Rethink Your Drink and Tangerine Soda

Tangerines (photo from sodahead.com)

This March Bay View Nutrition launched its “Rethink Your Drink” campaign.  The campaign educates students about the impacts of sugary beverages like sodas in energy drinks.  In the Nutrition classroom, students measured the amount of sugars in common beverages such as soda, chocolate milk, energy drinks and processed juices.  The students were shocked by how much sugar they drank on a daily basis!  Students learned about alternatives to sugary beverages like water, 100% fruit juices and milk. 

Students are also being challenged to go for the month of March without soda.  So far, over 10 classrooms have signed up for the challenge.  Classes who meet the challenge will win a smoothie party hosted by yours truly.

Similarly, every K-3 classroom is receiving their own copy of Potter the Otter books.  Below is a link to a great website about Potter the Otter and drinking water.

http://www.potterloveswater.com/

See below for a natural soda recipe we made in class.

Tangerine Soda:

Ingredients:

*3 ounces squeezed tangerine juice.

*1 ounce melted honey

*Club soda to taste (depending on desired sweetness).

Preparation

1.     Add tangerine and honey.

2.     Pour over ice.

3.     Add in club soda to taste.

4.     Enjoy!

Students juicing tangerines for tangerine soda.

Growing Up Healthy

Growing Up Healthy mural

This February the kindergarten students received a month long unit on nutrition entitled “Growing Up Healthy.”  Students in all five kinder classes studied My Plate (Michelle Obama’s new guide to nutrition) and its corresponding food groups.  Similarly, students studied the importance of breakfast, eating a variety of foods and physical exercise.  Students in Beth Landry’s classroom received a visit and a virtual field trip from a local farmer.  At the end of the unit, students created a Growing Up Healthy Mural, pictured above.  Students promised to engage in a healthy behavior for the remainder of the year.  Students vowed to jump rope more, eat more vegetables and even plant a garden.  The mural illustrated the power nutrition education can have on early elementary students and their excitement to grow up healthy.

A kindergartner's promise to play outside more.

Papaya Boats

Papaya Boats (photo courtesy of Champions for Change)

This February the 5^th grade students studied healthy desserts.  In doing so, we featured a recipe from the Champions for Change website.  At Bay View Nutrition, we frequently use Champions for Change recipes in our classes.  They are quick, fresh and healthy. The students loved the papaya boats, especially the hints of mint. Enjoy the recipe as a midday snack or to top of a lovely meal.

Ingredients:

*2 papayas, rinsed and peeled

*1 medium banana, peeled and sliced

*1 kiwifruit, peeled and sliced 1 cup sliced strawberries

*1 (11-ounce) can mandarin oranges, drained

*3⁄4 cup lowfat vanilla yogurt

*1 tablespoon honey

*2 teaspoons chopped fresh mint (optional)

Preparation:

1. Cut papayas in half lengthwise. Scoop out seeds. Place each half on a medium plate.

2. Place an equal amount of banana, kiwifruit, strawberries, and oranges in each papaya half.

3. Combine yogurt, honey and mint; mix well. Spoon over fruit before serving.

Cabbage Spring Rolls

Cabbage spring rolls.

This winter students celebrated January’s Harvest of the Month, cabbage, by making cabbage spring rolls.  The students loved soaking rice paper and wrapping the ingredients together.  Students used grated carrots, sliced cabbage, chopped mint, cooked rice noodles and diced avocados to make this tasty treat.  Student’s also dipped the spring rolls in sunflower butter sauce (peanut sauce can also be substituted). 

Spring Rolls Recipe:

*1 packet of rice papers

*1 packet of rice noodles (cooked in hot water for 2 minutes).

*1 cup of grated carrots

*1 cup of  shredded purple cabbage

*4 tablespoons diced mint

*1 avocado diced

Dipping Sauce Recipe:

*1/2 cup sunflower butter or peanut butter

*1/4 cup soy sauce

*1/4 cup orange juice

*1 tablespoon honey

*1 clove garlic minced

Preparation:

1.     Combine all dipping sauce ingredients in a sauce pan.

2.     Heat over medium.

3.     Stir consistently until sauce thickens.

4.     Heat water for rice noodles.

5.     Place hot water in a baking pan.

6.     Dip rice paper in hot water until smooth.

7.     Fill rice paper will prepared ingredients (carrots, cabbage, mint, avocado, noodles).

8.     Wrap rice paper like a burrito.

9.     Dip spring roll in peanut sauce.

Student soaking rice paper.

Ingredients for spring rolls.

Carrot Orange Salad

Carrot Orange Salad

With the onset of winter, we are cooking with more citrus fruit to fight off colds and germs.  Citrus fruit like oranges, lemons and grapefruits are in season during the winter in California.  The tasty fruit is rich in vitamin C, which boosts the immune system.  Similarly, citrus fruits contain an acid, called citric acid, which helps energize the mind and muscles.  Students in class are using ph paper to test mandarin organes for citric acid.  Students love watching the ph paper change color!  Students are practicing using graters and are grating carrots to make a tart and sweet carrot orange salad.  The salad makes a perfect side to any winter feast. 

Carrot Orange Salad

 Serves 4

Ingredients: 

·      1 ½ cups of grated carrots

·      2 mandarin oranges peeled and finely chopped

·      ¼ cup craisins

·      ½ or 1 Tablespoon cinnamon

·      1 Tablespoon agave nectar

Preparation:

1. Comine all ingregidents and enjoy cold.  

Ingredients for Carrot Orange Salad

Student grating carrots for the salad

The finished product

Apple Oatmeal

Apple Oatmeal

In the Nutrition kitchen, students have been studying the importance of eating a healthy breakfast.  Coined as the “most important meal of the day,” eating breakfast can increase a child’s focus, a child’s energy and a child’s academic success in school.  Students cut apples and helped prepare the apple oatmeal.  The meal was one of the most popular meals of the year and it only took 5 minutes to cook!  See the recipe below to enjoy apple oatmeal at home. 

Apple Oatmeal:

From Champions of Change (http://www.cachampionsforchange.net/en/Breakfast-Recipes.php)

Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

·      1 3⁄4 cups 100% apple juice

·      1 cup quick cooking oats

·      1 large apple, cored and cut into bite-size chunks

·      1⁄2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

·      1⁄8 teaspoon salt (optional)

Preparation

1.     Combine all ingredients in a medium, microwave safe bowl.

2.     Place in microwave uncovered and cook on high for about 2 minutes.

3.     Stir and let cool for
1 minute before serving.

4.     Oatmeal could also be prepared on medium heat on a stove stop.

Student practicing knife safety

Apple Oatmeal cooking on the stove top

Stuffed Apples

Stuffed Apple

November’s Harvest of the Month is apples. Students learned about apple trees while working in the garden orchard.  Each class planted fava beans around the apple, peach, plum and persimmon trees.  Fava beans are nitrogen fixers and take the usable nitrogen in the air and convert the nitrogen the soil.  Fruit trees use the nitrogen in the soil and the nutrient helps the trees stay strong.  After working in the garden, students celebrated their hard work by making stuffed apples.  Students cored apples and added sunflower seed butter, craisins, coconut and granola to make a high-energy afterschool snack.  

Stuffed Apples

Ingredients

*1 Apple

*2 tablespoons sunflower seed butter

*1 tablespoon craisins

*1 tablespoon coconut

*2 tablespoons granola

*Lemon water (1 squeezed lemon mixed with ¼ cup water)

Preparation

1.     Cut off the top of the apple.  Soak apple in lemon water.

2.     Cut around the core of the apple with a knife.

3.     Spoon out the core of the apple.

4.     Put sunflower seed butter on top apple and in the core.

5.     Add craisins, granola and coconut.

6.     Place the top of the apple on the bottom.  Eat the apple immediately or save it for later. 

 

Student coring an apple.

Cored apple.

Student preparing the apple.

Student taking home the apples.