This Saturday, 17 kids from the San Francisco community joined Executive Chef Jorge Lumbreras and Manager of Food Education for Children Hannah Schmunk in STEM Restaurant’s waterfront garden for a Healthy Kids cooking class while their parents enjoyed cocktails and nibbles on the restaurant patio. Kids were asked to find something beautiful (or tasty) in the garden and draw it and they sketched lavender flowers being pollinated by bumblebees, cucumbers growing up a trellis, juicy strawberries, vibrant nasturtium flowers, and more. The STEM team plans to create an art display of their creations at the closing of their Healthy Kids summer series for restaurant visitors to enjoy.
Next, they harvested and washed nasturtium flowers to prepare a nasturtium pesto with vegetable sticks and hand-pressed flatbreads. Chef Jorge taught the kids a simple pesto recipe using nasturtium, pumpkin seeds, parmesan cheese, olive oil, and garlic – and the kids loved it! He schooled them in safe knife handling and the kids chopped bell peppers, cucumbers, celery, and squash into sticks. Finally, each participant received a ball of dough to flatten, stretch, and brush with olive oil to cook off and dip into our nasturtium pesto.
For dessert, they made ABC pudding – the “A” for avocados, “B” for bananas, and “C” for chocolate. Chef Jorge demonstrated how to deseed an avocado and kids scooped avocados into the food processor. They added frozen and fresh bananas, cocoa powder, vanilla, and honey and blended it together to make a nutrition-packed treat – and the STEM crew even had fresh berries for topping.
To close out a truly special class, Hannah stuck a candle in one of the pudding cups and everyone sang happy birthday to Zoe, the youngest participant who was celebrating her 4th birthday.