You think kids don’t appreciate good tasting healthy food?

I was sitting in the Ralph Bunche House this afternoon, listening to a few of our Youth Leaders prep food for a tasting for Jefferson High’s parent night.  They were saying something about the rice being gross and undercooked.  “What are you TALKING about?”  I shouted out to them.  Just a half hour earlier, I’d walked in the kitchen to find our ACE culinary programs assistant, Andres Chopin, pouring a beautifully cooked batch of brown Basmati into a bowl.

Andres came into the office, “No no, they are talking about the state rice.”  State rice?  I wondered.  “School lunch,” he clarified, and the girls followed in to explain.  At least 10 times last semester they said, school lunch consisted of a fried rice dish which was, “raw, like not even cooked. Only the middle was cooked.”  [Must have been the microwave effect.]

“Did you eat it anyway? Were you hungry?”  I asked.
“Yeah but, it was dry around the edge.  And there was chicken but in the middle of each piece was kinda hard.”
“Were there any veggies in it?” I hoped.
“I dunno, I think, maybe bell peppers?”  They shrugged, as if they couldn’t have bothered to go digging for peppers in that dismal par-cooked rice and chicken dish.

See, THAT’S what gives healthy food a bad name in school lunch rooms -  so called healthy dishes that aren’t even made in local kitchens, but rather factory produced elsewhere then reheated (poorly) on site.  You think kids won’t want and be willing to eat healthier school lunches?  SURE they will, but these kids have taste.  They know good food.  Their parents make it.  They are learning to cook it.

And, you can be SURE it’s NOT that kids don’t like healthy food, when they dump their raw-ish school lunch rice into the garbage bins.  They just want decent tasting, well prepared healthy food.  The tides are turning kids.  You KNOW, at RootDown LA, we can throw down great tasting healthy food with little effort and at a cost comparable to a fast food meal.

Note – we didn’t ASK these kids to compare our veggie fried rice with LAUSD’s.  They clearly couldn’t help but notice.

Just sayin’

Last week we were working with a group of students from Jefferson High’s Green Academy; they are planning to design and install an edible garden at the home of one of our neighbors on East 40th Place.  These same kids had connected with RootDown once before in the Jefferson garden, where we tended to our crops, blanched some broccoli and made a little homemade salsa.

Jerson Ramirez said he’d been making that “stuff” (salsa) ever since we made it in the garden. He wanted to know where we got those blue corn chips.  Trader Joe’s we said. Which, still won’t come to South LA because it doesn’t fit into their business model.  But that’s ok.  We’ll keep building the demand for healthier processed foods, and the stores already here will start offering them – organic blue corn chips included.

To anyone who says it’s hard to get kids to eat healthy food, we say – talk to Jerson.  Maybe he’ll make salsa with you and get you to eat your tomatoes.

Thanks SO much to TreePeople, who enabled RootDown to give away 25 trees to our friends and neighbors today.  We had SUCH a good time this morning, sharing our pumpkin quesadillas and fresh fruits and veggies with all the folks who showed up to get a tree and tend the garden Enrich LA established at John Muir Middle School.

We’re looking forward to having a fruit harvesting and jam making party in three years when these little trees start to bear.  Stay tuned!

For years, the founders of RootDown LA were working out of cupboards, closets, cramped spaces – IF! there was any permanent space at all to store the few but critical tools we use to start to get kids to eat their veggies.

This year, we were given occupancy of the Ralph Bunche House, the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s boyhood home, just a half block from Jefferson High School, where we grow and teach food focused lessons.  We now have a place for our pots, pans, and cutting boards.  We even at last, have a working oven and refrigerator.  Having a home base has done wonders to help us begin to solidify our programming and create a space that reflects all the values of healthy eating.  We strongly believe, when kids feel part of a community, they adopt its values, including the consumption, yes even of nasty veggies.

The RB House has become an energized and welcoming gathering space.  Our neighbors are starting to notice and come ’round, sharing cookbooks, homemade dishes, music, stories, and even recipes for homemade allergy remedies.  Go figure, a plant in our front yard says our new neighbor, has medicinal properties.

We’ve got some ground rules at the Ralph Bunche House - no artificial ingredients, colors or high fructose corn syrup are allowed across the door step.  Our young buddies, Matthew and Jeremiah have attempted to test our will in these matters numerous times – they keep showing up on our stoop with orange Hot Cheeto, and sucking up blue Slurpees.  “Get those slurpees to the curb!” we say.  ‘But this is RASPBERRY!” they try to convince us of their bright blue slushies’ nutritional value. ?!

This week however, Jeremiah glided up on his scooter and was cupping in his hands – guess what – a MANGO!  He loves mangoes.  Great we said.  Eat all the mangoes you want in the Ralph Bunche House.  Our fridge is yours.  In it you’ll find mangoes if you like, and broccoli and lettuce from our Jefferson garden, persimmons and apples from LA’s farmers markets, milk, cheese, meat and eggs with no hormones or antibiotics.  If you look right now there’s even a homemade pumpkin pie in the freezer, leftover from Thanksgiving.  (We’re not opposed to sweets btw – we just want them to be made from real food!)

We keep a picture of Ralph Bunche, hanging over the kitchen sink.  In the photo, he’s sitting at a table, as though he’s just finished a meal.  We’re guessing he ate good food.  And we hope we are honoring his hopes for the space he left to the community.

Boy DID we have Thanksgiving at RootDown LA – TWO turkeys worth!   Thanks to our students, friends, staff and neighbors who joined us – bringing food, board games (Jasan!), and even good jazz for our dining pleasure.  Our bellies were too full to report the event any sooner.  We’re so thankful we have a place to gather and cook and eat and grow healthy food.

Thanks to Roi Choi, king of the LA food-truck craze, who recently facilitated a VERY generous donation of LG kitchen equipment for us.  We’ve got one refrigerator up and running and now have equipment enough to outfit multiple cooking stations once our Veggie Eating headquarters get renovated at the Ralph Bunche House!  Thanks LG for helping us revitalize the strong food culture in our community so we can train our youth to help make healthy homemade cooking an every day affordable, easy and delicious experience!

Jeremiah and Matthew started showing up this fall, just to see what was happening in the once empty house on their block.   They stroll about the house while high school kids cook.  They ride their scooters in the street out front and play ball in the back yard. They have even agreed to rake the leaves from our giant avocado tree for a small fee.  Here they are, eating cucumbers with lemon and salt.  Yum.  The veggie eating has begun.

Thanks Jorge Nuno, for inviting RootDown LA to come bring our veggies to the Nuevo South Halloween Health Fair and Carnival this evening.  What fun to see the costumed neighbors pouring into the closed off block.  A two-foot tall Captain America, Freddy Krueger, Snow White and Elvis all came by our veggie booth.  Music, dancing, and a TRULY scary haunted maze made the night memorable.

We were honored to have small groups come by and spend some quality time with us, learning some basic cooking techniques, discussing the benefits of homemade vs/ store bought ranch,  and sharing their own successes – how they’ve helped their own children build preferences for veggies at home. One father put it simply as he pointed to our persimmons, cauliflower and bell peppers, “This is what we have at home, not soda.”

One super cool crew of young men, after being convinced broccoli wasn’t so bad, turned on the younger kids and got them to eat their broccoli too.  That’s how it goes folks.  We teach one kid, he teaches another… it’s pretty simple stuff once we draw them in and get them over their  “no, I’m good” veggie aversions.

The RootDown Youth Leaders weren’t so sure our veggies would hold their own with the hot dog booth nearby, but even the women working the hot dog booth insisted we share our pumpkin quesadillas when our kids went to them for hot dogs.  Our Youth Culinary Intern, Andres Chopin produced the perfect combo – sauteed veggies over a steaming hot dog.  Nice.

Happy Halloween everyone!

No joke folks.  Last Friday we were in our Jefferson High garden with students from Ms. Kelley’s art class.  We lost a little time getting to the garden.  And, we were a bit distracted with the lunch time music our neighbor school, New Tech, was pumping out just outside the garden gates.

Still, after getting our reluctant kids to eat blanched broccoli, salted tomatoes and caramelized bell peppers, they were DOWN for busting out some salsa, even with just 5 minutes left in the class period.  “Go to it!”  we challenged.  They didn’t mess around.  Garlic got minced, cilantro picked, tomatoes diced.  They even took the time to season it all with the right amounts of lime and salt.

Who says healthy food takes too long to cook? In less than 4 minutes, these kids were munching on blue corn chips and their own homemade salsa.  High five young chefs.

Last week we took our “You’re Gonna Wanna Eat Your Veggies” road show to All People’s Christian Center,  just a mile from Jefferson High School and our headquarters at the Ralph Bunche House.  All People’s runs a branch of the Central High School program, offering students from the age of 16-20 years old, who may have difficulty succeeding in the traditional school environment, the opportunity to acquire a high school diploma.

We were particularly excited to connect with this crew of kids when we heard that the American Friends Service Committee has been working with the youth to install and maintain their own garden at the Center.   The teachers at All People’s have been using the garden as an educational tool to get kids’ hands and minds on fresh locally grown foods. 

All People’s offers numerous invaluable programs to the community, from after school enrichment programs for youth of all ages, to free produce distribution.  We talked with youth and their teachers, about the possibility of developing a cooking demonstration program that would help promote the free produce that tends not to get snatched up so quickly.  Cabbage, for instance, even when offered for free, tends to go slowly.  The kids could develop and share recipes that encourage neighbors to take whatever specific produce is being offered up for the week.

Thanks guys for inviting us in for the day!  We hope you’ll come join us at the Ralph Bunche House for our Thursday after school cooking classes from 2:45-4:45, or at the Jefferson High Garden on Tuesdays from 1-3.