CITY KITCHEN - a cooking and gardening program for urban youth

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TODD GILREATH!

2009-03-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

Please join us in wishing Todd Gilreath a Happy Birthday! Todd manages our Summer Ave., location, and is a very positive and valuable member of our team. Should you wish to shower him with expensive clothes, he informed me that his dimensions are as follows: size 17, waist 33.

Wish him well @ toddgilreath@745cash.com

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Pizza Crust Class

2007-11-14T12:16:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed this recipe almost as much as the kids did! As a chef who has made her share of pizza crust in a variety of ways, this was the first one I've made without olive oil, and without mostly white flour. It was indeed the healthiest of crusts, one I will continue to make for years to come. The oatmeal added texture, and with the slightest amount of honey, a caramel sweetness imbued it. Yum.

I will admit that as the kids were activating the yeast, and adding wheat flour, many turned up their noses. I heard a few, 'this is gross', and one girl said, this smells like burned milk. Suffice to say, I felt a bit nervous that they may not enjoy the wheat and oatmeal crust, that was explicitly more healthy than a heavy white flour/oil based crust.

Luckily, after we rolled our dough, and spread tomato sauce, with their choice of toppings: pepperoni, green peppers, mozzarella cheese, Parmesan, sauteed cremini mushrooms, caramelized onions - all was well. As the mini-pizza's cooked, we could smell hints of honey and baked bread in the air. They kept trying to open the ovens to peek, the anticipation was great.

All and all, the evening was a huge success, mostly because my kids got to taste a healthier alternative, and actually preferred the taste! They sat down and copied the recipe before they left, so they could try it at home.

Here's the recipe. It's awesome!

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Crust This recipe, based on "Anytime Pizza" from Susan Roberts and Dr. Melvin Heyman's "Feeding Your Child For Lifelong Health" is a good introduction to whole grains. Little hands can help shape toppings into smiley faces.

INGREDIENTS: Oatmeal crust 2 teaspoons yeast 2 cups white flour 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1 1/3 cups instant or quick-cooking oats 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 1/4 cups water Pizza Olive or corn oil cooking spray 1/2 cup tomato sauce (fresh or canned), or more as needed 4 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese 6 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, grated Toppings Yellow onion, finely chopped Mushrooms or zucchini, thinly sliced Green bell pepper, thinly sliced Pineapple, finely diced

INSTRUCTIONS: To make the crust: Mix all the ingredients in a food processor and blend for 2 minutes or knead by hand for 5 minutes. The dough will be soft, even slightly sticky. Lightly coat the inside of a large bowl with cooking spray. Remove the dough from the processor, place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rise for 1/2-1 hour to make the dough pliable. Preheat oven to 450°. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or coat sheets well with cooking spray. Cut dough equally in half. Cut each half into 8 pieces.Roll each into a ball and stretch out to make a disk about 3-4 inches in diameter. Place 8 disks on each baking sheet. Spray dough lightly with oi land cover for 1/2 hour if you have the time (this last step is not essential). Divide the tomato sauce evenly among the 16 pizzas. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and then with cheddar cheese. Make smiley faces with the toppings.Bake for 12-15 minutes until cheese is bubbling and starting to brown. Makes 16 miniature pizzas

PER PIZZA WITHOUT TOPPINGS: 155 calories, 7 g protein, 22 g carbohydrate,5 g fat (3 g saturated), 12 mg cholesterol, 276 mg sodium, 2 g fiber.

City Kitchen in the Commerical Appeal

2007-09-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2007/sep/05/f5amy/

MIFA's City Kitchen helps urban children to 'think global, eat local'
By Jennifer Biggs
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Amy Pickle is on a mission: She wants a community garden in every public housing project, every Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association apartment complex -- or just about anywhere people who are poor or on a fixed income live. The tiny garden in the side yard of the MIFA Living Skills Institute on St. Paul is a good start.
"I've got many phases of this in mind," she said.
She's talking about City Kitchen, a program she started to introduce urban children to the "think global, eat local" concept. It started in February with cooking lessons for the kids, and last week they planted their first garden.
"Why tell them to eat these great tomatoes or produce if they can't afford it? But if you have a garden, it's possible for everyone to eat well," she said.
Chef Pickle -- that's what the kids call her -- conducts classes twice a month at the skills center. The children who attend all live in MIFA housing. Adults in MIFA housing (there are 100 units around the city) are required to take classes at the center to enable them to move toward independence; this is one of the first classes for kids.
In recent sessions they've made refrigerator pickles with local cucumbers, and strawberry jam and peanut butter.
"They need to see that not everything comes in a can," Pickle said. "They need to know that peanut butter starts out as peanuts."
With the help of a heavy-duty food processor, they saw it transform before their eyes.
"Man, this smells just like Jif," William Richardson, 11, said when he opened the bowl of the processor.
That night the kids left with a cup of homemade peanut butter; they always take something -- jam, fresh corn, tomatoes -- home, and it helps. Many of the kids are fed inexpensive food that will provide quick energy at home -- dinners made from rice packages, starchy meals planned around potatoes.
"But the kids know there's a lot available out there, like taco salads for instance, and they want to try these different foods. It's just not things that most of them can get at home," Pickle, 38, said.
So last week they made taco salads, with fresh corn and Ripley tomatoes, and even thinly sliced jalapeno peppers (those came with a warning).
Terriq Duncan, 11, was sitting a little too close for comfort to Brittany Jackson, also 11, when they were removing the kernels from the corn cobs.
"Quit! You are splashing all over me," he said.
"Hey!" she countered. "It's not me, it's this corn!"
Pickle stepped in as their voices rose.
"What's our philosophy?" she asked. "Remember, you can hate the game, but never hate the player."
Learning to set the table -- even making centerpieces -- and how to behave at the table are all part of the class. "Yuck" and "gross" aren't allowed.
"If you don't like something, just smile and say 'Thank you for making it,' " Pickle teaches.
Cooking is her second career. After college she went into computer programming and she lived comfortably, as she had when she was a child. In her 30s, she decided she wanted to be a chef, and after attending the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, she worked in New York at an upscale restaurant.
"That was where I really made the connection between poverty and fast food," she said. "I was probably poorer than I'd ever been in my life, and I started looking at McDonald's for the first time.
"If I could get a dollar or two, I'd buy an order of french fries and a Coke. I'd rationalize it because I was working long hours as a line cook and the fat would get me through to the next day. I couldn't afford produce, because it wouldn't sustain me."
After about a year in New York, she left for San Francisco, hoping to work with Alice Waters.
"Initially that's what I wanted to do, but I realized that was extremely ambitious," she said.
She lowered the bar, but not by much: Her next choice was to work with Judy Rodgers at Zuni Cafe.
She couldn't get an interview -- she couldn't even get the manager to let her put in an application.
So she got creative. She went to Zuni, splurged on lunch, then wrote about it and faxed the letter to Rodgers.
Over and over again.
Finally, Rodgers responded.
"When she called me, I could not believe it. I just could not believe it," Pickle said. "After that, I really thought that I was the bomb."
During her year in San Francisco -- she returned to Memphis to help take care of her grandmother after her grandfather died -- Pickle was able to visit Waters' Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley.
"It was almost a farm," she said. "There was a huge, huge garden."
Seeing the success of the Schoolyard -- a nationally recognized program where children manage gardens that are then used to feed them in school -- made Pickle realize she wanted to do something similar in Memphis.
She talked about it everywhere. At home, out with friends, at work (she's the chef at Mantia's) and one day, in the beauty shop.
"I ended up in a hair salon talking about it with, of all people, Margaret Craddock (MIFA's executive director)," Pickle said. "She just went nuts. She thought it was a great idea."
Craddock is a supporter of the Slow Food movement and was excited about what Pickle was saying.
"I told her I'd love to have something like that developed for MIFA," she said.
Craddock supports Pickle's plans to expand the gardens to the MIFA housing centers where a garden is feasible.
"I think it would be a wonderful activity for the whole family," she said.
MIFA has provided the place, the children, some of the funding, and the side yard for the garden. Pickle has paid for a large portion of the supplies from her own pocket, and Tom Bennett of Bennett's Nursery and Garden in Horn Lake provided the labor and the plants for the garden. But a $10,000 anonymous grant through MIFA kicks in soon, which will bring financial relief but won't fund the citywide project Pickle has in mind.
"There is land all over Memphis," she said. "We've got to take advantage of it. You want to see no land, go to Chicago or New York."
--Jennifer Biggs: 529-5223
Peanut Butter
1 1/2 cups unsalted roasted peanuts
1 tbsp. peanut oil (possibly more)
For smooth peanut butter, mix the peanuts with the peanut oil, and pour the mixture into a food processor. Process the mixture until it's very smooth.
For chunky peanut butter:
Take about 1/4 cup out of your 1 1/2 cups of peanuts and set them aside.
Mix the rest of the peanuts with the oil, and pour the mixture into the food processor.
Process the mixture until it's very smooth, then stir in the reserved peanuts.
Process a few seconds more to create the chunks in your chunky peanut butter.
Store peanut butter in a sealed container in the fridge for as long as 2 weeks.
Thai Chicken and Vegetable Wraps
3 (6-oz.) chicken breasts
4 (12-inch) flour tortilla wraps
Vegetable mixture:
2 oz. mixture of red, yellow and green bell peppers thinly sliced on an angle
1 oz. shredded carrots
3 scallions, sliced on an angle
3 tbsp. chopped mint leaves (4 sprigs)
2 tsp. sugar
2 tbsp. rice wine vinegar or white vinegar
Salt, to taste
Spicy peanut sauce:
1/4 cup room temperature homemade chunky peanut butter
2 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp. rice wine vinegar or white vinegar
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper, curry, nutmeg, cinnamon
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
Heat a grill pan over high heat and lightly oil or spray with nonstick spray. Grill chicken 6 minutes on each side.
To make the vegetable mix, toss ingredients together.
For the sauce, whisk peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar and curry powder, nutmeg and cayenne. Stream in vegetable oil.
Slice cooked chicken on an angle.
In a very hot nonstick skillet or over a gas burner, heat tortillas 15 seconds on each side.
Pile chicken and veggies in wraps and drizzle liberally with spicy peanut sauce before wrapping and rolling.
Source: Amy Pickle (both recipes)
If you'd like to help
You can make a directed donation to City Kitchen, c/o MIFA, 910 Vance, Memphis, TN, 38126, or call 527-0209 for more information. You can also go to mifa.org online.

The GREATEST kids - MIFA Skills Institute

2007-06-13T05:41:00.000-07:00

photos by Fran Taylor

Introduction

2007-06-13T05:38:00.000-07:00

The kitchen is an experimental classroom, where kids delight in trying new flavors, textures, colors and scents - they combine them and reshape them to call them their own. City kitchen classes show underprivileged children how to prepare simple, nutritional meals that can be duplicated at home, with limited ingredients. These classes integrate culture, history, math and science with a focus on the relationship between food and life. Each child works at their own pace, trying new approaches once they've mastered the basics. We encourage each child to share their own recipes from home - foods from their rich, ethnic backgrounds.In addition to cooking, our kids learn table manners; how to create centerpieces for the table, and how to set a formal place setting. We feel these activities encourage them to want to celebrate dining together at home, with their families.