Cooking with Friends

How’s everyone doing in the past two weeks? Well, I have been excited all the time ever since I heard our mac & cheese and food-sorting activity were so popular among students at Tupper’s Homework Club! Our community partner, Teri, even used “a big hit” to describe how students loved this new snack. This was extremely encouraging, as our hard work finally paid off, and all the struggling and hard moments we have experienced at the beginning were not a waste of time. If you have lost your track of what was going on, let’s have a review of who we are and what we did:

We are group 22 in LFS 350. We are a collection of UBC students with passion about cooking and eating good food. This year, we participated in CBEL program and chose to cooperate with Homework Club of Sir Charles Tupper Secondary School to promote nutrition knowledge among students. Homework club has been run for 12 years at Tupper, previously supported by Pacific Children Resources Society in the past and currently by Hillcrest Center and Little Mountain Neighborhood House. On every Tuesday and Thursday, it provides students with fruit, vegetables and hand-made snacks during after-school times. Indeed, fruit and vegetables are healthy, but always having the same things seems to a bit boring, and snacks like PB&J should be altered with something healthier. Therefore, staff at Tupper wanted some LFS students with food and nutritional knowledge to bring some new ideas about how to encourage students to consume more nutrition-condense food. They also expected us to teach and monitor volunteer students to safely handle cookware during snack preparation.

With full enthusiasm, we started our work. We had three visits to Tupper on Wednesdays, October 14^th, 21^st, and November 4^th, 2015. Chickpea salad sandwiches, Tsatsiki dip and hummus served with rice chips and vegetable chips, and mac & cheese made of whole-wheat macaroni and low-fat milk were prepared respectively. On the first visit, posters comparing nutrition values of chickpeas and peanuts were exhibited to encourage them to consume healthy sandwiches. A milk blind tasting workshop was held on our second visit, during which students tasted four types of milk (soy, goat, skim chocolate) with their label covered, chose the one they liked and were then told what they were. Food-sorting activity on the last visit let students to categorize different foods into four major food groups as defined by Canada Food Guide. Both quantitative (survey questions) and qualitative (observations and feedbacks from Tupper staff) data were collected to determine the effectiveness of our plans.

Many of our friends (college students) enjoyed eating chickpea salad sandwich because they knew it was nutritious, and its taste was not bad. So we thought it was very likely that teenage students would also give it a try after being informed of how nutritious it is. However, no one liked it, mostly due to the unpleasant flavors of mayonnaise, celery or chickpeas, as collected from their answers to survey questions. It was a quite frustrating but reasonable outcome for me, since it reminded me of one of the presentations in my FNH 250 course, which talked about eating insects. I still remember how horrible looking the cooked insects were, and no matter how the presenters stressed insects were rich in proteins and other nutrients, I didn’t dare to give a try. I guessed the students who saw the chickpea salad sandwich must have had the same feeling as me being encouraged to eat insects — NO!!!!!!

Having failed in our first try, we were a bit confused about what to do next. At that moment, we knew that we had to make sure that students would be willing to try new food, and that a balance between nutrition and flavor should be achieved. However, we were not experienced in this. Luckily, by talking with our TA and community partners, good ideas were brought out, among all of which, “starting with something that students are familiar with” was used as the priority of our further work (Teri Corcoran, personal communication, October 19, 2015). As Shulman (2005) mentioned, students are supposed to learn how to react when it comes to the situation that knowledge is limited but actions must be taken. I think we did a good job on this and learnt to see things from other people’s perspective. And not surprisingly, the next two tries were successful.

Speaking of the volunteer cooking session and workshops, the biggest impression of our community partners was the engagement of English Language Leaners (ELL). “Youth were excited to help out and challenge their classmates”, said J. Johnson, our community partner. And, Teri also mentioned “this dynamic created unique experiences to build on friendships and to take on leaderships roles in presenting the activities”. To add on these feedbacks, the two workshops not only benefited students’ social skills, but also attracted their interests in nutrition. For example, most students chose soy milk, of which some of them even had never heard, as their favorite during the milk blind tasting. Therefore, by holding such activity, students are informed with more types of milk and its alternatives and are encouraged to consume more milk products so that a higher intake of Calcium and Vitamin D can be achieved. Moreover, even though the food-sorting activity seemed to be a little childish for secondary school students, it still played a role in introducing new immigrants to Canada Food Guide and helped them to maintain a balanced diet with an approach that they might not have experienced in where they used to live.

Overall, the most useful tip about educating kids is that letting them be interested should always be the priority.

Frankly speaking, some limitations did occur and made some of our ideas fail to come true. For example, we wanted to make raw brownie balls with dates to tell students to consume less sugar, but it was crossed off from the list due to the budget issue. Also, we being not able to show up on Thursday to have a face-to-face conversation with all Homework Club students was a pity. Otherwise, students would be given deeper impression on our nutrition promotion actions, and we were also able to directly know their feelings about this project in order to make further improvements. Last but not the least, four months with only three visits is REALLY not sufficient for Homework Club to create their own food program on their own, which gives students fun nutrition/food activities and new snacks.

Therefore, we have two suggestions, one being given to our community partner and one being given to anyone who wants to promote nutrition among children. First, try to find a sponsor (or donation program) that is able to provide snack ingredients with low prices and, ideally, is willing to ship them to school so that the money is saved, and preparation time would be reduced by a lot. Second, try to interact with children as much as you can, and both of you will gain valuable experience.

Finally, I want to thank our community partner as well as LFS 350 instructors and TAs who had been so patient to us and had been always willing to help us out. I also want to thank the volunteers who have worked so hard preparing snacks and facilitating with workshops, as well as all students at Homework Club who showed excellent cooperation during this project.

It’s so hard to believe that it has come to the end of our last blog! Thank you so much for reading our stories and sharing your feelings and thought with us. There’s still a long way to go until everyone knows the importance of having a healthy diet and adequate nutrient intake. If our experience has inspired you to promote nutrition to your families and neighborhoods, this will be our biggest success.

Shirley (on behalf of group 22: Kelly, Lucy, Sharon, Ya, Vita and me)

Reference:

Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18–25. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ697350.pdf

Well, well, well. Welcome back for our fourth update!

So you want to hear about the reaction of students toward our hummus and tzatziki dip recipes and the result from the milk blindfold taste test? Keep reading until the end!

Our objective this week is to keep up to the “secret” achievement we made two weeks ago and find another snack recipe students would like and make improvement to it to become healthier.

After discussing with our community partner, macaroni and cheese with broccoli was chosen to be the recipe for this week. To make the recipe healthier, whole milk and macaroni was substituted with 1% milk and whole-wheat macaroni considering about low fat and high fibre content. The cheese in the recipe was reduced to around 2/3 of its original amount as well.                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Here is the menu we modified and used for those of you who are interested: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/broccoli_cheddar_mac_and_cheese/

There were 7 student volunteers showed up (more than what we expected) who were recruited from last homework club session. We see this as a sign of students getting more interested in finding out what we are doing. But at the same time, it added pressure on our side to accommodate more volunteers.

During this visit, we were actually allowed to use the Foods classroom to prepare our snack, which made great improvement on the facilities we had access to. Student volunteers were excited with the tasks they were assigned to and they were eager to help. Everything went smoothly with a little problem occurred along the way… Cold milk was accidentally poured into the mixture of butter and flour, making flour clump together. And the sauce was not thick enough. Hope this won’t affect the taste too much… It might be better if we can try the recipe at home before bring it to school.

For the activity, a poster was made to imitate a plate, and pictures of different foods were made for students to categorize them into the four food groups on the plate. Also, the community partner who is in charge of facilitating the activity is going to ask students which food group is missing from the macaroni and cheese recipe. An intention of this activity is for students to realize the importance of a balanced diet and become more familiar with the four food groups in the Canada’s Food Guide.

In last week’s Moment of Significant Change workshop, our group identified and discussed our group’s significant moments in our project so far. Below is the graph we made.

This “storied approach” was used for us to reflect on our objectives and expectations of the project to see if it is necessary to make any modification to our objectives or expectations.

Our group mapped out the story of our project collectively on the graph. We began our project with big thinking and ambitious goals; everything seemed to be bright and going up for us. We then met our community partner during our first session and we seemed to be on the same page. After our project proposal presentation, we found out that the big picture goals in our proposal were too ambitious and that objectives needed to be changed for it to be achievable. At the same time, we were struggling to align course goals with what community partner asked for. As the proposal report and first visit passed neutrally, the result of the first visit came out not as good as what we expected. We found that there were a lot of misunderstanding between our community partner and us. We were going downhill again. But after the disappointment, we actively asked for feedbacks and help from our community partner and TA in order to make improvements for the following visits. Fortunately, a lot of useful suggestions were provided, which gave us clearer understanding of our project, and the second visit was successful.

By looking at our storyline, it reminds me of myself coming alone to Canada six years ago. I had ambitious goals and imagined a bright future before arriving. I encountered many struggles and downhills later as I faced the reality. But learning occurs when there is a certain amount of anxiety and risk existed (Shulman. 2005). I learnt from experience and quickly adapted to the new environment. This is also the projection to our project.

To approach the graceful dismount, our group adapt and listen to what our community partner needs and what students want and like. We are adding nutritional aspects to the snacks students usually have instead of sticking with the original plan of throwing something that is nutritious but completely new to students. We agree on our TA’s suggestion to incorporate some ideas from our community partner, as they understand the students’ preferences much better than us through their daily work experience.

So I heard you want to hear about the results from two weeks ago. Here are the comments made by our community partner, “nearly every person tried most of the milks and tried the hummus and tzatziki with vegetables and pita breads to dip. There were almost no left overs!!” (J. Johnson, personal communication, October 26, 2015). The snacks were a hit. As for the milk blindfold taste test, “students were the most curious about the goat milk, as many of them had never tried it. Most of the students picked Soy milk as their favorite and that was a surprise to some of the adults/volunteers” (J. Johnson, personal communication, October 26, 2015).

if you feel like sharing your moment of significant change or any thoughts about our homework club project, you are extremely welcome to leave your comment below.

Next posting will be our group’s last posting, please check back and say farewell to us! See you in a month!

Ya Gao (on behalf of group 22: Kelly, Lucy, Sharon, Shirley, Vita and me)

Reference:

Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18–25. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ697350.pdf

Hi everyone, I’m glad that you come back to check our third post!!!!

Are you curious about how to make high school students like chickpeas?

Here is what we did; we made hummus dip!!!

Our objective this week was to get an idea of what students like for snacks from the first survey and make an improved snack recipe with healthier alternatives. However, when we went to pick up the surveys this Monday, the feedback was not what we expected.Our community partner said that the kids found it overwhelming to have surveys that were short answer questions because a lot of them just wrote “I don’t know” and so there was no clear answer or opinion for our group to use. Moreover, many students don’t like chickpeas and refuse to try them, which resulted in a lot of leftovers.

To be honest, we did feel a little disappointed because the recipe that we provided did not satisfy the students Tupper. The good thing is, this experience makes us to think more about the reality. The students at Tupper don’t have as much nutritional knowledge as we do. The teachers there are not LFS graduates. It is unrealistic to make them suddenly start to eat healthy and nutritious food according to our standards. Therefore, we decided to make some changes from our original plan and adapt some ideas for the homework club leaders because they understand the students’ preferences much better than us.

This reminds me about Dan Barber’s story from the podcast (452: Poultry Slam 2011). Adapting a new method into the environment takes time. And there will be a lot of unexpected challenges throughout the process. For Dan Barber, it took him 3 years trying to adapt the new method to raise his geese and it still has not succeed every time. For us, we only have 4 sessions in total to help the school to take in this healthy eating idea. It is normal to experience some difficulties because we learn the most from our challenges. The key to success is to learn and adapt.

Therefore, on Wednesday’s session, our group made hummus dip with chickpeas and tahini (so that we could use up the chickpea leftovers from last week) and tzatziki dip with yogurt and dill. For chips, we bought veggie and rice chips for students to try different chip alternatives.
For those who were interested in the dip recipes, here’s are the links: http://www.inspiredtaste.net/15938/easy-and-smooth-hummus-recipe/

http://natashaskitchen.com/2013/10/10/tzatziki-sauce-recipe/

There were 5 student volunteers and a community worker who came to help us chop vegetables, measure and mix the ingredients. Students were hesitant to try the new dips at first, but because they tasted the dips with a familiar food like chips, and because they were involved in the cooking process, they were more comfortable in trying a new food!

We also took an idea from the Tupper community team to plan a “blindfold taste test” activity, which will be held on Thursday. The teacher will handout different milk samples (skim, 2%, goats, soy and almond) to students and ask simple questions like how many different kinds of milk have you tried? What kind of milk is you favorite? At the end of the activity, they will count up the total preferences for each kind of milk and determine preference % to see if any students are surprised by their picks. A simple questionnaire will be given out just as last time, but with short answer questions substituted by yes/no/neutral questions.

The 3rd visit to Tupper went really well. The ingredients only cost $40, which is perfectly under the $60 budget. The volunteers who came to help us seem to like our recipe and we hope the kids from homework club will like it too. The grocery shopping took quite a lot of time even with one person driving. Unfortunately, we won’t get anyone to drive on our next visit. Our community partners’ suggestion about this is to email them in advance to confirm the recipe and maybe other activities beforehand so our group can shop for foods before we arrive. We plan to pick up the surveys from homework club by next Monday and use the results to improve our next recipe. Some of our recipe ideas for the next session are english muffin pizza, pita and sauce, cheese and vege…….

If you got any ideas about tasty, healthy, inexpensive snack recipes, please feel free to leave us a comment. We are looking forward to see your ideas!!!!!!

References

Interview. Audio Blog Post. 452: Poultry Slam 2011. N.p., 2 Dec. 2011. Web. 22 Oct. 2015. Retrieved from http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radioarchives/episode/452/poultry-slam-2011?act=3#play
–Sharon Wang (on behalf of group 22: Shirley, Lucy, Vita, Sharon, Ya and Kelly)