Saturday, June 13, 2009

June 6th Workshop Review

Our latest workshop was full of yummy goodness. Sarah Poten, our presenter from Greenmarket, gave us many interesting facts about our foods. Such as:

1) The color of the chicken's feathers determines the color of the eggs. So brown eggs come from brown chickens, white eggs come from white chickens, and green eggs come from a special South American chicken with green feathers around its neck (the jury's still out on green ham).

2) Though purple and white carrots are funky finds at New York's farmers markets, they used to traditionally be the norm. Some time ago a queen (we're not sure which one) got the golden colored carrots we're used to seeing now and declared, "Let them eat gold!" And thus we now mostly see orange carrots.

3) Same for potatoes. Red and purple potatoes were upstaged by the cardboard colored variety because they were larger and easier to grow.

4) A great fact to remember when filling reusable bags at your market is that the smaller the fruit or vegetable, the more nutirents it packs per pound. Take that you big, ugly potatoes.

After talking about food, we decided to taste some. A few GAK kids braved the punch of radishes, examined the insides of red and purple potatoes, tasted spinach and chamomile and mint, and wore a few garlic sprouts as jewelry.

When it was all over, we divvied up the bounty of veggies brought in by Sarah, and everyone left with great printouts such as a 'make-your-own-menu' list and a scavenger hunt for their next trip to the market.







































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