Farmers donate fresh products for kids to cook in class

Students at 13 San Joaquin County high schools — including Tokay and McNair — are about to get some fresh ingredients for their classes courtesy of local agricultural groups.

The San Joaquin-Stanislaus Cattle Women, the county chapter of California Women for Agriculture and the San Joaquin Farm Bureau Federation have teamed up to donate more than 500 pounds of apples, pumpkins, ground beef, almonds, cabbage and tomatoes for students in cooking classes.

“We’re very excited,” said Lisa Podbielski, who teaches four beginner and one advanced consumer foods and nutrition classes at Tokay High School.

When she first began teaching students to cook and prepare food at Tokay, in the midst of the recession, the agricultural groups helped teachers out with donations of ingredients, she said. When she got an email last year that they were planning to relaunch the program, she jumped to sign up.

“I’m always challenged with the budget and how much I have, so when I get donated food, I use it!” she said.

The Cattle Women first launched the project in 2005, said Molly Watkins, who leads the group’s publicity and legislative committees.

“At the state level, the Cattle Women wondered how much cooking the kids did with beef,” she said.

So they called around to see if local school districts would be open to donations of ground beef and other local produce. They teamed up with the Farm Bureau and the California Women for Agriculture.

The donations give teachers and students new and different ingredients to work with, and it boosts local agriculture because they are all local and seasonal.

“Sometimes they get things they haven’t cooked with before, or they haven’t thought about cooking,” Watkins said.

This year, each of the three groups chose two commodities to donate. Each of the commodities came from local suppliers. For example, the beef was purchased from Ted’s Meat, which supplies local restaurants.

“With each commodity, they get a handful of recipes on how they could use that,” Watkins said.

Several of the teachers the group has worked with in the past still use the recipes from the program’s previous years, she said. The students also receive handouts on how to store and safely prepare each ingredient for cooking.

Teachers who wanted to get signed up with the San Joaquin County Office of Education, which keeps a master list to keep track of how many ingredients are needed.

Otherwise, the program’s requirements were simple.

“You have to like farmers, you have to write a thank-you note to whoever donates, and you have to pick a time and a place (to pick up the donations),” Watkins said.

So on Tuesdays over the next three weeks, more than 20 teachers will visit the Office of Education in Stockton to pick up their supplies.

The Cattle Women and California Women in Ag have duplicated the program in Stanislaus County, where students are learning to cook with melons, spinach and other crops grown there.

For teachers like Podbielski, the donations are a huge help in the classroom. She receives a budget each semester, but it’s always a stretch to make it last.

Another organization recently gave her 100 pounds of flour, and she’s been teaching her students to bake bread.

“I have five periods where most of what the students are doing is cooking and preparing food, all year long,” she said.

She plans to lead students in using donated cucumbers to make pickles, cabbage to make Asian-inspired dishes, and pumpkins to make pie from scratch.

“It just really helps,” she said.

That’s exactly what the county agricultural groups were hoping for.

“We hope these donations will have a lifelong impact on the students,” said Mary Robinson, the Cattle Women chapter president.