The gods were smiling on Canyon Springs Community School Friday afternoon.
After hours of preparation, beginning bright and early at 8:30 a.m. – following months of preparation that’d begun back in the fall – the school’s sixth-grade class had created a full-course lunch of Greek foods for themselves, their families and the School Day Cafe crew that’d overseen the day’s cooking process.
Sixth-grade teacher Mallory Langley said her class of about 30 students had been looking forward to the day of the lunch for weeks.
“They were so excited for all the different things that they got to prepare. Everybody did want to be in the entree station, which they couldn’t, but everyone was really happy,” Langley said. “We had five different stations happening. The students were using real knives. They were doing the proper measurements and everything on their own.”
School Day Cafe had started developing the lunch theme and menu at the beginning of the year, when Canyon Springs was selected out of the district’s nine schools for the school meal program’s 27th Kids Cooking Campaign. The theme was conceived to line up with Langley’s unit on ancient Greece.
“We did lean towards Greece, since that was coming after winter (break),” Langley said. “(School Day Cafe) went over the menu with us all. The kids got super excited. (Students) received a packet of all of the recipes so they could look it over, even have that to take home afterwards, so they can … take it home with their families.”
School Day Cafe met with Langley’s sixth graders once a month in the two months leading up to the event, showing them Greek dishes to consider for the February meal. Brittany Young, the program’s director of child nutrition, said some meals were familiar to the kids, and some they’d never heard of.
“Once we started showing them some different pictures of some different menu ideas, it started to come together,” Young said. “We (also) went out to the class and talked about some decorations. Some kids made Medusa heads that are displayed in the front (of the dining room).”
On the day of the lunch, under the supervision of a School Day Cafe team that included eight management personnel and several support staff members, students worked in groups of six to seven to prepare the buffet-style spread, including beef gyros, chicken shawarma, Greek salad and other sides – but not before a lesson on proper food safety hygiene.
“They even had a barbecue grill outside,” Langley said. “The chicken that they were making, the beef, they were out there. They mixed all of the seasoning, (and all) the marinades were out there. They brought in skillets for the rice. They chopped all the stuff for the salad. They were really excited about the baklava bowls that they were making.”
Many kids who’d never had the dishes being served Friday were impressively seasoned when it came to the basics of the cooking process, Langley said, giving some of the quieter students the chance to shine as they adeptly chopped and peeled vegetables.
Some aspects of Greek cuisine were surprising to students. Sixth graders Caidyn Camarillo and Ariel Contreras, members of the Greek salad squad, said the lack of lettuce was the most surprising part of making their side.
“It’s called salad, but they don’t actually use lettuce,” Camarillo said.
“I thought there was going to be lettuce in it, but they just put a bunch of vegetables together,” Contreras added.
Both agreed that they enjoyed the end result regardless. On top of getting to eat the fruits of their efforts, the Canyon Springs dining room was a fitting tribute to the sixth graders’ labors Friday, with a poster of a vine-covered archway covering the back wall and student-made construction paper columns lining the windows.
Langley’s students ate while decked in “leaf” crowns hand made from construction paper – a creative process that took three weeks, Langley said.
It all culminated in an atypically immersive unit, Langley said.
“(Food) was a really good component that we want to focus on in ancient civilization,” Langley said. “Religion, economics, those types of things. … Being able to get that experience was great.”