My Pyramid Salsa is a basic mixture 2, 24 ounce jars of salsa, 1 can of corn (drained and rinsed), 1 can of diced peaches (drained and rinsed), 1 can of black beans (drained and rinsed), and 1 ½ cups of cheese. Eaten with whole grain crackers, the recipe covers FOUR food groups from My Pyramid including grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, and beans.

This “recipe” is really not set in stone, rather, it is a Cooking By Looking recipe, which means, add what you like, and if it looks right to you, then it will taste good. We also encourage adding fresh seasonal ingredients such as cilantro, corn, or fruit when available.

My Pyramid Salsa has been offered in a variety of settings to many different audiences: board members, Brown Bag site leaders, Kids Cafe site leaders, ServSafe participants, and kids in our Kids Cook classes, to name a few. Across the board, the response to My Pyramid Salsa has been quite consistent: initial apprehension at first (the peaches are the source of apprehension), followed by two enthusiastic thumbs up after the tasting!

So how did the recipe go over at Whole Foods 5% Day? First, we had to replace the canned peaches with crushed pineapple, an ingredient readily available at Whole Foods stores. Nutrition Ed’s cooking demo volunteer helped assemble samples and the vote was unanimous: shoppers who sampled the recipe LOVED it!

Nutrition Education was thrilled to serve My Pyramid Salsa at Whole Foods 5% Day. This recipe represents nutrition education at CAFB: using basic ingredients in healthy and economical ways, adding fresh flare when and if you can, and eating a variety of foods from the Food Pyramid.

Cucumber Salad with Fresh Grated Coconut
Tamales World Tour Show; c. 1997, M.S. Milliken & S. Feniger

Serves 6

Kaila was our resident cucumber expert last year!

4 cucumbers, peeled, seeded and diced
3 tomatoes, cored, seeded and diced
2 carrots, peeled and grated
1 serrano chile, finely chopped
2/3 c. fresh grated coconut
1/2 c. finely chopped, lightly toasted peanuts
1/2 – 1 teaspoon sugar
1 – 2  tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Cilantro leaves for garnish

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Spoon onto individual plates.  Garnish with cilantro and serve.  This also tastes good with a dollop of strained yogurt.

Marian Peele, director of Agency Relations

 I’m growing 15 different types of herbs (all legal), cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini and lots of perennials!  So talk to JuJu or Susan, they’ll give you lots of information and inspiration for you to start your own garden.    

The Capital Area Food Bank distributes food, but it also provides education and skill-building opportunities that build community capacity to address the issues of hunger and poverty.  We just added a new program to our ranks that does just that – the DC Farm to School Network (the Network).  The Network works to connect D.C. schools with healthy, locally-grown foods to serve in their cafeteria meals. It’s a non-traditional program of the Food Bank – not about food distribution directly, but about developing the capacity for the District to nourish and educate vulnerable youth – to the tune of over 100,000 meals each day.

Farm to school programs connect local farmers with local schools so that more healthy, local foods are served in school cafeterias.  They also offer hands-on education about food, health, nutrition and the environment (in the form of school gardens, farm field trips, chef demos, and more).  Farm to school programs get kids excited about eating healthy, local foods because they look and taste better.  And we all know how important it is for kids to eat healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, especially when the District has one of the highest child obesity rates in the nation.

If we look at child poverty rates, Washington, DC has the highest of all the states. Low-income students don’t have to pay, or pay very little, for school meals because they’re subsidized by the federal government. In the District, about three out of every four students qualify for subsidized (free or reduced-price) meals.  As a result, many low-income children get their main meals each day at school.

The food bank sees school meals as an opportunity to nourish youth in the District on a large scale – many of whom are at risk of hunger.  We see school meal reform efforts as a down payment on the future of kids who will grow to inherit this city.  Learn more about what we’re doing to make farm to school programs happen in the District at www.dcfarmtoschool.org.

Do you think school nutrition and farm to school are important?  Testify at the Healthy Schools Act hearing on Friday, March 26th!  More information at www.dcfarmtoschool.org.

 The Event

Children sat coloring the food pyramid as donors, OSSE representatives, long-time volunteers, and advocacy partners from Feeding America and DC Hunger Solutions were welcomed in to the site. 

We had four speakers at our event.  Lynn spoke to the group about the importance of food and our work in the community.  I spoke to the group about the ongoing goals of Kids Cafe.  Steve Park spoke to the group about the children’s programs at Little Lights Urban Ministries and the impact that Kids Cafe will make at their site.  Daniel Nestel discussed the volunteer projects his family leads at Beth El Temple and why he finds this work so important.

After the speakers, Jeff Poch led the children in a nutrition activity talking about the food groups.  Then he and the children made guacamole and the salsa for tacos.  The children enjoyed a dinner of bean and turkey tacos with lots of veggies on whole-wheat tortillas, a side of fruit salad, triscuits, and milk and juice. 

Planning for the class was challenging because most of the nutrition education activities were sight-dependent and needed to be modified. Instead of reading nutrition labels on cans of food, we decided to have a taste-test of canned fruit and vegetables to investigate sugar and sodium levels. Instead of showing pictures of food portion sizes, our nutritionists created models using a 9-volt battery (cheese) and a deck of cards (meat). We utilized activities that employed the four other senses in order to teach the nutrition aspect of food.

The most challenging and awe-inspiring part of this class was the culinary aspect. When asking the participants why they were taking our OFL class, the majority of the responses were, “To gain some independence by learning to cook better on my own.” There were a variety of skill levels, from experienced household chefs to those who had never correctly chopped an onion. One woman who was brought in by her daughter told us, “I never liked to cook especially now that I’m losing my vision, but being with others in this class who are blind and cook for themselves makes me believe that I can do it too.”

Chef Mitch Greene, a two-time volunteer for Operation Frontline, had experience with this type of class as he had taught with the program before. One day during class, Chef Mitch decided to teach the class how to cut an onion, a seemingly impossible task. Yet the descriptive instructions created a vivid mental image for the participants which made the skill easy to pick up. It became clear that it didn’t suffice to just point something out; the vibrance of the details was equally important.

To get a better perspective on the class, the class leaders and I even tried cooking at home with our eyes closed. The experience was a bit disorienting and even terrifying but it instantly became clear why confidence in the kitchen had the power to provide greater independence. Learning to cook for oneself is a fundamental skill that should be taught to everyone, regardless of age, gender or even disability.

It doesn’t matter what skills you already have, anyone can cook. In our Columbia Lighthouse class, it was often the blind who actually had the strongest vision on life.

This post is also on the Share Our Strength No Kid Hungry blog.