rootdownLA

Who better to get kids to eat their veggies than other kids?  It was AWEsome this spring, to take our Jefferson High School Youth Leaders on the road to run RootDown LA’s Youth Leader Training program for OTHER kids in the South LA community.

Both USC’s MYLA Obesity Prevention Program and HEAC (Healthy Eating Active Communities) at The Accelerated School hired RootDown to train kids in their food systems/nutrition education programs to cook healthy food and build preferences and demand for fresh foods in their communities.  THEN! – the MYLA students took their new skills to teach their peers back at the College Ready Academy.  And, TAS students will use their cooking & veggie-pushing skills to run healthy food tastings where they have completed their corner store conversions, bringing more fresh foods into corner markets near the school.

Know anyone who could/should eat more veggies?!  Call us and we’ll come teach you how to make all those nasty veggies taste better!

RootDown Youth Leaders joined the L.A.U.R.A. Community Unity Peace and Resource Fair, bringing seasonal fruits and veggies to pass out with homemade salsa and ranch dressing.  We noticed we were the only people there, promoting healthy eating, who actually had healthy food to hand out!  Hmmm.  People devoured it and noticed how good the fruits and veggies, grown in season can taste.

Dos Andreas - The Elder Andreas claims he and our Andreas must be cousins!

Yuli, Celia, Kenny and Andreas cutting up the veggies!

Guests wanted to pass out the fruit for us. We couldn't keep the platter full!

Laura Baca, Diploma Project Counselor at Jefferson High invited RootDown in to remind her students how EASY making a super healthy and tasty breakfast can be.  In just a few minutes, we squeezed oranges for juice, cracked and scrambled eggs, toasted whole grain bread, and even made some TASTY granola/fruit/yogurt parfaits.  Who else wants some breakfast?!

RD Youth Leaders Yuli and Celia pick their first lettuce leaves!

Our Youth Leaders came out for their first volunteer day at the GSF/24th Street School last Saturday.  It was simply awesome to see local high school students connecting with elementary school kids (and their parents!) in a nieghborhood school garden.  Our Youth Leaders had never been in a garden nor harvested from one.  They let the 24th Street Students show them their veggie beds and in turn shared their culinary skills to make a lunch of chicken noodle soup and garden fresh salad!

Hunter and Mariela harvest our salad.

Cooking the veggies!

(Notice our new RootDown LA shirts looking stylie on Andreas, Ana and Mariella!!)

Three of RootDown LA’s Youth Leaders had their first RDLA community work experience recently – cooking a healthy lunch for volunteers at WE CAN’s neighborhood tree planting.  On January 9th, WE CAN partnered with Tree People to plant 150 fruit trees in South LA.  RootDown LA was there with fresh seasonal fruit and a white bean pasta salad whose name got too long when we tried to include all the ingredients in it.  Three kinds of kale, three herbs, red onion confit (that’s onions cooked in red wine vinegar, butter and sugar), feta and cotija cheeses, balsamic vinegar and sauteed garlic made it into the mix before we were through.

One guest was particularly thrilled we served a dish with no meat.  The white beans gave the protein the volunteers needed to stay powered through the planting day!

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!