Is it a bird? A plane? Nope. GW students making Superhero Smoothies
29 Sep
This week in cooking class at George Watts Montessori, students made “Superhero Salads” and “Superhero Smoothies.” Each had all the nutrients you need in a day. For the smoothies, the surprise ingredients were spinach and basil. Here’s what a class looked like.
Oh, one thing first — thanks to all the fabulous volunteers who turned out this week and who signed up for future weeks. None of this would work without the volunteers! OK, now for the photos…
Nutritionist Becca Wright preps parent Mollie Flowe and DPS school board member Heidi Carter to volunteer with cooking class.
Ms. Wright starts class by talking about healthy foods
First, kids read the recipe.
Then they measure out ingredients.
Combine ingredients.
And mix!
In this recipe, we used fresh basil from the Edible Garden.
The result was a slightly brownish smoothie with colorful flecks.
You can see it a little better here.
Who would've thought a spinach-filled smoothie would taste so good?
If you’d like to make it at home, the recipe is essentially this one. The only difference is the addition of fresh basil leaves.
My students LOVED the smoothies and Mrs. Wright did an awesome job of organizing volunteers to help make sure everything went smoothly.
When I was plugging in the blender for the smoothies I asked one of those teacher questions and I was sure my students would know the answer…turns out I was wrong. I asked, “do you know why you NEVER put your hand in a blender?” The group just looked at me so I said, “because there are very sharp blades in there.” I tilted the blender and pointed inside. One student replied, “ooooh, I didn’t know that I thought there was just a thingy that crushed or squeezed stuff.” Cooking is exposing the students to so much more than food but vocabulary and relevant life experiences.
So true! I discovered with one classroom that no one had any idea how to use a can opener (to open the black beans). I’d expected them to need a little help with dicing an onion or figuring out how to get 1/8 tsp from their 1/4 tsp. measuring spoon. But the can opener? Unexpected.