At our elementary school’s recent fungi festival, I wedged my knees under a kid-sized table in the “restaurant” section. Fifth-grader Ben was the host, dishing up mushroom soup and sautéed shiitake mushrooms. On either side of me sat 6-year-old girls, ready to give them a try. Several more kids filled the rest of the table, busily talking and holding their spoons ready. I had never seen children so excited to taste a mushroom.
On my right, Hannah, asked for “just one, because I don’t know.” Relieved to see a skeptic, I watched the tasters, expecting to see some grimaces as the buttery-slippery mushrooms hit their tongues. Not one kid at the table spit out their mushrooms. In fact, both girls asked for huge seconds and quickly shoveled in more mushrooms. One boy quietly said no thanks to more but proceeded to tell me the differences between shiitake mushrooms and those button mushrooms we see most often. And, did I know that you can eat some puffballs but others are poisonous?
There was no hypnotist or sweet enticement to get these children to eat a frequently shunned food. They chose to eat these mushrooms. How did this happen?
Fourth- and fifth-graders from the Prairie Creek Community School hosted the festival, a culmination of weeks of fungi study that had sprung from a walk in the woods. At Prairie Creek, the kids often pursue topics that they discover and find interesting. When mushrooms caught their collective eye, they dove in, researching mushrooms on the Internet, photographing mushrooms in nature, interviewing experts, and growing shiitake mushrooms in the classroom. Divided into small groups, the students then created posters, models, and other presentations to share their new knowledge with their classmates. The result: a fungi festival complete with mushroom tasting and a room full of kids feeling connected to and invested in their food.
Now, to be fully honest, not all of the students tasted the mushrooms. Some remain diehard mushroom detesters. But, my youngest son, who generally prefers white or super-sweet foods, now counts himself as one who enjoys the occasional mushroom. Not that he’s been converted completely: I’m fairly sure I won’t be serving him grilled portabella mushroom sandwiches anytime soon.
While I’m pleased that he is willing to try mushrooms, I’m more thrilled about his growing awareness of food and the world around him. He is now tuned in to the fungi he sees in nature, how it grows, that some are poisonous while others are sought-after delicacies. This curiosity is expanding his young world to include other foods and their sources.
Try this at home
Connecting children to their food is easy to build into home routines. A home garden is often a first link to the concept of growing food. Remember the bean seed in a Dixie cup? The miracle of a sprouting seedling that was just days ago a dry, hard little bean rarely fails to amaze. Expand that to an entire row of beans next spring and your preschooler may come running in to tell you, “Hey, there’s food in your garden!”
The novelty of seeing vegetables sprout is just the beginning. Children involved in planting, tending, harvesting, preserving, and cooking their food begin to see what they eat in a different way: They feel some sense of ownership and may just be more likely to eat the foods. Eating becomes more integrated into their lives instead of a separate activity, unrelated to the world around them. Plus, it’s fun! Just watch the face of a child scooping blueberry preserves made from the berries she picked, washed, and helped cook and can.
Not everyone has the space, time, or interest to maintain a garden. Another way to expand children’s (and adults’) exposure to local, seasonal fruits and vegetables is a Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) share. CSAs work like this: Pay up-front for the season (sometimes in installments), then pick up your “share” of the harvest weekly at the farm or designated pickup spot.
At our nearby Big Woods Farm CSA, each week (June through October) we get a heaping half-bushel of just-picked organic fruits and vegetables. We also have the option of picking additional vegetables several times during the season. A helpful newsletter provides bits of info about the produce of the week plus ideas about preparation.
When we joined our local CSA several years ago, I thought it would be a good way to ensure a regular supply of local, organic produce. Little did I know that it was also the beginning of a grand education — for me and for my entire family. Baffled by some of the unknown items (celeriac?) and overwhelmed some days by quantity (what else can I make with eggplant?), I needed advice. The guidebook to CSA vegetables, From
Asparagus to Zucchini: Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce, was just the answer. We were soon exploring new veggie territory.
I didn’t convert our diet entirely to CSA produce, but during the season every meal included at least one veggie from the share. At the dinner table, “What’s that?” was answered with a brief reading from the book. (My easy way of explaining — plus it had more authority.) “A turnip is one of the most ancient and globally used vegetables. In Europe, turnips were once the vegetable of choice to throw at someone as an insult …” Intrigued or at least mildly interested, everybody tried the new food, at least one bite. And, we talked about it.
We quickly became more familiar with the reality of seasonality. Sounds great in theory — eat based on what is naturally available during the season. But one of the challenges of eating based on what comes in the CSA basket is dealing with the volume and repetitiveness of certain produce. In spring and summer, we have kale. And more kale. I’ve learned many new ways to prepare and incorporate kale, some more popular than others. My 11-year-old now requests kale sautéed with garlic, while the 9-year-old usually only eats one small bite.
Pumpkin Week
Nothing in the season quite tops what is now called “pumpkin week” at our house. At the end of CSA season, we are invited to glean the fields for whatever is left — pumpkins, squash, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and/or turnips. One season was especially good for squash and pumpkins, and we took home a van load. We baked the pumpkins, cut in half, in the oven, scooped out the meat, and pureed much of it. And then we had pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin custard, until we were in danger of turning orange ourselves.
I was nearly overwhelmed by it all and about ready to toss the last few pumpkins to the chickens. But the four boys were enjoying the run on pumpkin (except maybe the pumpkin soup). I felt less alone in my pumpkin challenge when my high schooler laughingly told me that his buddy at school was also enduring pumpkin week. I had the definite impression that this was not a true hardship for either of them.
This year, my two youngest were adamant that we not miss the field day — squash and pumpkin day. On a blustery afternoon, we hauled a big two-wheeled cart out into the field. The boys ran ahead, picking the “best” pumpkins and squash, while I cut off some Brussels sprouts and pulled up turnips. They managed the mounded-full cart together, barely able to keep it from tipping. Laughing and chatting about the haul, they loaded the van for me. We brought some of the bounty to the food shelf, which is a weekly routine for the CSA. Pleased to be sharing “their” harvest, the boys talked about how much somebody would enjoy those squash.
Not to say, however, that all four of my boys would choose squash over ice cream every day. Or, any day. But they are developing a deep, intuitive understanding of the cycles of life, of food, and the harvesting, preparation, storage that many of us miss in this modern day of “pineapple in Minnesota February.”
Besides introducing the kids to new foods, our CSA experience, gardening, and explorations of other new foods, have led to broader discussions about food in general. For example, where does it come from? At a friend’s house for dinner recently, the kids played the “local game,” which involved naming all the foods we were eating that were produced locally. Nearly everything on the table — chicken, corn, honey, milk, bread, butter, squash, apples — was local. And, the kids could name where most of it was produced.
This was not a game I ever played as a child. Food came from the store or the garden; no big deal, we thought. But, the food world has changed quickly, with produce from around the world available year-round and many of us far removed from the growing cycle. Connecting children to their food not only links them to what they eat, it also shows them the interconnectedness of the land, plants, animals, and people. This awareness could be a foundation for thoughtful selections and good stewardship. Plus, they just might eat a mushroom.
Jodi Ohlsen Read is a writer and the cheesemaker at Shepherd’s Way Farms, where she lives and works with her husband and four sons.
