Washing Things

Cleaning up is part of cooking. It’s very important to keep everything clean in the kitchen so that bacteria doesn’t have a chance to grow. Certain types of bacteria can make people very sick. A clean kitchen is a safe kitchen. In this Project CHEF video we will look at washing hands, washing dishes, washing fruits and vegetables and cleaning spills.

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Reading Nutrition Labels: Ingredient List

When choosing food that comes in a packet, the first thing you should do it read the ingredients list to know what’s going in your body and to help you make a healthy choice.

In Canada, by law companies must list all the ingredients in a packaged food. Ingredients are listed in order of weight from most to least. This means that a food contains more of the ingredients at the beginning of the list and less of the ingredients at the end of the list.

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Greens Galore

Salad greens we grow ourselves are phenomenal! Why do they taste so different? In a word, freshness. We have seen it time and time again in schools, kids who start out “allergic” to greens soon become salad green lovers by tasting all the different flavours of greens they are cooking with in the classroom, some even from their school garden. If you don’t try growing anything else with us this season from home, try one pot of salad greens. From seed to plate in a bit more than a month, the satisfaction can’t be beat.

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RHUBARB STRAWBERRY CRUMBLE

Rhubarb-Strawberry Crumble

We have made this traditional recipe with Kindergarten to adult cooks and the response has always been a resounding two thumbs up. Make this recipe in the springtime when BC rhubarb is in season. Although it may be tempting to make this early in the season, try to wait for BC strawberries as they explode with flavour and colour taking this recipe off the chart with local goodness.

Yield: Serves 6 – 7
Preparation Time: About 20 minutes
Baking Time: About 45 minutes @ 350 F

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Chicks and Salsa – Book Activity

If I had to pick a favourite fictional food-related children’s book, one of the top tier books would be Chicks and Salsa, written by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Paulette Bogan (Bloomsberry USA Children’s Books, 2007).

What could be more fun than farm animals deciding to cook Latin inspired food and holding a fiesta? This book is begging to be read aloud as the words spring to life with alliteration that captures their fabulous feast. The illustrations are equally rich with delicious details.

Enjoy the video retelling of the book then get busy searching for wonderful words that feel good in your mouth. After that, make a sumptuous snack with our Latin inspired recipes.

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Acrostic Poetry

Cook. Healthy. Edible. Food. That’s what the CHEF in Project CHEF stands for. It’s called an acronym. We think that the words stand for what Project CHEF is all about. An acrostic poem starts with a word and this is the topic of the poem. The letters of the word become the first letter of each line of the poem. The word or phrase in each line of the poem is related to the word topic.

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A Guide for Parents

At Project CHEF, we believe that children of any age are capable of helping out in the kitchen. It’s hard to put a number on what age your child may start using a knife, but if you are looking for a place to start, we have a few helpful tips to get your kids in the kitchen.

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