Solar Cooked Snacks in the Garden of Eatin'

 



Solar ovens are so 'right now' it is surprising that we are not seeing more of them in super health and environmental-conscious Sonoma County.

Still, I didn't have to travel far to see one in action, for Petaluma's popular Vice Mayor and leading light at the new North Bay Children's Center at Mary Collins Charter School at Cherry Valley, Karen Peterson Nau has a nifty little (non-profit produced) Sport Sola oven set up in the appropriately named Garden of Eatin'!

"Our philosophy within the North Bay Children Centers is for year-round fruit, herb and vegetable gardening to flow seemlessly into the daily curriculum," said Karen, as she and eight pre-school students showed me around their garden this morning. Pausing to pick artichokes for their daily snack, a happy group of three to five year olds were keen as peaches to put me on the right track for our edible plant tour.

"These are strawberries," said one little girl. " We eat our artichokes with hummus," said another. How fantastic for under fives to take such a role in their nourishment and well being, when so many American children their age have yet to see a swiss chard specimen, let alone munch on one for elevensis.

"The solar oven is a simple solution to staying off the grid," said Karen. "All that is needed is around three hours of daytime sunshine and a drop of water, and we can cook practically anything."

Yesterday's snack was freshly made potato salad from the previous week's garden harvest. In fact, all of the winter veggies are now out of the mix and NBC's master gardener has overseen the summer plantings of a surprisingly wide variety of edible bounty given the sustainable size of this half circular garden.

According to the non-profit Sola cookbook (portion of purchase price of each stove within the US goes to offset costs of sending solar ovens to third world countries) such delights as whole pot roast dinners and roast chickens can be concocted in these streamline, save the air contraptions. Can't argue with that. Although it might be hard to bake a big family dinner on a rainy Bay Area Sunday in December, there are at least nine months of the year when one of these ovens could very well come in handy. Not least during an earthquake - in an ideal scenario every California home should have one of these in their disaster preparedness kits.

Meanwhile, Karen is cooking up a storm at the children's center and the kiddies will be tucking into corn, pumpkin, peas, cherry tomatoes and all sorts of yummy organics this summer.

Something else I must mention from this morning's mini visit to 'the class farm' (and Karen did grow up on nearby Peterson's Farm of Petaluma, after all) is the Three Sisters garden. You may well know of this popular native American legendary style of planting, but it is the first I have heard of it, and I love it! Legend has it that mother nature had three daughters who had an irritating tendency to squabble. Instructing them to find a way to cooperate and live together in harmony, the sisters (corn, bean and squash) set about re-establishing themselves in the earth. The corn grew up with beans wrapped around her for support and the squash spread out on the surrounding ground to shade the soil and keep moisture from evaporating. Harmony! And three sister crops which appeal to little kids.

"There are 'Three Sister' gardens all over the world," said Karen. "The perfect solution for protein, carbohydrate and vegetable and the kids will eat them all!"

The North Bay Children's Center is a non-profit organization which aims to bridge the gap between what parents can afford to pay for child care in Marin and Sonoma Counties and what it actually costs to deliver high quality care.

The innovative Garden of Eatin' is an organic learning garden unique to North Bay Children's Centers and is intended to combat childhood obesity by teaching children to make better, well-informed nutritional choices as they learn about health and nutrition through an integrated, hands-on environmental curriculum.