Making Pasta and Sauce!

The Localvores Make Lasagna

By The Localvores

The Localvores served lasagna to the teachers and staff in September.  We used a lot of ingredients from our very own hoophouse that we grew over the spring and summer.  For example, we used tomatoes, peppers, and basil from our garden. Other ingredients such as flour, eggs and cheese were locally sourced.

How We Made The Lasagna

Sauce:

We started by making our homemade sauce. We harvested a ton of tomatoes of various kinds and washed, chopped and pureed them. We sautéed onions, garlic and peppers and then added our tomatoes. Then we added water, paste, basil and spices and let it cook. It tasted pretty good, but it was too watery. We added more paste and cooked some more, but it never thickened up. That’s when we realized we made an error! We messed up by not seeding and chopping the tomatoes; we had pureed them whole instead! To fix this, we used a strainer to remove all the seeds. It took a long time, but we ended up with sauce that we then boiled for hours until it reduced and thickened.

On to the noodles…

Our lasagna noodles were not store bought, but homemade! First we had to make the pasta dough. We used locally sourced flour and eggs, water and salt. Once the dough was ready, we separated it into sections. We then put those sections into our pasta roller machine and cranked the handle. This flattened the dough ball into thin sheets of pasta. We laid our sheets out to dry a bit. It took a little while and to get the noodles just right in width and thickness. It took longer to convince Mrs. Bryant, but finally after several attempts we were pleased with our results!

The Cheese Mixture:

We used really amazing locally sourced cheeses from Sunset View Creamery (our very own Nurse Niki's family creamery) and Crosswinds Farm and Creamery. We added fresh local eggs from Mr. Gardner's lovely hens and some spices and mixed it up.

Bringing it all together:

We spooned some sauce in the bottom of the pan and used the noodles we made and layered it with our cheese mixture and sauce. We repeated this 3 times and topped it all off with some mozzarella and parmesan cheese and baked it to a perfect golden brown. It smelled amazing and tasted DELICIOUS!!!

What came next:

We served our lasagna, along with a beautiful salad, garlic bread and chocolate chip cookies to our teachers and staff...and we obviously ate it too! Every great chef tastes their work! 

The Bakery on Wheels

The Bakery on Wheels

By Dill Grossi

The Localvores have been busy with bringing coffee and homemade muffins to the teachers in all 3 buildings this fall! We called our traveling cart the “Bakery on Wheels”, and our class took the Bakery on Wheels to teachers’ classrooms to deliver their muffins and coffee.



Gimmee! Coffee graciously donated a bag of ground coffee to our cause! We also made 3 kinds of muffins, banana, pumpkin and zucchini. We used the vegetables we grew in our hoophouse in our muffins!

My job was for teachers to give me the money and I was responsible for making change and putting the money in the bag. Ms. Haight and I then made a deposit to the bank.

We chose to do the Bakery on Wheels because we want to raise money to go on a dream field trip
to NYC. Our hope is that when we go to NYC we’re going to have fun, go shopping and try to take a cooking class at the Milk Bar Bakery, which was featured on our favorite show, Chef’s Table, but that costs about $2,500, so we have some fundraising to do!!

We will be doing our Bakery on Wheels every other month! Our next Bakery on Wheels is scheduled for December and will feature our homemade coffee cake!!!

Chef's Table

Chef's Table

By Jerlando Keyser

I like all the episodes of "The Chef’s Table" on Netflix. We watch it in class. Watching the show makes me happy and inspired to cook in the Locavore program!



The producer, Mr. John Henion, who is from Trumansburg, visited us and talked to us about working on the Netflix series. It was awesome that he took time to visit our classroom!

Gourdlandia Field Trip

Gourdlandia Field Trip

By PAM

This fall, our class went on a field trip! We went to the Falls Restaurant before we visited Gourdlandia. I loved the Falls Restaurant because it was so fun. The students had their own table. The adults sat at a different table. I felt free. I ate salad and steak!
  

We went to the Falls Restaurant because it was a reward for the class and a chance to eat locally and support a local business. It was really, really, really, good food!

We went to Gourdlandia in Ithaca to learn about gourds, how to grow them and what they can be used for. At  Gourlandia we got a tour of Graham Ottoson's gourds and her gift shop. We learned some interesting stuff. Here’s a fun fact, when drying gourds, they look like they are rotting, but they're actually not! Did you know you can make bowls, hats, lamps, nights lights, necklaces and more out of gourds?!?!

  

Graham also showed us all the cool things she makes with gourds, and we got to make something too! Some students made necklaces. Other students made gourd dolls.

 

I liked learning about gourds!

Trip to the Falls Tavern

Trip to Falls Tavern

By Alex Wilcox

This fall, on October 19th to be exact, The Localvores went to the Falls Tavern for some delicious lunch as our first stop on our field trip!

We earned money from making lunches for teachers. I had a burger and fries at the Falls Tavern. I love ketchup, mustard, onions, and tomatoes on my burger. Next time I might get steak like Peighton had on her salad.

After  lunch we went to Gourdlandia. I made a necklace out of a gourd!

Mulch!

Mulch

By Brittany Beatty and Isaac Ziefle

Mulch is wood chips, dirt and leaves. It is used in a garden for making planting beds. It’s also used for controlling weeds, and adding nutrients.

In the hoop house we use mulch for prepping our beds for plantings and for weed and moisture control. We use it to grow plants like kale and vegetables!

You can buy mulch like we did or you can make mulch by collecting pieces of wood chips, sticks, grass and leaves.

We use mulch in the hoophouse. We use shovels and two wheelbarrows to get the mulch where we need it. Shoveling mulch is hard work. It gives nutrients and moisture to the plants and it is good for the plants, it helps them grow.

The hoophouse helps us grow food. We cook the vegetables for the teachers but we get to try them and they are  good.

Recently we grew really tall beanstalks, but the beans didn’t grow. We grew tomatoes and made sauce, and we grew pumpkins and made muffins.

We make lots of foods with the vegetables we grow and are able to sample all the food we make...and most of the time we like them!

Baking bread with Wide Awake Bakery!

It was really fun baking bread. I had fun shaping the bread.  It was my first time. I felt calmer after I was baking bread.  I learned that you had to weigh out the bread ingredients.

--Brittany

Thank you Wide Awake Bakery for donating your time and dough to our January Localvore Lunch!