Taste Test Extravaganza by Adara Thao

Over the past few months, FEEST interns at Evergreen Campus have been working with Highline Nutrition Services to submit a recipe for school lunch.  Check out this interview about a dinner dedicated to creating recipes at Evergreen HERE.  This past Wednesday, FEEST, with the help of Highline Nutrition Services, YMCA and Tom Douglas organized the Taste Test Extravaganza, where about 100 students from Evergreen had the opportunity to try some potential school food menu items as well as the recipe FEEST submitted.  Our media intern, Adara, tells us all about it:

Here’s the background story that lead up to all of this…FEEST has been working to change school lunches and when we found out that we had a chance to make a change we jumped at it.  At my school, the lunches don’t have much variety, are very repetitive and the food feels old and unappetizing at times. So when they told us that we had the chance to change it we were all excited and enthusiastic to do it!

First, we talked to Lisa Johnson, the Highline Public Schools’ Nutrition Services Director and Sarah Keen, the Nutrition Services Manager about the issues we had and worked together on what we could do and tried to work around the requirements of school food. We ended up talking about a food taste test where students would come and taste healthy, good food and give us their opinions. We worked on trying to make it fun and entertaining by hiring a DJ, and stamp card to make sure everyone went to each booth to taste all the different food. The stamp card would then be an entry into a raffle with really cool prizes! The prizes were ten dollars to DubSea Coffee and Big Foot Java and the grand prize was a 50 dollar gift card to H&M! The grand prize was the one that had everyone hyped up and motivated to go around to each booth. We also had a bingo sheet where they had to go around and get to know people by asking them questions, for example, name one source of calcium. If the person knew it they would sign their name and once they got a bingo they had a better chance of winning.

We also discovered that the recipe we submitted ( a Somali dish, Biryani) was made by Chef Eric Tanaka from Tom Douglas restaurants!

Food wasn’t the only thing there; there was also a booth that had a game about your drinks. It showed what was in a lot of the beverages we drink on a regular basis, like soda, milk, and juice. It showed how much sugar and nutrients were actually in them.
Overall it was a really awesome event which made me feel bad at the same time because my 5th period class was stuck in class and missed out on all the awesome food and games.

Check out our recipe for Biryani!

Biryani

Serves 12 portions of 1 cup each

 

1 ½ medium onion small diced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

4 roma tomatoes, pureèd

¼ cup of tomato sauce

½ cup tomato paste

½ cup buttermilk

2 tbl salt

2 tsp curry powder

1 tsp ginger powder

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp tumeric

1 tsp ground coriander

½ tsp ground cloves

½ tsp mace

1 tsp black pepper

2 russet potatoes, peeled and medium diced

1 sweet potato, peeled and medium diced

3 carrots, peeled and sliced into coins

1 green bell pepper, julienned

1 yellow bell pepper, julienned

1 red bell pepper, julienned

½ cup of water

1 bunch of cilantro- minced

12 eggs, hardboiled and peeled

Sauteè onions until browned, add garlic and cilantro.  Add pureed tomatoes, allow simmer.  Add all spices and 1 tbl of salt and mix well.  Add tomato paste and tomato sauce and last tbl of salt.  Mix well.  Wait about 5 minutes and add buttermilk and water slowly.  Allow simmer.  Add all potatoes.  Turn up heat to bring stew to a boil, then cover and turn heat to medium low.  When potatoes are cooked through, add hardboiled eggs.  Mix gently.

Serve with rice.