Green Plate Special

Green Plate Special is looking for energetic summer interns to work with our middle school day camp programs. Gain hands-on experience in organic gardening and scratch cooking while engaging and educating youth about the farm-to-table movement. Our summer interns build skills in communication, experiential learning, community outreach, planning and organization, while working in the Green Plate Special garden and kitchen.

To learn more about Green Plate Special Summer Internships, visit our Events page.

There’s been talk, but we are making it official…

Green Plate Special has a new permanent home in 2014

Thanks To….

The Mark and Susan Torrance Foundation for generously funding the garden and for their vision and belief in the importance of garden to table education

Thistledown LLC for providing a beautiful property to Green Plate Special, as our permanent home

New Digs…yes it’s a pun

WHERE:

2115 25^th Avenue South, just behind our friends and program partners, Treehouse for Kids (seems we like corner lots)

corner of 25th Ave S & S Walker

2013 is our third and final year at the corner of Martin Luther King & East Union, the property we love so much! As of December 31^st, 2013 we will have the last bulb removed from our old location and the garlic (hopefully) in the ground at our new location

planting peas on President’s Day

The Garden comes first….Kitchen classroom is second -we need to raise capital funds for this, but we already have a building to work with! Your support is crucial! CLICK THE DONATE BUTTON TO YOUR RIGHT -right now

lovin’ the kitchen

Our current garden grew organically for 3 years with character, warmth and energy thanks to…our youth and volunteers who created it & from the community who supported and protected it

Our NEW GARDEN (and future kitchen classroom) will be a beautiful and sustainable teaching garden and urban “farm”

What will be the same?

Youth and neighborhood outreach and relationship building

Students experimenting and adding to the garden canvas

In-school, after school, summer programming

Rich and diverse curriculum based programs; tons of fun!

The current covered shelter will move with us

first carrots of 2013!

What will be different?

Big-beautiful shed & greenhouse

Bees, chickens, outdoor wood burning oven

Covered and uncovered gathering spaces, a “tranquil space” with benches and sundial

Bird baths, fruit trees, more raised beds and vertical growing opportunities

Lights, irrigation and a kitchen classroom for year-round programming

IT’S PERMANENT!  BIG DIGS!

mixed age and starting fresh

ADDITIONAL THANKS TO:

Teal Design the landscape design firm and GC for our garden

Environmental Works kitchen classroom architects, designers and permitting wizards

Madrona Company 3 year lease at our current location and the opportunity to get a great start on our mission

Treehouse for Kids helping us connect and create this new relationship. We are looking forward to FANTASTIC results!

Wood Stone Corporation for their generous donation of the wood burning oven

EVERYONE OF YOU WHO’S HELPED, ADVISED AND SUPPORTED ALONG THE WAY –you know who you are !!

Please watch this link to the Seattle Channel’s City Stream from December 6th program (channel 21):

http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3071240 (the entire show)

http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=4071241&file=1 (Green Plate Special segment)

They were so wonderful to split up the interview over 2 sessions so we could connect both the garden and kitchen classrooms for a complete focus. We were working with our great Seattle Parks’ STEP group, who are actually HS students. So we appreciate their patience as I discussed our primary MS focus during their sessions.

The photos above are from our STEP program partnership with Seattle Parks. These HS youth have been coming to us once a week since October and our last class together is coming up December 12th. They have been an interested and mature group and we will miss their energy.

We:

planted for winter (cover crops and wintering over planting)

made lots of soup and learned the knife skills of course

preserved ground cherries and made fruit syrups

created seed storage boxes for better organization for next years planting -they will leave their legacy in this way!

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A year in review….

Please consider supporting Green Plate Special as we finish up a wonderful 2nd year of growing cooking and diverse programming. We are looking to 2013 with great challenges and huge opportunities to expand and further develop our program, curriculum and the range of middle school youth we currently work with.

Because of the support we received this year, we have been able to surpass many of our program support and partnering goals. In 2011 we served 70 students and our goal for 2012 was 100 and we passed this goal last month. Next year we will have our first small group of students who sign-up to work directly with GPS instead of through one of our wonderful programming partners (we will continue working with all our partners in greater capacity next year as well).

This year, with help of private donors, family foundations, generous fundraising support and a few small corporations, we raised enough money to purchase much of the needed small equipment for our kitchen classroom (still in the Madrona Presbyterian Church) and give our garden and students the tools, seeds, soil and art needed to keep it a thriving place of education and joy. We provided programming to over 110 new youth, supplementing partner program support with donations.

Sawhorse Revolution, with their high school students, is building a covered structure on our property, enabling us to be in the garden and be more flexible with weather. This will be done by the end of the year.

We have come a long way; we have a long way to go:

We are still an all-volunteer program and this is not sustainable. Paying a small staff of 2-3 to run and oversee all areas of our organization, including creating curriculum and being part of programming, is necessary to move forward and also help to support our valuable volunteer staff and generous in-kind support (which went over $400,000 this year).

By January of 2014 GPS will need to be on new property, close enough to our current partners (middle schools and other programs) and big enough to support both a garden and the much-needed small kitchen classroom that has already been designed for us. Property with low overhead costs which will enable more of our financial support to go toward programming and our youth.

Please consider donating today or contacting us with volunteer or property support. Show your support for empowering middle school youth in our community to eat healthier and live healthier lives. Be a part of the solution to break the cycle of childhood obesity and other food related health issues. It’s FUN too!

For donations over $300 we will create a produce and preserves (made by our students) basket for you and deliver it to your home.

Click on the DONATE button to the right of the screen, or send your checks to:

Green Plate Special, 4540 45^th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 98105

BEET PKHALI

This is a Georgian recipe (the country) similar to one I used with spinach during my Pirosmani restaurant years. Jeff Konkle was a sous chef there and continues to be an amazing chef at Harvest Vine, when he’s not being our Garden Coordinator. Jeff made this last September for an Open-Garden event and it was a big hit especially among the young folks (really!)

Thinking of what is still in our garden, we thought you’d enjoy trying this recipe….

We WILL have food growing all through the winter, much of it under cloche. The greens of course will florish but we have lettuce, radish, more root vegetables (including millions of carrots…) under cloche with the hopes of winter lettuce and radish and lots of food ready for spring!

Our students just finished planting flower seeds, bulbs, and lots of cover crops. Garlic is next….

3 each        large beets, with their skins, but stemmed and washed

3/4 cup      walnuts, ground in a food processor or finely chopped

2 large       cloves garlic, minced

1/4 of 1      medium onion, minced

3 Tbsp.      cilantro, finely chopped

2 Tbsp.       fresh parsley, chopped

1/2 tsp.      ground coriander seed

Pinch          cayenne pepper, or to taste

1/4 tsp.       ground fenugreek seed

2 1/2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar, or more to taste

3 Tbsp.        water

to taste        salt

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.

2. Wrap the beets in aluminum foil and bake until tender, about 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Cool completely.

3. Peel the beets and cut into pieces.  Mince in a food processor.

4. Combine the beets with the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Mix thoroughly and season with salt.  Taste and add more vinegar, if desired. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

5. To serve, spread the pkhali in a shallow bowl and smooth the top with a spatula.  With a knife, make a pattern of diamonds in the top. Garnish with cilantro and chopped walnuts, if you wish.

Wednesday the 24th is National Food Day.

Personally I believe everyday should be thus! A focus on healthier (and tastier) eating, food justice issues, growing and cooking with families and children, foods from around the world and here at home; pretty important issues!

We will be in our temporary kitchen classroom (at Madrona Presbyterian Church) with our Garfield CC gardening STEP high school youth (Seattle Park’s teen job training group). They are working with us every Wednesday through early December to support our garden and so far have planted cover crops, flower seeds for spring and built 2 new cloche to protect our newly seeded winter and spring vegetables. A great group!

While we are playing with eggplant (grilled eggplant on grilled bread) and making Kale and Scarlet Runner Bean Soup (we just finished drying a bunch of these), Tom Douglas Restaurants will be raising funds for Green Plate Special! All day on Wednesday the 24th ALL of Tom’s restaurants will be featuring a whole grain salad (different at each place) and the proceeds for this are going to support us. This is BIG and thanks to all the great folks at TDR!

Do your part and treat yourself to one of their fantastic salads at one of the many great choices: FOOD DAY AT TD RESTAURANTS

Find out more about Food Day by clicking on it…

Check out what else the Garfield CC STEP group is doing by going to their blog….

Find other ways to support FOOD DAY around the Seattle area.

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Thank you to the Wyman Youth Trust for their generous support, just in time for our summer programming. This is the second year WYT has supported Green Plate Special and the $2000.00 donation was put to great use toward our summer programming funds (more glances at the summer coming up). It helped pay for more kitchen and garden equipment (much of which was discounted drastically or donated), notebooks and materials needed for our 6 weeks of full-days in the garden and kitchen. The new tools have made it possible to be that much more efficient with our classes as we move around from church (our temporary kitchen space) and garden.

Thank you very much!

Thanks to Sawhorse Revolution (check them on FB as their blog is not up and running yet) through the Rubicon Foundation for making us their Fall 2012 high school youth project recipient! Sawhorse is working with a group of high school students to design and build a covered gathering space in our garden, to be done by the first part of December! City of Seattle Youth Arts grant

and the Loyal Bigelow and Jedediah Dewey Foundation are making this financially possible and Coyote Central is providing shop space for hands-on lessons and prefabrication of our structure.

A little more about who Sawhorse is and what they do:

Sawhorse Revolution is an afterschool carpentry program for Seattle high school students. The program focus is on carpentry and construction skills, key areas of manual intelligence that are increasingly rare in contemporary education. Sawhorse Revolution builds upon the sturdy foundation of three youth summer construction camps held at the Rubicon Foundation’s rural Smoke Farm. Our students work with professional builders and educators to complete permanent, large-scale construction projects. Whether a tree house, a fire lookout or an artistic workbench, all of our projects support the goal of creating epic, well-designed structures with Seattle youth to promote critical thinking, practical learning and teamwork.

Sawhorse Revolution is growing quickly after several years of programming. We are focusing more energy on Seattle proper to meet local needs, encourage students to have a positive impact on the communities, and become aware of the designed spaces in their daily lives. Each after school program is supplemented by two retreats to Rubicon Foundation’s Smoke Farm space on the Stillaguamish River.  These farm weekends give counterpoint to the intensive city-based work and offer time to reflect with a small group of collaborators in a supportive natural environment.

The benefit picnic last Sunday at Lark was really lovely,  the food and the company divine! Much of the kitchen staff and a few key front folks were there along with some of their friends, who donated their time to help with this event.

Garden tables and picnic tables were set out in the back of the restaurant, turning a gravel “yard” into a festive and flower-filled garden-party. You could smell the pig roasting a mile away, but the rest of the fare was a vegetarian’s dream.

Jeff, Mancho (our new 8th-grade student-staff (he was part of our 7th grade science program last school-year) and I, were proud to harvest enough beans, tomatoes, beets, greens, onions, garlic and basil to contribute to the meal.

Over 70 generous and interesting folks were there and it was a pleasure to meet them all. Thank you for your support!

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All the way back in late June (we have had an extremely busy summer hence the months of delayed updates) Symetra Corporation came to our garden to work for 6 HOURS of one Week Of Service Day:

The Symetra Week of Service rallies employees to take part in company-sponsored volunteer projects. Every year, employees across the organization invest nearly 1,000 volunteer hours during the Week of Service — landscaping, mowing, cleaning and painting to enhance our community treasures.

Over 30 employees came to our garden between 9-4pm to do the most basic, and one of the most important, aspects of our garden maintenance needs…they weeded! They weeded EVERYTHING and kept going for 2 3-hour stints.

We enjoyed the people their conversations and their very hard and focused work! We even got support with properly placing our new summer-season porta-potty from Honey Bucket (yes this addition is a really big deal for our garden and our students).

We are so appreciative of their hard work and the tidy results!

THANK YOU SYMETRA AND THANKS TO MY OLDEST (not in age) FRIEND, CATHY BEAUCHAMP for getting GPS into Symetra’s support list and leading both sessions!

What Symetra Says:

Being a good neighbor means bringing the community together to celebrate. It means being a responsible steward of the environment. And it means making a financial commitment to help those in need. That’s how we approach corporate giving in the Seattle area, where our company is based, and in other communities across the county.