Lunch! Fun for the Whole Family

One of the historic components of All Peoples Kids Working to Succeed program has been the bag lunch.  At the end of a morning of KWTS work in the garden, student participants, youth leaders and adult teachers would gather in the church basement or on the church steps and eat lunch together.  Each participant would receive a bag lunch, lovingly prepared by folks from one of All Peoples' partner churches.  At the height of the summer, 30 to 40 kids, youth and adults would eat lunch together, 3 days per week, for 8-10 weeks.  

Yes, that's a lot of lunches, and you might be thinking:  what a daunting task to make and deliver all of those lunches!  However, when many hands from many families from many partner communities each made lunches for a day or two, the bag lunch program was very manageable.  The biggest challenge has always been refrigerator space at the church!

Welcome to the summer of Covid-19, when the Kids Working to Succeed program has been completely re-imagined, including the lunches.  Students participate 3 days per week, with online and home activities and one day per week in the garden.  Recognizing that families depend on KWTS lunches as a source of summer nutrition for their children, program leaders designed a way for families to have 3 lunches per week at home as part of the program.  Each Monday, students come to the church with their grown-up to pick up their KWTS supplies for the online and home activities as well as their Grocery Bag Lunches.

Grocery Bag Lunches consist of provisions for lunch for a family of 5 for 3 days per week.   This summer, there are 12 families with kids in the KWTS program.  At first, partner churches were skeptical about this new lunch model.  Grocery shopping for 12 families for 3 days of lunches for 5 people - that's 180 lunches!  However, if you think about making lunch for 3 days for your family of 5 and needing to grocery shop for that times 12, maybe it doesn't seem quite so daunting.  

Well, with just a little encouragement, the partners accepted the challenge.  Hopefully, they are feeling positive about Grocery Bag Lunches on their end, because by mid-summer, All Peoples is claiming Grocery Bag Lunch a success!  In fact, here are some messages which have come in from KWTS families:

[We received] the best lunches today, 3 bags of food separated into 3 categories, spaghetti and meatballs lunch, sub sandwich lunch, and hot dog lunches with ALL the fixings.  These actually brought tears to my eyes because all of our kids go home with this fabulous stuff!!  Not just a basic bag lunch.  It even excites [my husband].

My son feels proud to bring these lunches home for the family.

These lunches are making something new happen for us.  We are actually making lunch and eating it together.  I like this family time better than the old way.

Partners have been impressively creative, have baked dozens and dozens of homemade cookies, have packed groceries in re-useable bags - it is beautiful!  The love that goes into shopping and organizing is very apparent to the families.

From a logistics perspective, the Grocery Bag Lunch program has been very easy to manage.  If a family has transportation challenges, delivering the Grocery bags to their  home as a porch drop on Monday has worked well.  Keeping the items in bulk packaging has eliminated the trash problem that has sometimes been an issue around the church.  

Maybe you are wondering why Grocery Bag Lunches are a topic in the Harvest Hands Blog.  All Peoples grows food as part of an overall commitment to food justice ministry and increasing food security for families that struggle to put daily bread on the table.  Grocery bag lunches are literally helping our kids to grow as they grow food for their community.  This story is one way in which All Peoples can highlight the ways in which many hands are coming together to do this food justice work and to say thank you.

KWTS small group working in the garden

 

Kohlrabi - It looks like an Alien

If you grew up in Wisconsin, you probably grew up eating raw kohlrabi.  In my home, we had kohlrabi slices next to our sandwiches instead of potato chips (and as kids, we were not too happy about that).

Yet, if you grew up with this vegetable and you have not had it for a while, you might find a taste of it will bring back fond memories.  It does make a great snack, and the new juicier, tender varieties taste better than you will remember.

Kohlrabi (pronounce it like coal-robby) is in the family of vegetables that includes turnips, rutabaga, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, broccoli and cauliflower.   These vegetables mostly were grown in Europe and then later brought to the Americas.  Kohlrabi is popular in the US with families of German heritage.  Even the name is German:  Khol for cabbage and Rabi for turnip.  

Wisconsin's cooler climate is very similar to the climate in Germany, and kohlrabi grows really well here.  The plant looks pretty weird as it grows.  The leaves are light green, and are good to cook and eat just like you would cook collard greens or kale.  The bulb part grows above the soil, and is actually part of the stem.  It can be white-ish, light green and even purple.  No matter the color of the stems or the bulb on the outside, the inside of the kohlrabi bulb is bright white.  

Small kohlrabi bulb growing in the All Peoples
Darius Simmons Community Garden

If you are growing kohlrabi, don't let it get too big!  Most varieties of kohrabi get tough or "woody" (hard to chew, like if you were trying to chew wood) if the bulb gets too big.  When the bulb is about the size of a baseball, it is just right for picking.  A softball size kohlrabi will be too big and tough to eat.

When it is ready, you can harvest the kohlrabi by picking the plant right up out of the soil.  Cut off the leaves and wash them.  Cut them up and prepare them just like you would any kind of green.

The top of the kohlrabi bulb

The bottom or root side of the kohlrabi bulb

The bulb is prepared by peeling it.  Like rutabaga, kohlrabi has a waxy outside skin and an inner tough skin.  You need peel off the skin in order to eat kohlrabi raw or to cook it.  

Cut a thin slice to cut the top off

The root side can be tough, find the place
where it is tender and cut it off

Inside, the flesh is white and juicy

Use a sharp knife to carefully peel away the waxy outer
and green inner skin. 

Once the kohlrabi is peeled, you can cut it up however you like.

Raw kohlrabi is good to eat in slices, chopped or shredded on salads.  It is also a good vegetable to serve with dip or hummus.  

Thin slices or strips of kohlrabi are very good as a substitute for bamboo shoots in Chinese dishes or as a nice crunchy addition to any stir fry.

So if you come on over to the All Peoples garden and you see these weird green or purple balls with leaves growing out of them, you have found the kohlrabi.  They do look a little bit like garden aliens.  Usually kohlrabi are ready to harvest in early to mid-July.  Maybe you will get lucky and can find some freshly harvested kohlrabi on the garden stand so you can take it home and try it.

Plant Diaries: Early Summer Photo Album

The All Peoples Porch Pots and Partner Plots ministry has taken the Community Garden out into the community - way out!  Peeps Plants are growing up in their new homes on porches, in raised beds, in church gardens and home gardens, across a 3-county area.  Here are a few photos that the plants have sent us (with a little help from their caretakers) so we can see how much they've grown!

Oh Baby!  This little cucumber plant made the journey out to 
Waukesha County and is already producing fruits!  Congratulations!

Here's a message from the cucumber plant in this Waukesha County partner
porch garden:  "The tomato plants were complaining because I was
creeping around near them.  Then I felt like I was going over the edge! 
Luckily my caretaker moved me so my baby cukes won't fall to the ground
and I can crawl around as much as I please!"

And here's a message from the tomato plants in that same porch garden:
"Thank goodness that pesky cucumber plant is no longer crowding
us.  It is SO hot out here, but as long as we get the water we
need each day, we love it!  Our caretaker is doing a good job of
giving us a consistent amount of water each day so that we don't 
get yellow spots on our leaves."

We got this message from 3 happy Peeps Plants:  "Check out the 
lovely couple that takes care of us in their partner plot!  They put us
into these big buckets and we are so comfy and have room for our 
roots to grow!  Pretty soon we will give them what they
need to make salsa."

Our friends out in Rubicon made a cool logo for their 
Partner Plot program.  Many of the church members there
have big gardens and even farms!  This is their first year
of partnering up with All Peoples.

One family started a Partner Plot
near the picnic table in their yard.

Another family has a great big garden.  Can you see the
little Partner Plot sign in the garden?

Here's another friend with a Partner Plot which is growing
yummy veggies to share with All Peoples families.

The next time you visit the All Peoples Darius Simmons
Community Garden, you can look for the All Peoples &
St. Olaf Partner Plot sign!  It was a gift from our friends
at our new partner church.

Our friends from St. Olaf noticed that the strawberry farms
in their area had a lot of extra berries on the vines.  They
braved the warm weather to glean the fields so that families
in the All Peoples neighborhood can have fresh, picked strawberries!
Produce from the St. Olaf Partner Plots is usually delivered on Wednesdays
to the All Peoples Free Produce Stand in the community garden.

We hope you are enjoying the photos and the news from the Porch Pots and Partner Plots!!  Thanks to the photographers and communicators who are sharing their stories with us.  

Keep growing, Peeps Plants!!