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On a sunny afternoon in August, campers in the GIAC Preteen Green Camp completed six sessions of Play With Your Food during a heated Iron Chef battle in the Frog common house at Ecovillage. A grassroots program designed and directed by Audrey Baker, a recent Cornell University graduate, and supported by dedicated volunteers, generous non-profits and farms, and passionate community leaders, Play With Your Food allowed a diverse group of young adults to explore--through hands-on gardening, composting, cooking, a downtown harvest tour, a market day of selling specialty pesto and other garden produce, and a food market scavenger hunt--interconnections between the soil and the food they eat. Campers learned to consider environmental issues, human health, cost, and convenience as trade-offs when planning for meals.
On day one, most campers were hesitant to chop vegetables, skeptical of vegetarian food, and afraid of dirty lettuce; by the Iron Chef at Ecovillage six weeks later, however, two teams (Bayzel and Delisioso) were engaged in collaborative planning for complex meals by exercising an array of individual skills, from artwork to advertising to leadership to pizzaz. In the end, each team presented a beautiful three-course, plant-based, low-cost and creative meal to a panel of community leaders, boasting of the local, organic, and garden-grown ingredients. Many thanks to Liz Walker at Ecovillage for hosting this wildly successful event.
See this article about the event.
Funding and resource support provided by the New York Coalition for Healthy School Foods and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County.
Dequan and Mikayla prepare berries for the Delicioso team's dessert, a triple-berry crumble.
The Bayzel team's curry dish entree (sweet potato, fingerling potato, swiss chard, glazed carrots, multicolored peppers, and brown rice), garnished with fresh basil from the Play With Your Food garden, waits to be served to the judges.
The Bayzel team menu on the judges' table, placed alongside hot mint-ginger tea and the main course.
Meisha, Jocelyn, and Alexis (from left to right) serve Jemila Sequeira, Whole Community Project coordinator, and Josh Dolan, Gardens for Humanity coordinator and Master Gardener at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County.
Todd McLane, manager of West Haven Farms at EcoVillage and provider of over 20 types of organic vegetable plant starters for the Play With Your Food garden, announces Bayzel's curry dish as "Most Colorful" -- the Iron Chef battle ended as a tie, and other prizes were "Most Surprising," "Most Local," and "Best Presentation."
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