International [Whatever] Day

I love any excuse to celebrate. (It's true: my college roommate Mary can attest to my strict adherence to Margarita Tuesdays at our apartment during our senior year. In case you're wondering, no, I don't still stick to that rigid schedule. Any day is a good day for a margarita. But I digress....) Last month, on the eve of the big snowstorm, I stopped by my local Giant supermarket to pick up a few things. You know, the important stuff: rice crackers, an avocado, heavy cream. As I strolled by the cereal aisle, I saw this display:

Really? I'm surprised it wasn't promoted at school -- lord knows kids in the DC public school system could stand to eat more whole grains. I went home and made myself a fruit and yogurt parfait with granola, lest I be accused of neglecting this important occasion. Twas as delicious as it was patriotic.

Now, over this past summer, I acquired a jar of fancy chocolate hazelnut spread from my dear friend Susan. I vaguely recalled a few years ago hearing something about an international nutella day, and I distinctly recalled missing this most significant of days last year. So I made sure that I put it into my calendar and set a reminder. I mean, I wouldn't want to have my foodie card revoked -- the blatant use of fake cheese powder on my popcorn already has me on the food police watchlist.

This Friday -- February 5 -- I participated in my first local celebration of IND. As we sipped on our morning coffees at the school, my interns and I enjoyed slices of farmers market apples slathered in luxurious chocolate hazelnut spread. And then we proceeded to teach kids how to make a healthy butternut squash sauce with whole wheat pasta. (Are you kidding? Of course I didn't tell the kindergarteners it was IND or there might have been a riot.)

Last night, the IND celebration continued over handmade, mini nutella pop tarts that one of my dinner guests brought over. (In case you want to crank out some pop tarts yourself, here's a recipe that I used when we made them in a Brainfood class a few years ago.)

As we nibbled on Suzanne's flaky homemade pastries, her 10-year-old daughter informed us that she and her friends had celebrated National Icecream For Breakfast Day. What?! How did I miss that one? I'm marking NIFBD on my calendar right now. My dear readers, are you aware of any food-related holidays I should know about?

Who knew that washing dishes could be so much fun??

Photos courtesy of Brainfood

Last Friday marked the final day of the Takoma Academy Rising Tigers day camp, where I've been spending two days a week with middle schoolers teaching cooking in Langley Park for much of the summer. From the first day's Basics of Baking to the final session's Invent Your Own Pizza, the enthusiasm of the campers was positively infectious. And miracle of miracles, they actually loved doing the dishes.

Chattering away, rising 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th graders scraped and scrubbed, rinsed and sterilized, dried and stacked their dishes at the end of each session. I usually had one or two quality control folks at the drying end of the line who would send things back to the scrub station if anything looked questionable, but aside from a cracked pestle and a few broken glass bowls (note to self: do not buy glass bowls again) the dish crew pretty much took care of itself.

"I never knew doing dishes could be so much fun!" exclaimed Cerina as I came around the corner one afternoon with a load of mixing bowls and spoons. "Do we get to do this at the end of every class?" Yes, yes, you do. This is Brainfood, and among the youth development goals that we focus on in the program are accountability and being part of a community. We cook together, we clean together. Even so, I've never worked with folks who actually looked forward to washing up after cooking. (I mean, Kenton's a good sport and all, but I would be lying if I told you he was glad to hear my new apartment would not be coming with a dishwasher.)

I kid you not, when we had the end-of-camp open house for friends and family, I had five or six campers practically knock each other over to get to the kitchen to demonstrate how to use the dishwashing station. Scrape. Wash. Rinse. Sterilize. Dry. It was awesome. Parents took note. The kids also showed off their pizza dough kneading skills, their knowledge of the different food groups, and photos of themselves with the Signature Sandwiches that they'd made the week before. They impressed their parents with tales of trying (and liking) spinach and mushroom frittatas, kale basil pesto, and tofu berry smoothies -- "You don't even know that it's tofu, it's just really smooth and creamy!" -- and showed off the take-home recipe booklets that my fearless intern Sam and I had made for them. I hope I teach some of these kiddos again some day.

Not just because on their exit surveys some of the campers actually said that their favorite part of class was doing the dishes. To be fair, most of them listed the cooking portion as their favorite, but if some kids like washing up then more power to them. Oh, yes, I hope they sign up for Brainfood's after school program when they get to high school! (Unless Brainfood starts an after school program for middle schoolers in the meantime... I'd be so there.)

A twist on your usual alfredo

One of the best things about volunteering with Brainfood is that you get to eat delicious food at the end of every class... unless you have to leave early.

After smelling chocolate banana cake and grapefruit cake with cream cheese frosting cooling on the countertop and discussing next week's workshop where the Brainfood MVPs will be teaching local middle schoolers how to make low-cal chicken and broccoli alfredo, I was STARVING. But alas, I had to get myself to UDC before the end of our session today and thus I left sans cake. (So sad.) Somehow the kale salad, carrot, and hard-boiled egg I brought for dinner during master gardening class tonight didn't do much to curb the grumbling in my tummy. I got home, still STARVING, around 10pm and started to rummage through my fridge with alfredo on the brain....

Lemons: check. Neufchatel (admittedly kind of random): check. Parmesan: check. Garlic, milk, fettuccine noodles: check, check, check. Broccoli... um... no. Chicken... um... no. Parsley... well, a bit... I think there's some out in the coldframe, which I could mix together with some of the recently maligned (but, to be fair, pretty tasty) cutting celery. Maybe there's something I could do with that baby bok choy I picked up from the Dupont market this weekend....

In the end, I concocted quite a delectable plate of pasta for my late-night Mardi Gras dinner, scarfed before I even got out my camera to snap a photo to include with the recipe. I can say with certainty that the creamy, lemony sauce was simply divine. Maybe not as good as the famous Madeira sauce, but maybe a reasonably close second, and a way faster and less labor-intensive recipe than the usual. Here's how to make your own in less than 20 minutes:

Creamy Lemon Fettuccine Alfredo with Bok Choy (serves 2)

1-2 baby bok choy, washed and chopped into bite-sized pieces
½ box fettuccine noodles
1 tablespoon butter
3 cloves garlic, minced
zest from 1 lemon, freshly grated
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1 cup whole milk (don't talk to me about skim milk, you're lucky this isn't cream)
½ tsp sea salt
2 tablespoons neufchatel (or low-fat cream cheese)
grated parmesan cheese
freshly ground pepper
a handful of fresh parsley (and cutting celery, if you like), finely chopped

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add noodles. Cook for 10-12 minutes. (Or use fresh noodles and cook for 3-4 minutes.) During the last 3 or 4 minutes of the pasta boil, toss bok choy into the pot as well. (And Ryan teases me for how many dishes I use. Psh. I just prevented using an additional pot here -- a little credit, please!) While the pasta and bok choy cook, sip on a glass of something tasty and start making the sauce....

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and lemon zest and saute for about 1 minute. Add in the flour and whisk until fragrant, about 1 minute. Whisk in the milk and salt and cook, whisking constantly, until just thickened, about 3 minutes. Add the neufchatel and parmesan cheese and whisk until creamy, about 1 minute. Stir in a few grinds of fresh black pepper and the chopped parsley.

Drain pasta and cooked bok choy and stir into the alfredo sauce. Serve topped with a bit more grated parmesan.

Oh, my, that was delicious. I've nearly all of the ingredients to make another batch this week. Maybe I'll try mixing in some sauteed strips of sweet potato with the bok choy. Heck, you could add just about anything to this and it would be delicious: broccoli, chicken, peas, cauliflower....

Happy cooking! Let me know if you try it out.

A food gallery walk with Brainfood

Last week marked Brainfood's first ever Community MVPs Open House and Food Fair, and boy was it a fun (and delicious) event! Though the group taught their first workshop at Walker Jones Elementary this fall, for many in attendance this was their first opportunity to see the peer nutrition educators hosting food demos and leading a special event.

As I and the Brainfood staff and volunteers stood by, beaming, students welcomed friends and family and interested community supporters, explaining their plans to make an impact on the DC community: teaching people how to prepare healthy, tasty food. Following a narrated slide show, attendees roamed the meeting space on a kind of "gallery walk" of food. Small groups of students at a series of stations discussed healthy alternative ingredients in the (tofu) berry smoothies and (low-fat) creamy potato soup, then handed out samples for folks to try.

They demonstrated how to dredge chicken in cornflakes for "fake flake" baked chicken strips and how to melt chocolate in a double boiler for "trick-or-treat" brownies. They explained how the simple, from-scratch brownie batter had been blended with carrots and spinach to boost the nutrition content that even the pickiest eater would be hard pressed to identify. (So sneaky and chocolaty! Oooh, I can't wait to try out that recipe on a few of my own students who claim to not like vegetables....)

You can't tell from these pics, but in fact just off to the left of the camera there was quite a crowd. Still, there was plenty of food for us to nibble on at each station, and a cornucopia of goodies to eat on the buffet table -- pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, homemade poptarts, spinach artichoke dip, stuffed potato skins. Nobody went home hungry. Actually, I'm pretty sure most people went home well fed and looking forward to seeing the talented teens in Brainfood's second year program ramping up their work with local schools, community groups, and farmers' markets this spring and summer. I know I was.

Out of the kitchen, into the market

Since my return from Nebraska, it seems like most of my waking hours have been spent gardening and perusing farmers' markets. Now that we're coming into the height of the growing season, it seems that there is a farmers' market (or two) nearly every day of the week. My favorite market stop of the week was on Thursday: my first ever visit to the Penn Quarter market, where I had been asked to photograph the first Brainfood student market demo -- something of a sneak preview of Brainfood's exciting second-year program starting next fall, which focuses on peer-led food education and outreach. (How cool is that??)



Ollie and I rolled up just as the students were arriving, so I had a chance to chitchat a bit with everyone before the enticing aroma of sauteing onions and garlic scapes drew the masses over to the information tent where the cooking demonstration was taking place. On offer: free samples of fried rice featuring fresh, seasonal ingredients chopped on site. I watched in awe as the high school students minced, stirred, tasted, and dished up one batch after another of the savory concoction. (And of course I tried a plate of it myself. I mean, Brainfood sessions always end with the sharing of food. I don't want to break protocol.)



There was not a trace of nervousness that I could detect among the group of friendly, confident youth. Not that I'm surprised: Amy and Carina are amazing teachers and offered the usual encouragement and measured guidance as students took the lead. They looked on proudly as their proteges spoke with folks of all ages about the ease of the recipe and its infinite adaptability, explaining the technique and pointing out different ingredients. These students, some of whom were pretty new to cooking less than a year ago, were cooking and talking with passers-by like old pros. I must say I was impressed. So were the market shoppers who tarried for a few minutes to sample and ask questions. One woman, coming home from her shift at the Department of Transportation, commented on how quick and easy and tasty the recipe was. "I mean, I can make this in about 10 minutes and my son will get a ton of healthy vegetables! I think he'll like this," she smiled as she finished up her sample. (Yep, and the eggs lend a bit of protein, too, I couldn't help but volunteer.) "I'm going to go pick up some eggs and carrots right now."



Yes, the fried rice was easy and tasty. It's pretty inexpensive and you can make a whole bunch of it at once (which, if you're on the kind of budget that I am on these days, is a huge bonus). Inspired, I made an enormous pot of it for a potluck barbecue with my ultimate frisbee teammates two days later. There were some rave reviews. Here's a slightly adapted version of the Brainfood recipe, which serves 12....

Farmers Market Brown Fried Rice

Heat 1 TBSP peanut oil (or olive oil) in a large pan, then add 8 eggs (beaten) and cook until eggs are set. Remove from pan and cut into strips.

Heat 5 TBSP peanut oil (or olive oil) in the pan, add 2 onions (peeled, small dice) and saute on medium heat until translucent (5 mins or so), then stir in:

- 3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced (or 1 thinly sliced garlic scape)
- 1-2 tsp fresh ginger, peeled and minced
- 1 cup mushrooms, sliced
- 1 cup asparagus, thinly sliced
- 3/4 cup green onions, thinly sliced
- 1 red bell pepper, seeded, small dice
- 1/2 cup carrots, small dice

Cook for 5 mins longer, then stir in:

- 3 tsp sea salt
- 6 cups brown rice, cooked (ideally cooked the day before and stored in fridge overnight)
- the cooked eggs
- 6 TBSP sesame oil or olive oil
- 14 TBSP shoyu (soy sauce) or Dr. Bragg's liquid aminos
- 6 TBSP mirin (rice vinegar)
- 1 tsp ground pepper (to taste)

Heat until warm, then serve and devour with friends.

No utensils allowed

So, right, I seem to be slacking a bit on the blogging. Okay, okay, you're right. Even in the midst of the absorbing job of developing and managing the first mobile farmers' market here in the District, there are some things that should remain sacred. I even missed the men's college basketball final this year, if that gives you any sense of the (somewhat controlled) chaos that is my life these days.

One thing that I have managed to keep up is the favorite part of my week: Tuesdays at Brainfood! I've been especially excited lately, with two special guest visits from professional chefs and the shift in focus beyond basic cooking skills to delving into the preparation of cuisine from various countries around the world. Yesterday, as I took a deep breath in an attempt to shed the stress of the workday, I opened the door to smiling student faces and a stash of unusual ingredients about the kitchen. Mmmm, yes, this was going to be good. Ahhhh....

"There will be less dishes to wash at the end of class today, since no plates, forks, knives, or spoons are allowed at the final meal," Amy began, smiling mysteriously. Students looked around at each other and a few giggled. "Yes, this week we are packing our bags and traveling to Ethiopia!" (And me without my toothbrush and pajamas. Oh. Right. Okay, so our stomachs and imaginations are going.) As Amy led us through a bit of culinary history in one of Africa's most populous and linguistically diverse countries, we passed around some of the traditional spices we would be using: berbere (an Ethiopian staple, which reminded me of a cross between cayenne and paprika; the student standing next to me suggested it smelled kind of like barbecue), cardamom, turmeric. You know, I've eaten Ethiopian food a few times -- I do live near the U Street corridor, after all, which apparently houses the largest Ethiopian population outside of Ethiopia -- but for no good reason, frankly, I'd never cooked any myself. There was much for me to learn here.

Amy and I made our way around the kitchen to help turn on burners and check in with each of the 16 high schoolers as they came together in groups to prepare pretty darn authentic Gomen (spicy stewed collard greens), Amhari (a vegan stew, loaded with carrots, potatoes, onions, and cabbage), Dora Wat (Ethiopia's national dish, a chicken stew with hard-boiled eggs), and even a quick, crepe-like version of Injera (to supplement the authentic flatbread Amy had picked up at a local market).

Class ended with a feast, shared family-style, and the group sampled each of the dishes before each student steadily devoured a new favorite. Such adventurous eaters, I love it! I think Dora Wat was the most popular, though there was quite a contingent of Gomen lovers. What little bits of Amhari and Injera remained were quickly wrapped in tinfoil and stowed in backpacks and purses for the commute home.



And in the end, Amy was right: very few dishes. (Very few leftovers, too.)

After School Special: Brainfood

Feed your mind and the rest will follow....

During my first volunteer shift with Brainfood -- quite possibly my favorite after school food education program in the city-- the focus was on whole grains. (What are the chances? I worry that I'm going to develop a reputation as someone obsessed with roughage. I swear I'm not. Though it is important to include in a healthy diet....) As I stood by as an adult mentor, students chopped and grilled and roasted quite the feast, in this case millet burgers, quinoa salad, a hearty veggie chili, and some forbidden rice with coconut milk. Yum. You must guess by now that the way to my heart is directly through my tummy: I've been volunteering with the same group of young adult from high schools around the city every Tuesday night since.

Since that fateful and delicious first experience working with the crew at Brainfood's Columbia Heights location, I've been enamored with the program's careful cultivation of meaningful relationships between teens and adults as students develop valuable team building, time management, and culinary skills. Mentoring had been my favorite part of teaching, back in the day, and it felt amazing to be back in such a role. After only a couple of months, the students and adults I work with feel like an integral part of my life, and I find myself especially looking forward to Tuesdays. And then there are special events like the holiday party: so much fun!



(I guess they like me well enough, too, including me among the group's compiled affirmations and thank you notes posted on the wall at the holiday party last month. I almost cried when I happened upon the yellow sign with my name on it while wandering around with Carina's camera to snap pics of students decorating gingerbread houses or enjoying food that they'd prepared with friends and family, it was so unexpected and sweet.)

I've learned a lot so far from the students as well as Amy, our fearless leader. Just when I thought I knew everything there was to know about chicken -- I had learned to adeptly roast and carve one up awhile back at CulinAerie -- last week Amy went and taught us all about different methodologies for preparing healthy and tasty alternatives to fried chicken. (Or at least healthier: one recipe had an awful lot of mayonnaise, but it was still baked rather than fried and used cereal as the crunchy coating. It was soooo good. I found myself, as the kids did, going back for seconds. And thirds. I mean, come on, who can resist homemade ranch and honey mustard dipping sauces?) And there was the spicy but irresistible tortilla soup from the week before: I hovered nearby asking students about the kinds of foods they liked to make at home as they expertly diced jalapenos and onions, then slurped up a second helping after everyone had their fill during the closing meal. I had to go home and make some myself!

I'm missing them this week. It feels a little funny not meeting -- school's out for the MLK holiday -- but I'm looking forward to next week when we dive back into the kitchen. Soon we'll be wrapping up the segment on chicken and starting to dabble with sauces and seafood. Mmmm.

Enticed yet? Should you be interested in helping out at Brainfood, they welcome volunteers. There are long-term opportunities (they ask weekly volunteers to commit to coming in once each week from September through May), concentrated stints (like the summer program), and one-time events (for guest chefs/speakers). It's time well spent. And they even feed you at the end.

[Photos courtesy of Brainfood.]