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This week we celebrated the end of our first formal RootDown LA Youth Leader training with the passing out of our new RootDown LA tee-shirts, “You’re Gonna Wanna Eat Your Veggies.”  We also had a pot-luck feast of food made by students, parents and even grandparents!  One student’s grandparents brought us a gorgeous Bionico de Fresa!

It was a lot of trial the past two months, only a little error, as we all got more familiar with our food systems, chef’s knives, and cooking techniques for a bunch of veggies many of us previously thought were disgusting.  We asked our students to write, after four 1.5 hour sessions with us, what they had learned.  One student in particular captured so well, what we hoped they might learn:  – that a whole food is healthier than a processed food – that many fruit are losing nutrients because they are injected with different chemicals – these chemicals don’t only affect the flavor of the fruit but our organisms – it is valuable to teach others because we get informed of important issues not heard before that are important to us.    Yes!

And, pics sometimes say more than all our words.  So we’ll let them speak about our little celebration this week.  Thanks to: Jocelyn for the pasta salad; Guadalupe for the superior yet simple mashed potatoes; Mariela’s mom, Narda for the pasta corn celery and carrot salad; Juli for ham sandwiches; Andres’ mom, Martha, for her awesome chicken mole; Ana, whose mother, Juana made a giant fruit salad, and everyone else who kept putting out the delicious dishes for our gathering.  Special thanks also to Keya and April who are our strongest proponents for the apple/cheese combo they’ve fallen in love with this year.  Try it!  They swear by this tasty snack.

- Authored by Karen Ramirez, Senior at Jefferson High School, Member of RootDown LA for 2.5 months

In my training so far with Root Down LA it has been a great experience just to be able to be around my friends to learn about healthy food.  I have been exposed to valuable information I wasn’t familiar with.  Back when, if Katy told me to try a fresh tomato by itself I would be like yuck!  However, now I could eat it and I know what to expect.  So far I know that I want to help my community to eat healthier because I see the problem in our society and it is because there are not so many whole foods available.

We as teenagers find it easier to go to the store and buy a bag of hot Cheetos, but what is not shown in reality is how much we affect our organisms with this food.  What make’s it worse our adults as role model let it happen. Can it be that we are not well informed?  Or that our society has become that lazy?  No we cannot drain our health away.  It is said that our generation is not expected to live long because of how we manage our food eating system… Continue reading ‘Youth Leader, Karen Ramirez – “Putting my little pieces of grain to improve the food system”.’

Just three weeks into RootDown LA’s weekly 1.5 hour training sessions, our new Youth Leaders are impressing us already with their culinary skills and ability to share their food systems knowledge.

So far this year, they have catered two school events, most recently Jefferson High’s parent night, for which they made homemade hummus and sautéed veggie wraps.  They also plattered 30 pounds of persimmons, pears, and apples, and seasoned homemade ranch dressing to serve with seasonal veggies.

They are learning what everyone should know – that making healthy food is NOT expensive or too time consuming.  In just two hours, ten student leaders made all that healthy food for 100 people at the cost of $1.75 per person.

We’re always thrilled to get in the Garden School Foundation’s outrageously impressive 24th Street School garden.  GSF puts on the most lively volunteer days with anywhere from 50-100 students, parents, and friends from across the city showing up to maintain and expand this edible and educational garden.

Special thanks to the 24th Street elementary school students who helped prepare a lunch of chili including greens from the garden, and local seasonal fruits.  A particularly grateful shout out to young Woody, who acted as our right-hand man in the outdoor kitchen while we scrambled to make food for all these hungry gardeners.  Woody quickly learned and then taught other students, parents, even the principal! about caramelizing onions and how to safely cut carrots with the “claw.”  The principal noted later she’d never seen Woody so concentrated in any project – YEP!  That’s the POWER of garden and food programs that engage our youngest generations in the building of healthier food communities.

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.