kindergarten lessons in raw food!

oops, so it's already july but i'm a bit behind in posting. a few weeks back, i had the pleasure of being in a kindergarten class for a morning and they usually bake bread and i didn't want to deprive them of their friday cooking lesson so i thought i'd try an 'un-cooking' lesson!

first we combined ingredients for the marinara. this is my go-to sauce that i got from you guessed it, ani phyo. i'll have to look up what book. whenever i'm at a loss for what to bring to a potluck or to quickly whip up for dinner guests or to add to something else (like back in february's lasagne), i love blending this up! i'm grateful i used a recipe i was really familiar with as trying to coordinate jobs to involve 15 active young ones is a challenge! in hindsight, i should've tested the recipe out using the hand blender in advance. and i maybe should've measured out everything first as that took awhile and we almost had a REALLY oregano-inspired marinara. but it's funny, no matter how non-exact the ingredient combinations were, it turned out well! the kids loved smelling the spices (basil was a favourite) and were curious of what this would turn into.

 the sauce took so long though that i had to send them for their recess play time while i took 20 minutes frantically trying to hand-blend the sauce into something without the big sun-dried tomato chunks! or, my worst fear, garlic chunks!

 here is the part i knew would be a hit... the spirooli! before recess, i was so scared about the results as the kids were eagerly telling me how much they didn't like vegetables (ack, the whole recipe!), especially tomatoes (gah! fresh and sun-dried in this dish!) but telling them i worked in a restaurant seemed to help. since i 'must know what i'm doing', they seemed to trust the vegetable preparations!
each of them had a few turns of the spirooli to turn zucchini into noodles. the best was when one exclaimed, "so that's how you make noodles!" i excitedly showed them the inner of the zucchini that reminds me of corkscrew pasta when the rest has been spiroolied away and they all wanted to try it! even the top part (just raw zucchini!) that i cut up into wedges when one said it tasted like pizza. must have been the smell of the sauce nearby.

 after finishing the noodles, they took turns shaking nutritional yeast and hemp seeds for a "veggie parmesan" and then sat at places at their tables with real plates and forks (none of that plastic business!).

one student went around spooning the 'rawmesan' onto plates of people who wanted it and many did! and many liked it! some were calling it sugar but whatever! many asked for seconds or thirds of the pasta. so it must have been a success!

hurrah!