VegOut! 2014 with Recipe for Success

I'm going to mix things up again this week to tell you about an organization in Houston that is important to me.  Last week, I was telling someone about an experience I had volunteering.  Their eyebrows raised and their eyes got bigger, "You volunteer?" they asked, "That's really impressive.  How do you find the time to do it?"  I was surprised by their response.  "It's important to me, so I make the time," I explained.  In truth, one of my favorite parts of the week is the time I spend volunteering with an organization in Houston called Recipe for Success. 

Recipe for Success is a program for elementary school students that takes a seed-to-plate approach to nutrition.  Students plant seeds, tend the growing plants, harvest vegetables, fruits and herbs, and turn their harvest into nutritious dishes that they get to eat.  They learn about gardening, cooking and nutrition, all while having fun.  The goal is to instill life skills that will give these students the upper hand against childhood obesity.

Once a week, I spend two hours volunteering at a local elementary school.  I help the gardening teacher, Tommy, with the after school culinary program.  We get to teach each grade from preK-5 for three weeks on a rotating schedule.  I've had each of the groups at least twice, so by now, I know most of students in the the after school program.

There's no greater feeling than walking into the cafeteria to pick up our class for the afternoon and noticing the students' faces light up when they see me.  "Abigail!" one of the kindergartners always yells before running over to give me a hug.  The first time we met, he was picking on another student for being homesick.  I told him that there was nothing wrong with being homesick and admitted, "I miss my mommy too!" "You do?" he asked, not quite believing me.  The third grade girls excitedly ask, "Do we get to go with you today?" If I say yes, they jump up and down and fist pump a "Yes!"  If I say no, they look dejected and grab my hand or give me a hug.

Every once in awhile, I see one of our second graders who is working hard on his English skills.  He gives me the biggest smile of all of the students because once I realized that he only spoke Spanish, I brought in a list of all of the plants we had growing in the garden written in both English and Spanish.  Finally, I could give him answers instead of saying "No sé como se dice en español" when he pointed to a vegetable and asked me, "¿Y esto?"  With that list of words, he had the opportunity to get to know the garden like all of the other kids.

The way the students respond to me is how I know that Recipe for Success is making a difference in their lives.  They love going to culinary.  "Are we going to cook something today?" they ask as we walk to the classroom.  "No, today we're going out to the garden," I tell them.  They haven't quite figured out that every day that Mr. Tommy and I are there is a gardening day, not a culinary day.  "Do we get to plant something?" someone asks with excitement.  "Do we get to taste something?" a wide-eyed student wants to know.  "Can I carry the watering can?" asks one of our students who always wants to help.  "This weekend, we planted in our garden at home," another student is eager to share.

In an effort to get kids eating vegetables at home, Recipe for Success started the VegOut! campaign to challenge kids (big kids included) to eat 30 vegetables in 30 days.  At first, I thought, "piece of cake!"  We're healthy eaters and we eat vegetables every day.  If you've been following my blog, you know how I love to sneak vegetables into baked goods.  But, as I looked at the vegetable log, I realized that we definitely don't eat 30 different vegetables a given month.  Since my boyfriend does a considerable amount of the cooking, I asked him what he thought about the idea of taking the VegOut! Challenge.  "Let's do it!" he said.

At the beginning of the month, we were doing great!  We hosted a pizza night with our friends and used four different vegetables.  A few days later, we had a big salad loaded with veges, adding four new ones to our list.  A week passed and I realized that we'd only eaten one or two new vegetables.  We had onions and bell peppers in at least four dishes and zucchini in a few others.  Carrots and celery were wasted on salad instead of being used for something more delicious like soup.  The cucumber in my Greek wrap didn't count because it too had been in the salad.  I made colcanon by adding cabbage to my mashed potatoes, so it would have been double-dipping to add sauerkraut to the list.

I was starting to panic!  There was no way we'd be able to eat 10 more vegetables with just 10 days left!  I couldn't even name 10 more vegetables without cheating.  I needed to stock up, so I went to the Urban Harvest Farmers Market.  I picked up rutabaga, a daikon radish, broccoli, and a red cabbage.  What I really wanted was rhubarb (there was no rule stating that my vegetables couldn't be made into dessert).  I knew H-E-B had stocked it all winter, but wouldn't you know, they were out.  Instead, I picked up an artichoke.

With just 5 days left, I went to our local grocery store looking for 3 more vegetables to get us to 30.  I didn't look in the frozen vegetables, but in the produce section, there wasn't much left that we hadn't already eaten!  While jicama would have been a good addition to a slaw I was planning to make for fish tacos later in the week, it stunk and was oozing sap, so I decided not to get it.  There were beets, but we've had so many bad beet experiments that they have been banned in our household.  We also aren't crazy about greens (Swiss chard, collard greens, the kind of greens you eat cooked).  I selected a few baby bok choy cabbages for stir fry and grabbed a handful of green beans.  I decided to count garlic and ginger as vegetables since one is a root and the other is a bulb.

With a few days to spare, we made it to 30 vegetables!  I even had a few extras that I didn't get to add to the list: sugar snap peas from the garden at school, Chinese cabbage in a Vietnamese chicken salad, and raw green beans!  I plan to make a slaw later this week with daikon and red cabbage, so I might even get to 35 vegetables by the end of the 30 days!

The most memorable experience of this challenge was my boyfriend's response to rutabaga.  When he got home from work and opened the crisper he exclaimed, "Wow, that's a lot of vegetables!  Artichoke, turnips, rutabaga..."  I explained that what looked like a turnip was actually a daikon radish.  A few nights later, we were discussing what to have for dinner.  I asked him to boil the artichoke while I looked up recipes for rutabaga.  He looked deflated and said, "Rutabaga? Do we have to have rutabaga?"  I ladled rutabaga chipotle soup into bowls while he toasted crostinis and rubbed them with garlic.  I wish I'd made him say what we say with our students at Recipe for Success, "One, two, three!  Bon appétit, now we eat!"  I didn't have to ask him to rate the soup with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.  He promptly admitted, "This is really good."

The most unique vegetable dish I tried was avocado sorbet.  We're friends with a French couple that makes delicious food.  One night, they hosted a Mexican meal: corn chowder, mushroom and poblano tacos, and avocado sorbet.  The sorbet was incredibly creamy.  It was lemony with a hint of avocado.  "It tastes like frozen gaucamole!" someone exclaimed.  I wondered how it would taste with lime instead lemon.  I worried that it might taste even more like guacamole!

What I learned from this challenge was that we need to add more variety to our diet.  Sure, we eat a lot of vegetables, but we eat the same vegetables over and over (tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, lettuce, spinach, and cucumbers).  During squash season, we eat a lot of squash.  In the springtime, we eat a lot of asparagus.  Seasonal eating is great for many reasons, but it can be tricky to remember to add variety.  Also, spending more time in the produce section made me realized how little fruit I've been eating.  While I stocked up on veges, I grabbed a few kiwis and a mango.  I bought bananas for the first time in months.  I grabbed some small tangerines to make into an adorable little 4.5" Clementine Mousse Cheesecake.  I even bought an apple to pair with cheese, but ended up eating it raw.  It wasn't hard to add variety, but it took intention.

Thanks to Recipe for Success for encouraging healthy eating and reminding me to practice what I teach our students!  If you're interested in learning more about Recipe for Success, volunteering, or donating to the organization, please visit www.recipe4success.org.