy as ever. We're keeping the newer kale plants covered for now so they have a chance to grow undisturbed while they adjust to their new home.

Hopefully the newly transplanted kale will grow as abundantly as our existing plants, seen below. Here we are harvesting some kale that was planted last season. Some tips for eating include:

-Boil and serve with oil and vinegar

-Stir-fry and serve with other dishes

-Eat raw

Kale also tends to get sweeter after the first frost.

A bit of a post script here, but at the end of our meeting, we saw huge flocks of migrating Canada geese:

That's it for now. Stay tuned for more!

Work Party Reminder: October 14th 2011

Reminder to all that we are having a work party tomorrow after school (Friday October 14th) to plant some of the beds and prepare the garden for upcoming cold weather. We will meet in the garden at around 3:20 p.m. Hope to see everyone there!

Starting Off the Year

The start of another school year, and we are off to a great start! After everyone settled into the routine at school, we held our first few meetings of the year. We had over 40 newcomers this year, so it looks like we'll have plenty of helping hands!

We had a very productive meeting today, with around 20 people showing up to help out with aerating, staking, and weeding. We'll be preparing the beds for the winter later on this month, filling them with soil and planting seedlings. We're hoping to have some new winter crops within the next few weeks, so stay tuned!