FoodPrints DC

🍎 Autumn is apple season and our students are busy turning locally grown apples into applesauce.

🎶 This hands-on cooking experience brings young students so much joy, we overhear them singing original hits, including “Applesauce” by this Pre-K3 student at Amidon Bowen ES.

Homemade Applesauce recipe below... Easy and delicious, 100% recommend trying at home:
Serves 9:
🍎 Ingredients:
-5 lb. apples
-2½ cups water
-1 cinnamon stick (optional)
Optional:
lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon stick or ground

🍎 Directions:
1) Start by washing the apples. If working without a food mill then peel and core the apples. Otherwise, the entire apple can be used.
2) Cut the apples into bite-sized pieces.
3) Place the apples in a large pot with water and optional cinnamon stick. Bring to a boil and stir well.
4) Adjust the heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until the apples are very tender and starting to fall apart, about 45 minutes. Allow to cool until just warm.
5) If you did not peel the apples, put the apples through a food mill or use the back of a spoon to stir/press them through the holes of a strainer. (If you used red apples, the skins will have turned your applesauce pink!)
6) If you peeled the apples, you can pour the cooked apples into a bowl and mash with forks, spoons or a potato masher.
7) Taste, and if you would like, add a little lemon juice, sugar, and/or cinnamon.

✏️ Our incredible staff is SO ready for the school year!

🥬 Our team can’t wait to GROW COOK EAT and LEARN with you!

👋 See someone at your school in a FoodPrints t-shirt?! Say hi! Ask them what they do! Every one of our teachers is amazing, unique, energetic, and thoughtful in the work they do. They are darn good cooks and gardeners, too!

🥕 Happy First Day of School to all our FoodPrints kids!

🥕 We are so excited to learn alongside you and make discoveries together in our gardens planting seeds and in our kitchens cooking delicious recipes!

There are seeds everywhere, let’s explore how they move! 🌰 🌼

Can you look around your neighborhood for seeds? They come in all shapes and sizes and often do not stay in one place...How do you think they travel?

Miner Elementary students show us that some seeds stick to clothes, others fly through the wind, and some kinds even burst.

Explore your neighborhood and see what seeds you can find! 🌰 🌼

Happy Earth Day! 🌍 ☀️ 🌿

There are many ways you can celebrate Earth Day & Month in your classroom or at home. One of our favorite celebrations comes from lesson, “Taking Care of the Planet.”

🌍 Begin by reviewing the 5Rs (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot), and then have students work in small groups to create 1-2 minute skits to teach their community about one of the 5Rs.

🌍 Provide students with props (recyclable and reusable materials like cardboard boxes, plastic bottles, and milk cartons) that help spark ideas and inspire excitement for performing!

🌍 Be sure to set aside enough time for your students to perform their skit for you.

Full “Taking Care of the Planet” lesson in bio.

Our FoodPrints students stole the show at last week’s Food is Medicine Summit!

FRESHFARM FoodPrints was a featured participant in the first-ever Food Is Medicine Summit in Washington, DC on January 31st. With more than 300 attendees, a variety of stakeholders in the Food is Medicine space discussed policy and practice needed at the intersection of food and health.

We were invited to showcase our innovative approach to utilizing teaching kitchens and school gardens in public schools to provide positive experiences with nutritious food to children – and why food education is a key component of successful Food Is Medicine programs.

The 5th grade FoodPrints students who joined us at the Summit said it best:

🥕”Carrots - they’re just the best! They’re very sweet, which you would not expect from something you pulled out of the ground. … That’s what FoodPrints does: It helps you learn how to be more curious when it comes to food.” - Finn

🥬”I don’t know about you, but I didn’t like kale. So when I went to FoodPrints, and we made kale salad, I thought, oh no, I’m never going to like that. But when I tried it, I liked it - it was so delicious! FoodPrints inspires people to like foods or try new foods. It also teaches kids when they grow up to eat healthy and make meals from scratch.’ - Maya

Prescribing healthy food to manage chronic conditions is powerful - but it only works if we have positive exposure to nutritious food that leads to increased consumption of that food.

Head to the link in bio to watch our students teach Members of Congress how to make a FoodPrints favorite - Tuscan Kale salad.

Thank you Amanda Gomez & / for spotlighting our food education program where kids say “I’ll eat anything in FoodPrints!” Third graders at Francis Stevens Elementary are the heart of the story:

🥬 Ekan went from not liking tomatoes to enjoying the Kitchen Sink Salad garnished with cherry tomatoes.

🥬 Zendaya learned leaves “give the plant food” through photosynthesis.

🥬 Graham refers to kale as his favorite “superfood.”

The host tells listeners that FoodPrints is responding to the problems of diet-related disease and food-access gaps in many parts of DC. But a lack of dedicated funding makes sustaining the program for students like Ekan, Senhaya, and Graham a big challenge.

“We need to fund the food teachers in our public schools,” notes FRESHFARM education director Jenn Mampara, so that programming like FoodPrints is available in DC and nationally!

Read and listen to the full story here:

https://dcist.com/story/23/10/24/ill-eat-anything-we-make-in-foodprints-these-dc-kids-grow-harvest-and-cook-fruits-and-vegetables-at-school/

🥕 FoodPrints on NPR! 🥕

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We were thrilled to be featured by in a story that highlights how the FoodPrints program weaves food & cooking into the curriculum. October may be Farm to School Month, but every day in FoodPrints classes, our students grow, harvest, cook, and eat local food in our school gardens and kitchen classrooms.

Listen to the full story!
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/10/09/1204077086/can-cooking-and-gardening-at-school-inspire-better-nutrition-ask-these-kids

In the story,
🥕 and endorse our approach to nutrition education against the backdrop of high rates of diet-related disease.
🥕A student (in a lesson on whole grains) says: "I've learned whole wheat has more nutrition, because it has the germ and the outer layer," as he rolls out the dough for homemade crackers.
🥕A parent says: “Our family has tried new things because of the program.”
🥕.aubrey tells us: “Teaching nutrition without a kitchen is a bit like swimming lessons without a pool,” nodding to the kitchen classrooms that FoodPrints helps establish in our partner schools

Host Allison Aubrey sums it up this way: “The hope is that integrating nutrition and cooking into a school program will give kids the skills and inspiration to eat well.” We are doing just that: inspiring 7,600 students across 21 schools in Washington, DC, this school year!

We are expanding the reach of our FoodPrints Curriculum into Maryland!🍎🥕🍉

The Key School in Annapolis, MD, has started using the curriculum! We are excited by how this partnership expands our unique interdisciplinary program into Maryland – demonstrating how schools outside of DC are using our curriculum.

At the , first grade students launched FoodPrints with the Edible Plant Parts lesson, where they read Plant Secrets by Emily Goodman, then classified edible plant parts and chopped peppers, garlic, onions and tomatoes to prepare fresh salsa.

They shared: “We are excited about this powerful collaboration with FoodPrints and our Library and Maker Tech Programs. Soon, students will be using our new Lower School Garden to ."

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FoodPrints students loved visiting DC Central Kitchen this summer! Read about our trip below. 🥬🥕

🍁🍎🍂 Back To School Night!🍁 🍎🍂

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Our teachers greeted their school communities over the past few weeks, renewing and making new connections with students and families.

Many brought fresh produce from local FRESHFARM farmers to share with teachers and families, along with information about finding FRESHFARM markets and food access resources. As we enter a new season, FoodPrints teachers continue to directly connect local produce and resources to DCPS communities!

Happy Harvest season!

FRESHFARM market schedule in bio.