rootdownLA

How hard is it to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?  Kids laugh when we ask that.  They think we are ridiculous.  “Ha! Not hard at all!” they say.  “Duh, you take two pieces of bread, jelly and peanut butter and put it together.”  And how much does that cost – $5.00? we wonder.  “Naaaw, one dollar!” they guess.  “Nope, we suprise them, just $.45 cents for a whole grain organic PB&J sando!”  PB&J. It’s easy.  It’s cheap,  so why aren’t more kids brown bagging it nowadays?  We think they simply aren’t in the habit.  And we’re hoping to change that.

RootDown LA showed up for Jefferson High School’s four freshmen leadership retreats this fall – to bring the art of simple sandwich making back.  It didn’t stop with PB&J though.  On four hot Fridays in Will Roger’s Park, in just an hour, senior leaders, teachers and the freshmen cranked out five different kinds to total 150 sandwiches.  Grilled cheese and tomato, tuna fish, BLT’s, chicken Caesar salad, and of course PB&J sandos (as we call them) were all on the menu with fresh cut local fruit, much of which was donated from our partner farm, McGrath Family Farms.

So what’s the cost for our mostly organic, local, seasonal sandwich and fruit menu?  Total food costs came in under $300.00 per trip which, given leftovers each week, was less than $2.00 per student lunch.

And, for those who griped at first, when they saw whole grain bread, tomatoes on grilled cheese, or raw onions diced into the tuna salad, they sure didn’t complain when it all  came together, tasted GREAT, filled up their bellies and fueled their brains.

Less we forget our good manners!  We of course must thank our super amazing volunteers who came out and helped make the events, all four of them! so much smoother. Thank you much Corinna, Ben, Christianne, and especially our grilled cheese and tomato maestro, Alex!

RootDown LA's Roxana Reyes, feeding the people.

RootDown LA was honored to be able to feed the volunteers who showed up for WECAN’s National Service Day event in September – Planting a Little Piece of Paradise Parkway Project, converting grass parking strips on 60th street in South LA into micro-parks of flora and fauna. WECAN founder, Michel McLaughlin, organized one of the best volunteer events we’ve seen – fresh local fruit and chili made by RootDown’s Manual Arts High School student interns was available to all who came to work.  And, local professional musicians kept the crowds energized with their amazing drumming performance.  RootDown’s new Youth Coordinator, Roxana Reyes passed through the clusters of people wielding shovels and hoes, passing out juicy peaches, nectarines, grapes and watermelon.   Let us know if you want RootDown LA to bring samplings of healthy food to your next event!

Omar Graham, and instructor with WECAN, can't get enough of the nectarines!

Our new RootDown LA Youth Coordinator, Roxana Reyes, interns, Cesar Guerra and Alejandro Pais and Manual Arts students, Yesica Perez and Jessica Solano held their first healthy food focused activity recently – a WATERMELON lemonade! sale to raise funds to send students to the Bioneers Conference in October.
Manual Arts High School Senior, Cesar Guerra reports… Well it was pretty fun to have the lemonade sale on Friday. We really got to use our “cooking” skills and people talking skills. We were making a natural lemonade [instead of the powder and artificially flavored kind] that was not only healthy for you but it was very good. We made it out of lemons, chunks of watermelon which was very sweet, mint, and instead of sugar we used agave sweetener.*  Everybody had a job to do so Alejandro was cutting the watermelon while two other girls cut the lemons. As for me I was stirring and mixing the ingredients.  We had a great time making jokes and laughing and the scary part for me was talking to the teachers but when I saw Alejandro doing it then I got courage, opened my mouth and thank god words came out. The lemonade was $1 dollar but some people were generous and gave us like $5 or $20 dollar bills we made about $50 bucks that day. But yeah I liked the experience and I would like to do it again.

* For those of you who don’t know Agave sweetener, our new Youth Coordinator, Roxana Reyes explains it’s from the Agave plant and it reminds her of a treat she used to have with her father, “When they cut Agave down, they cut it up and cook it in a fire. It’s called Penka. My dad used to take me to a little mercado in Boyle Heights to buy it. And we’d just chew on it…” Roxana confirmed, the lemonade sale was a icy refreshing treat for the hard working teachers at Manual Arts!

Star health teacher, Vanya Hollis, invited us into her Manual Arts classroom last week to cook with her super amazing students who managed to capture some of our fast paced food activity on film. Thanks to all these kids for being brave enough to try even those foods they thought they hated! Changing minds and food preferences…RootDown LA

Youth working with HEAC and YAAO at The Accelerated School captured their farm visit in video, now posted on the WereFedUp website.  Please check it out and see what YOU could learn in a visit to McGrath Family Farms.

Thanks to all the students and SO many parents (there’s a waiting list now of Manual Arts parents who want to go to the farm!) who joined our last trip to McGrath family farms.  We had a stellar bunch of student chefs and were thrilled to see them filling up their bags with beets, carrots and sunflowers to take back to the city afterwards.

Thanks to all who joined RootDown LA’s first

“Not-Quite-a-Fundraiser”

(See more pics when you click here.)

“What will you bring to the table?” was the theme for the night when we gave RootDown LA it’s own little inaugural party at Jennie Cooks Catering last weekend.   We asked all of the students, gardeners, chefs, educators, activists, planners, (visionaries all) in attendance, to let us know what they could bring to the table as we work to build healthier communities and support RootDown LA’s work in South LA.

Thanks to all who brought their enthusiasm, ideas and donations to help us build connections and raise almost $1,000 right at the door that night.

So what ended up on the table?

Freelance baking (and a drawing of the Secret Goldfish),

Urban farm networking

“Everything and then some – visits, events, produce.”

“Negotiations to (hopefully) Win-Win” with school lunch improvements.

Equadorian recipes and willingness to cook with students!

Raised vegetable gardens.

“Time, thoughs, ideas, space.”

Peeps to know at UCLA Health Policy Center

Space for a fundraiser

Connection w/ a Student Leadership Summit @ Jan Perry’s new green building.

A glossy magazine dedicated to food and RootDown

A mobile culinary lab

Homemade pasta and bread and a garden to share!

A love of cooking, food, health & kids

Nutrition education and food prep in LAUSD

Education to my friends and family, community

Willing to cook with kids and go to the farm.

Media literacy for youth, documentary skills

Video production with youth

Art!

Music [and a nice drawing of a guitar and a guy singing Fa la la]

Yoga and extra hands

Banking expertise, volunteers

Passion for the cause, graphic design support

Improv and theatre games

Vegan blogging, farmers market recipes

Intentional living, integration of meeting needs/desires

Written by Manual Arts Student, Victor Islas…

November 20th, 2008, yes that was the day that, after 17 years of life, I first set foot on a real farm, The McGrath Family Farm. When I first heard of this farm, I thought to myself “oh just another boring piece of land with acres of nothing but wheat and corn,” but to my surprise, the farm was filled with a myriad of fruits and vegetables, all of which were planted very near each other, sometimes side by side. I soon learned why that and many other planting techniques used by the McGrath Family Farm were important, not only for the growth of the plants but also for the consumers, us.
The tour began with a look at the animal farm. I and two other students started visiting the animals. We enjoyed petting the rabbit, seeing the pigs and the goats, and running from the angry geese, which seemed to be the only one upset at our presence.
After seeing the animals Farmer Phil McGrath began the real tour. Right off the bat I knew there was something intriguing about the place. The first piece of information I was impressed with was with the fact that it was an organic farm, meaning they did not use any type of synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, and instead they use organic pest control methods. By using these methods, organic farmers eliminate the need for pesticides. This is important because it means the plant is healthier and natural, but besides that these methods prevent further damage to our soil and pollution to our atmosphere.
Then we walked for about an hour around the farm with Farmer Phil. We kept on learning more and more about the benefits of organic farming. So, the reason why it is beneficial to have so many diverse plants growing together is that it helps prevent bugs and insects from spreading. For example, if I were growing nothing but corn or wheat on my 100acre farm, as some farm companies do, and corn bugs infest my crops, then they have the potential to wipe out my entire corn supply. Then, I must use tons of pesticides to kill them but at the same time I’m destroying the soil, and creating a health hazard for my workers and my consumers. But if I had diversity in my crops, that event would never occur.
It was almost time to head back to our table and prepare lunch, but before that Farmer Phil, the Owner of the farm, allowed us to walk through rows of strawberries, and he allowed us to pick as many as we wanted. The strawberries were not as big as the ones I am use to seeing at the markets, but to my surprise they were ten times sweeter. My friend also remarked that they were the best strawberries he had ever tasted, and I agreed with him. We prepared lunch with freshly picked vegetables from the farm. Some of the vegetables we used were carrots, potatoes, beets, garlic, and onion; the best part was that they were all organically grown. After roughly an hour of cooking, I was anxious to taste our neatly prepared vegetable pasta. Simply delicious; it was the best pasta I had ever tasted, even though it was missing the Parmesan cheese. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it so much that I even made room for seconds.
Finally we were ready to leave the farm, but not before Phil, our generous host, filled our bags with organic fruits and vegetables to take home. I was so excited to show my mom the different vegetables we gathered, but I was more excited to see her reaction to the taste of the vegetables. She ate a carrot first and agreed with me that it tasted better than the ones that are not organically grown. Now, my mother wants to go buy more of this organic food, and I think we are going to make our first visit to a family farms market pretty soon.

We’ve just spent a whirlwind 48 hours with the first year Root Down students and they are INSPIRING!

It started in South Los Angeles at Manual Arts High School yesterday when we got to take some precious class time to meet the kids who will be coming to McGrath Family Farms this year.  As well, we began to cull out a smaller group of students who will work as our Youth Leaders.

Twice during the day, Megan dragged into the classroom, her ridiculously goofy giant hand drawn mural depicting the food system changes in our country – the transition from whole foods to processed foods.  The students were suspiciously kind, not making fun (at all?) of her stick chickens and cows.

These 10th graders were excited about the prospect of heading to a farm AND they agreed to come wearing ugly shoes and toting their own fork and spoon for lunch.  These kids are savvy.  When asked to tell a story from the stick chicken mural, the students threw out lots of terms they’d been exposed to – factory farms, hormones, organic, healthy.  Those word were all on their radar screens yet they had a lot of questions about what those things meant.  We’ll work on figuring that out this year.

The depth of the conversations that unfolded, in the classroom and during lunchtime and after school meetings with potential Youth Leaders, was unbelievable.  One student had built a cottage industry pomegranite business before she moved to South LA.  A flurry of ideas for other food businesses ensued.  Several students bragged they are the primary cooks in their families. One student felt compelled to tell us that he has been eating pretty much JUST cereal all his life; he’s nervous because several people in his family have diabetes.   He’s coming back next month for a private lesson on making even the most seemingly hideous vegetables palatable.

Today, when the bus pulled up to McGrath Family Farms and the kids poured out, we were uncertain how they would react to the scene.  Ducks waddling about, the hot sun blaring down, farm workers washing giant bins of greens and piling pumpkins for the roadside stand sales.  The kids didn’t skip a beat.  They easily took up tasks moving pumpkins, picking red, purple and green tomatoes and multi-colored beans.  Four students collaborated to cook an incredible lunch – a giant pot of chili and gorgeous salad of beets, greens, carrots – all from the farm.

At the end of the day, Katy shared with us what she’d overheard one student say as he sat with his plate of food, watching his friend pick up a baby bunny, “This is GREAT.”  Simple as that.  This was their school day.  And it was great.  For the students, the teachers, the farm staff, and for us.  Thanks to all of you, for helping us get this off the ground.

We’ll end with a wonderful string of thoughts and impressions Judy McGrath, (Farmer Phil’s sister) wrote to us after our visit today.  She’s in one of the pictures, with a bunny and Phil.

“Thoughts about today’s farm tour…  Incredible enthusiasm and motivation.  Lots of willingness to return to the farm.  I witnessed gentleness in handling a baby bunny, encouragement from peers to LISTEN to their peer group speaker.  Nutrition and diabetes were discussed among a group of students, as were store bought healthy foods, and “hard work” in relation to a student telling me she had picked beans.  Students asked if there was a compost area and were courteous with clean up.  The overall feeling was positive vibration with everyone.”  – J McGrath.