End of Summer Harvest & Back to School!

It’s that time of year! Freshly sharpened pencils, crisp empty notebook pages full of possibility, fall activity fairs, and new beginnings. Over at Brainfood, we’ve been busy harvesting lots of produce from the Brainfood Youth Garden and stockpiling it for fall programs. The garden has been producing loads of yummy veggies: pole beans, padron peppers, tomatoes, okra, and most of all, GREENS! We’ve been blanching and freezing collard greens, beet greens, rainbow chard, sweet potato greens, and more, and our students are certainly in for a year filled with lots of recipes featuring hyper-local greens from our Youth Garden right here on K Street!

                                                 
Meanwhile, as the garden gives us a bountiful late summer crop, we’re already focused on the next season, which is my personal favorite. Fall is a very special time at Brainfood, and though this summer was a particularly sweet one, we are so excited to welcome a few new staffers, some new volunteers, and a new group of students for this school year. Brainfood staffers have been visiting DC high schools for recruitment this week, setting up tables in cafeterias and talking to students about our programs. It’s so energizing for all of us to chat with prospective participants, tell them about Brainfood, and see the applications rolling in! We even brought a little bit of the Brainfood Youth Garden to schools with us by sharing samples of a chocolate beet cupcake we've been recipe-testing. We got mixed reviews, and the jury’s still out on whether we’ll tweak it further. Maybe throw in some raspberries from the garden for a fruity twist?