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 !!

Save the date! February 16 is the day of our first WORK PARTY of the new year. Here’s what you need to know:

MEET February 16
TIME 10:00-4:00
PLACE 2725 East Union Street, 98122, across from the Grocery Outlet at the corner of East Union and MLK

It will be great to see you, check in with what’s been happening and work side by side to spruce up and prepare for Spring.

The plan is to clean up the last of the season burlap growing, stack and remove wood, build a Pea Trellis (we have a President’s Day class that will be planting the starts they are starting from seed on Feb 1), prepare some beds for planting, cloch empty beds in order to dry them a bit and more.

GPS now has a covered gathering space so if it rains we are now “COVERED” and we also have a honey bucket on site, so no need to cross the street to the Grocery Outlet. There are plenty of spare boots, tools and extra coats. We’ll have hot coffee, water, juice and snacks.

If you can come join us, please RSVP.This really helps us so we can have enough snacks. Email us at diggit@greenplatespecial.org. We are looking forward to meeting new friends,catching up with the old ones and working together.

February 2011 Clearing the property

May 2011 Building a fence

August 2011 First summer harvest

Summer 2012 Growing proud!

Summer 2012 Our bounty!

High school carpentry students from the Sawhorse Revolution have completed our outdoor covered shelter.

Everyone worked very hard, including into the night, to complete our structure.

In addition to all the hard work, we had a chance to spend some time together with food and drink. The crew brought soup and lentil sloppy joes for lunch while GPS provided hot spiced cider for the last afternoon.The addition of this structure at the garden will allow us to be more flexible and make it easier to work with our Seattle weather conditions. In doing so, we can increase our time for gardening, learning and community.

Because of the support from Rubicon, Coyote Central, grants from the Loyal Bigelow and Jedediah Dewey Foundation and  the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture Affairs, Sawhorse Revolution made it possible for us to  create more programing and provide more hands on time in the garden.

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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For 6 weeks, in tandum with our MSEA teens, we worked with 10 youth from Summer of Service, through Seattle Parks and Recreation. With 12 6-hour sessions we were fulfilling our goal of creating a full cycle of seed to table!

In the garden, after our introduction, we went to weed/water/watch; we planted for a quick harvest (lettuce, radish, cilantro and arugula) and for fall/winter (carrots, collards, turnips, beets, greens, greens, greens) while tending, harvesting, eating and inhaling the summer crops planted by our Madrona 7th grade science class (tomatoes, sunflowers, peppers, eggplant, basil and…..greens, greens, greens…..).

Afternoons in the garden were spent making a new murals and garden art-signage. As always we prepared prepared a “picnic” or “BBQ” with lots of roasted vegetables and garden salads for snack and lunch. Of course strawberry lemonade was a huge hit too.

And in the kitchen our projects and recipes ended always in a full-scale sit-down meal with flowers gathered from the garden.  They learned to make omelets and scrambled eggs to add to our breakfast burritos with garden salsa. Our soup cook-off taught technique and the versatility of soup and the blind taste test gave eveyone the opportunity to taste without using their eyes (yes you do taste with your eyes) while using all their other senses. Breads and doughs included making pasta topped with a smooth carrot sauce with sage and our signature pizza dough for lots of vegetable toppings! In 6 weeks their knife skills were impressive and they learned to organize their work stations and perfected the concept “clean as you go” (we could all learn to do this a bit more).

The weather this year was a lovely garnish! Check out the mural on our back fence -this took weeks of planning and painting. it is ART!

Stay tuned for our fall/winter updates and thanks to all of you who patronized our farm stand on Friday, we raised over $600 and youth intern, Mancho honed his selling and money counting skills