7gen Bloc

In 1621, the Pilgrims and Indians got together for a shindig to help celebrate their hard-won bounty. I already figured they didn't pass the Butterball but was still surprised to learn that we can only be sure of two things they did eat: venison and wild fowl. Other possible dishes, according to Kathleen Curtin, food historian at Plimouth Plantation, include pumpkin, peas and -- take it back, Kathleen! -- seals. (To learn more about what the hungry, hearty band might have gobbled up, check this out.)

Nearly 400 years later, the students at Brooklyn's PS 107, the Little Green Thumbs you first read about here, got a jump on our national holiday by celebrating their first Harvest Day in October. Blessed with picture-perfect weather, they feasted al fresco on two lunch items straight out of their Sunshine Garden: pasta pesto made with their own basil and Department of Education-regulation roast chicken enhanced by herbs picked from containers planted around the old-fashioned red brick school.

Just as that first 17th-century celebration was actually a three-day festival that included races, drumming, and demonstrations of archery and musketry, PS 107's 21st-century event wasn't all about the meal. First, there was an assembly featuring music and dance plus presentations from fifth-graders vying for the chance to help decide the lunch menu.

Things really got cooking once the 500 kids from pre-K to fifth grade filed down to the basement, where they discovered a lunchroom expo. There, they crunched into a variety of apples, sipped just-pressed fruit and vegetable juices, and sampled eggplant caponata, kale slaw, and rice with herbs, again all from their garden, before voting on their favorite. The rice ruled the day, winning the dish a spot on the official lunch menu.

While the Pilgrims owed much to Tisquantum (a.k.a. Squanto), the success of Harvest Day can be attributed to a very supportive administration, staff and community and, most importantly, a hearty band of VIPs -- Very Involved Parents.

"All the kids were engaged and having fun," Michele, who helps head up the Garden Committee, e-mailed me after the event. (Her son, Aidan, is a second-grader at 107). Susan, her cochair, agreed: "I've never seen so many kids eating kale!" she wrote, adding that even her first-grader Ezra, "an avowed hater of all things green, was digging in."

Brian, a third-grader, was equally enthusiastic, saying, "That was the best food I ever ate!" Afterward, everyone recorded their reactions in their writing notebooks. Second-grader Ellie, who has all the makings of a future oenophile, wrote, "Some of the things we got to pass around and smell. They smelled really good!" That night Otto, one of Ellie's classmates, told his mom, "We learned tons of things on Harvest Day, and none of it was in the classroom!"

Students weren't the only ones who got juiced. "It stimulated a lot of teacher interest and enthusiasm," Michele said. "I realized that many of them really had not known the garden was active in the school."

My neighbor Randi, who ran Harvest Day as head of 107's federally mandated Wellness Committee, said that while the event is a great way to increase awareness and enthusiasm for the school's overall greening initiative, she has her eye on a much bigger prize. She will put her legal training to work this year drafting policy and working with the school bureaucracy to start making changes. "We're supposed to have a monthly meeting with the school food manager," she says. While 107 has a "fab" kitchen," Randi notes that the workers are reheating breakfasts and lunches that come from a central kitchen that churns out breakfast and lunch to 1,500 New York City schools every day.

PS 107's push is part of a larger movement to can reheated, processed food in favor of real, freshly prepared fare. As The New York Times reported recently, little cooking happens in the country's largest system, mostly because barely half of the city's 1,385 school kitchens have enough firefighting equipment to allow the use of an open flame.

Nationwide, the Times says more than 80 percent of the districts cook fewer than half their entrees from scratch, according to a 2009 survey by the School Nutrition Association.

Meanwhile, Randi is whipping up more plans, including field trips to local farms and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. And then there's the after-school cooking program, taught three times a week by students from the French Culinary School. Randi also turned me on to Chef Ann Cooper: The Renegade Lunch Lady, who is helping lead the way toward transforming, in Cooper's words, "cafeterias into culinary classrooms for students -- one school lunch at a time."

"We have every reason to think that all of the positive momentum and energy generated by Harvest Day will keep us moving forward," Randi said. "If we can't get our acts together now, we never will."

So, Seventh Generation Nation member, is your school riding the wave? What can we do to improve the quality of the food our kids eat five days a week? After all, we foot the bill.

photo: woodley wonderworks