Salsa created big smiles for Brookstone students on September 24. Our friends from St. Patrick Catholic School came to teach our 2nd and 3rd grade students about vegetables and health through Scissor Salsa.
Starting in the garden, students and volunteers picked tomatoes, basil and green onions for the salsa. Elizabeth Stamas, our Brookstone garden committee co-chair, then gave a small nutrition lesson about the importance of vegetables in our daily diet. Afterwards, students cut the vegetables with scissors into their bowls and squeezed some lime. The volunteers added some peppers and garlic and the students mixed it all together to make salsa! They were provided tortilla chips to go with the salsa, making a healthy snack for the children.
The garden was also uprooted, cleaned out and replanted by the students for the winter crop on Friday, October 12. Children and volunteers planted many vegetables including: lettuce, radish, collards, mustard and specialty greens, carrots, dwarf grey sugar peas, swiss chard, spinach, cabbage, beets, broccoli, brussel spouts, shallots, yellow onions and elephant garlic.
Stundents are excited to see the harvest in the months to come, but are most excited about the sweet potatoes they also planted. Students in 2nd grade will dig up their sweet potatoes on harvest day on October 29. These will be used in a school-wide Sweet Potato Pancake Breakfast held in the cafeteria on November 20. The pancakes will be made by our garden committee members and Johnson and Wales University chef Megan Lambert.
We are so excited show off our garden in these upcoming events!