Edible Schoolyard NYC

Kicking off the week with some green eggs and jam made by some of our Brooklyn Garden students!🍳🥬

It might be chilly but our leafy greens and peppers are still growing strong 🥬🫑🌱

Getting our sweet fix with these orange cranberry oatmeal cookies made by our students at Brighter Choice Community School!

Join us in making an Edible Education accessible to more NYC children this Giving Tuesday! Donating to Edible Schoolyard NYC allows us to provide hands-on cooking and gardening classes, family nights with delicious recipes, and so much more. Thanks to a generous supporter and friend, all gifts will be matched. Head to the link in our bio to become an Edible Education Champion Today!

This harvest season, we are especially grateful to our students, families, volunteers, staff, and supporters.

Thank you for being part of the ESYNYC community!

Food distribution is a big and important part of what we do at ESYNYC. It is a great opportunity to support our school communities and share delicious and fresh produce!

This week the team at PS/MS 7 in Harlem pack and and distributed to 200 Harvest Bags to school community members.
Each bag contained the recipe and ingredients for a veggie roast 🥦🧄🥕🥔🍠🧅

Yesterday some amazing members of our team got to work in the garden. Swipe to see the finished product - the new benches and tables that will be used students at PS 109!

Sustainability Club at Brighter Choice Community School in Brooklyn is all about cooking plant based. Students and their families has so much fun during virtual family cooking night where this month’s recipe was roasted potatoes!

Volunteer Opportunity!

Volunteers are needed on November 17-this Thursday!

We are looking for up to 15 volunteers to come help us out with a last minute
garden build project in our garden at PS. 109 in the Bronx!

If you love to work outside, want to help give back to your community, and are comfortable assembling furniture (IKEA level), we would love for you to join us! We also have some gardening work to do before the first frost sets in at the end of this week.

The workday is from 10:30am-3:30pm, and includes a free lunch and snacks!
Even if you can't join for the entire day, we would love your help.

If you sign up, more event logistics will be sent to your email prior to the event.

To sign up, please head to our Eventbrite page to hold your place. (Link in bio)

Volunteer slots will be filled on a first come, first served basis.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/edible-schoolyard-nyc-garden-build-day-ps-109-tickets-468477949157

Happy Native American Heritage Month! In honor of this month we are showing some of the Blue Corn grown by our Food Corps Service Member Ms. Neida. 🌽

A little about this Blue Corn…Ms. Neida is Hopi and Diné and was gifted Blue Corn from her family who lives on the Hopi Reservation. This corn is normally grown through a dry farming technique Hopis have been doing for more than 20,000 years. Given the environmental differences of Arizona and New York, the Blue Corn didn’t come out as she was expecting but it was a challenge Ms. Neida took on to be able to share her culture with the students and community at BGES.

*last picture is a page from the “Becoming Hopi Magazine” a publication of the Hopi cultural preservation office

There’s nothing better than a yummy snack in the garden on a beautiful fall day 😇🍂 our students are amazing to the core!🍎

Happy Halloween! We hope you all have a spooktacular👻 day filled with all your favorite yummy treats!!🎃🍬🦇

It’s ! Carolyn is the newest educator at and service member.

ABOUT
Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, Carolyn is an avid hiker and steward of environmental justice with an emphasis in supporting accessible foodways. She is a graduate of Culinary Institute of America where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Food Studies. When not serving with FoodCorps, Carolyn enjoys cooking for family and friends!
FAVORITE COOKBOOK
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

Glamour shot of the last of the sugar snap peas. We’re going to miss all the beautiful summer veg but we are excited about fall produce, like squash, apples and hardy greens!

Is there anything more beautiful than a 💐 of collard greens!? Garden manager Jackie doesn’t think so. These delicious and nutritious hardy greens are grown in many of our school gardens all across the city. What’s your favorite way to eat collards?

We are working to provide Edible Education to NYC public school students all across the city. Edible Education includes hands on cooking and gardening classes during the school day. Our students love these opportunities to explore learning in a different way! At the kids got to cook elote with service member Ms. Carolyn. Eat up!

Happy ! Students at had a collards tasting! Collards we’re cooked down with garlic and onions with a squeeze of lemon juice at the very end. It was a huge hit with the kids!

It’s an Wednesday at ! Their brood of chickens lays fresh eggs almost every day in the warm weather. They’re a favorite of students and families alike in the community, so popular we have to raffle them off because we don’t have enough! What’s your favorite way to prepare 🥚?

Soaking up these beautiful fall days with scavenger hunts in the garden, like at . Kiddos get to run all over the garden searching the different beds for prompts that they answer and share with one another. What’s your favorite question?

Nothing brightens up a dreary day like elote! At PS 311 in the Bronx, Ms. Carolyn prepared it with students to maximize the very end of the summer 🌽 and celebrate . This dish is a riff on elote, which is traditionally grilled and sold on the street in Mexico.

There’s no question that fall has arrived! At Ms. Neida hosted an apple picking event from preK and 3k students. There was a five senses station where kids looked at different types of apples, smelled cinnamon sticks, touched apples, heard the crunch of an apple and tasted three different types of apple! When the event ended everyone got to take home an applesauce kit to make at home 🍎.

We can’t think of a better way to close out the first month of than building a beautiful new shed for the garden at with friends, supports and parents. We had a blast and can’t wait for our next volunteer day.

We had a great time showing and First Partner of California around in East Harlem, where we have been partnering with the school since 2013. It's always inspiring to see how other friends, supporters and champions of Edible Education are working to bring this work to life in their own neighborhoods, cities and states.

One awesome thing about proving students with an Edible Education is that our classes help to bolster and reinforce other skills and lessons they are already learning in school, like math, science and language. Learning to make pizza is a great way to also teach kids about fractions, be it while measuring ingredients, or cutting up slices to share with friends! #🍕

Edible Education is hands on gardening and kitchen education, and so much more! Educator Raili was so pumped to welcome students back this September and wish them a “grape” 🍇 year she hosted a special tasting in the cafeteria at .

It’s and one of our favorite ways to celebrate is to make a delicious recipe, like pupusas. A pupusa is a traditional dish that people eat in El Salvador. It looks like a tortilla but it is stuffed with beans, cheese, or both. They are usually eaten with a delicious cabbage slaw! Thank you to Mercedes, grandmother of one of our students at for introducing us to this recipe at our community festivals!

We had an amazing time with our friends from ! This mighty team helped us break down old beds and complete the last three recycled lumber beds needed to update the garden terrace at . We had a blast with them and are grateful for all their hard work!

Join our team! Edible Schoolyard NYC is searching for new team members as we embark on an exciting Strategic Plan. Review the following opportunities at the link in bio and keep a lookout for a few more in the future.

Garden manager Mirem shares a reflection with us on the power and importance of Edible Education. “Food connects to everything, and everyone through the cycle of composting, and planting, and harvesting and eating, they can start to understand the idea of interconnectedness. So when you’re in the garden, you are very much a part of a community of organisms. Our students are able to see themselves as part of that community."

It’s not just kids, family and school staff who are gearing back up for the school year. Don’t forget our bug friends!!! Bugs are definitely one of our students favorite subjects and part of a healthy world and garden ecosystem. Do you have a favorite insect 🐜 🕷 🐞?

The first day of the school year has arrived and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome students, teachers and families back! We’re gearing up for a fun and educational year and are looking forward to sharing more of our work with all of you!

We will never, ever get sick of fruit and veggie glamour shots. Shout out to our amazing team of garden professionals, educators and volunteers who keep our gardens going over the summer so they can produce and harvest these gorgeous and delicious 🍉 and 🥕.

The team that builds together, stays together! The last two weeks our entire time has come together to prep and plan for our new year (just a week away!) including working in the gardens to build and fill new beds waiting for students to arrive and fill them with seeds and plants.

Nothing brings a smile to educator Hannah’s face like freshly harvested produce! They have an epic haul of bitter melon today. Bitter melon is grown and eaten all over the world, including Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. What’s your favorite way to prepare this beloved but divisive veggie?

Another day, another opportunity to be blown away by the amazing bounty of summer produce coming out of our gardens including jalapeños, heaps of basil, tomatillos and of course, that summer classic, the tomato 🍅.

from our gardens this week!

It’s been a wonderful growing season this summer. We’ve harvested all kinds of delicious fruits and vegetables from our gardens the last few months, including these adorable potatoes. When school is out we donate our produce to community members and local food pantries. #🥔

With August nearing its close, we’re taking a few more weeks to celebrate some of our favorite summer time veggies, like these GIGANTIC zucchini we harvested from the garden at .

Wishing everyone a *peachy* Friday!