February 2015 Archives

Houston Chronicle reporter, Rebecca Hennes wrote about our work in the HealthZone section on Sunday, Feb 22, 2015.

"For decades, kids have tried every trick in the book to avoid eating vegetables.

For parents who struggle to figure out how to turn that around, researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine have determined that educational intervention - such as involving children in cooking or gardening - is the answer.  Read more...

The Houston-based Recipe for Success Foundation was founded in 2005 on the principle that kids who learn to garden and cook make better food choices in life. Founder Gracie Cavnar and her organization developed gardens and cooking programs at a select number of showcase schools in at-risk schools across Houston and began expanding from there. To date, Recipe for Success programs have impacted lives of more than 30,000 kids in Houston alone.

"As a mom, I knew that no one responds to lectures or nagging," says Cavar. "Eating healthy food had to be cool and fun, so that's what we set out to create, tapping top chefs in our community as guest instructors." The idea is to fight junk food marketing with this thoughtful type of healthy food marketing that engages kids at a young age and steers their food choices for the rest of their lives.

 "Recipe for Success Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ programs have empowered children with the knowledge and skills to make a lifetime of healthy eating decisions," says Cavnar. "This is documented by SPAN surveys implemented at the beginning and end of each academic year, revealing that vegetable consumption in participating children increases an average of 30 percent by the end of the school year."

Recipe for Success' comprehensive Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ Program features a curriculum library of 400+ lesson plans to teach kids of all ages in a variety of settings and time constraints. The program is now showing school kids all over the Houston area - and in 9 additional cities across the nation - that eating healthy food is both cool and fun with its Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ at Affiliate Partner schools. Any school anywhere can sign up as an Affiliate Partner. Schools then send two or more of their own staff through the S2P web-based training and certification program.

 Costs include an annual affiliate partner fee of $500, plus a $250 fee for each staff member's training and certification. After registration and training are complete, the schools certified S2P instructors have online access to the full curriculum library of 400+ lesson plans, expert support, webinars, forums, and more to enable them to deliver this fun and effective nutritional programming. Each school must also cover their own consumables, culinary supplies and garden start-up materials.

 Hortencia Flores, a first grade teacher at Cedar Brook Elementary in Houston, Texas, began teaching the Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ program during weekly after-school sessions in early October 2014. "Classes are going really well," says Flores, who started with gardening and culinary classes held every Friday, after school.

"Students are highly engaged and motivated to try new vegetables and fruits, especially those coming from our garden," says Flores. "We had our first harvest a couple of weeks ago and celebrated with a delicious stir-fry recipe that students enjoyed so much. Last Friday, we used part of our harvest to prepare an amazing rainbow salad (1-2-3 salad recipe from the Recipe for Success website)." 

 Flores reports that she enjoys teaching the Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ curriculum, and grows more comfortable and confident with the program with each passing week. She also says she is grateful for the support of a loyal crew of five volunteers, who have assisted with the S2P program at Cedar Brook Elementary since it began.

 "With the help of 25 of Houston's finest chefs we created our Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ to turn kids on to the magic of food and empower them to make healthy decisions and their own scrumptious meals," says Cavnar. "Our program inspired the First Lady's "Chefs Move To Schools" outreach, which we helped her launch, and now we have over 100 professional chefs volunteering with Recipe for Success as we grow from coast to coast."

 For information getting started with the Recipe for Success Affiliate Partner program, refer to the Recipe for Success affiliate partnership page.

When you think of typical classroom pets, lizards, various small rodents, and fish are usually the first to come to mind. All of those are great, but at Recipe for Success we are a little different; we keep worms. Students learn that worms, specifically red wigglers, are fantastic decomposers, devouring our culinary classroom scraps and producing nutrient rich humus for our garden. 

 This past week, a few of our programs received roughly two thousand worms and boy, were our kids excited. Never seen two thousand worms at once? It's quite the tangled mess. Before they arrived, students spruced up the worms new home, known as "The Worm Hotel," with wet newspaper strips and banana peels. One kindergartner exclaimed during this nesting activity that, "a worm is the greatest pet in the world." I couldn't agree more - low maintenance, inexpensive, silent, and their excretion helps us grow healthy food. Now that's a loveable pet.

Students learn about the worms new habitat, The Worm Hotel. 

 Want to start vermicomposting at your house?  Check out Uncle Jim's Worm Farm to purchase your own pet red wigglers.