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Mark your calendars for SOUP NIGHT, Thursday April 3rd at 5pm at the Stone House to benefit the Food Love Project’s farm education program.
Reserve your spot now in the
Food Love Project Summer Camp July 14-18 or 21-25
News
BriarPatch Helps Sierra Harvest Promote Healthy Eating in Nevada County
A long-time supporter of Sierra Harvest, BriarPatch Co-op Community Market has contributed to our organization in so many ways: Countless BriarPatch employees have given their time to volunteer for Tasting Week and work in school gardens. We have been meeting in the BriarPatch community room for over five years, starting when we were still Live Healthy Nevada County’s Food and Nutrition Action Committee, and now we share an office with the BriarPatch Community Cooking School on Zion Street.
BriarPatch has always been generous with their funding, giving us several grants from its Community Fund to support farm to school and school garden efforts as well our organization’s operating expenses, and making many in-kind donations of produce and other items from their store to support various fundraising and tasting events.
Our missions have always been closely aligned, and we can always count on BriarPatch to be vocal supporters of our educational efforts when it comes to spreading the word about healthy eating habits and the value we place on supporting local farmers and eating locally. We are so grateful for BriarPatch’s generosity, and look forward to many more years of working together to promote and support healthy eating in Nevada County.
Carrots Trump Chocolate Cake at Bell Hill Academy
Sierra Harvest FoodCorps service member teamed up with Suzanne Grass, Food Service Director at Grass Valley Child Nutrition Services, to host a carrot tasting at Bell Hill Academy – what they didn’t expect, was for kids to love carrots as much as chocolate cake.
Bell Hill is a small K-4 dual language immersion (Spanish/English) charter school serving 306 students with a free and reduced lunch rate of nearly 78%.
The plan was to serve roasted carrots, but the carrot tasting started with Suzanne and her staff creating a work around for a botched delivery from the supplier. In a burst of creativity, the too thin carrot slices were turned into carrot chips, while Suzanne rushed to the local supermarket to purchase baby carrots that could be roasted.
Suzanne and two of Suzanne’s staff, served carrot chips and roasted carrots to all eight classes at Bell Hill Academy. Students were instructed first to smell the carrots, then to taste them. Students were very receptive, about half of them saying that they liked the carrot chips the best, and half of them preferring the roasted carrots. “These are delicious!” said one student. “Would you eat these carrot chips and roasted carrots if they were in your lunch?” we asked. “Yes.” was the resounding answer.
One student thanked Suzanne for bringing chocolate cake. Confused, because chocolate cake was not on the menu, she asked, “Do you think these carrots taste as good as chocolate cake?” His answer? “Yes. Yum!”
Sierra Harvest was delighted with the kids’ reaction: “While there may only have been one student who liked the carrots as much as chocolate cake, it is definitely encouraging that many of the students said they would eat the carrots if they were in their lunch.”