Community Kitchen

Teachers at Sunnyside Environmental School integrate gardening and cooking activities throughout the curriculum in kindergarten through eighth grades. We study world cultures and create meals from them, apply mathematical learning to baking, and eat our way through literature. We plant gardens and follow the process of growing food from seed to harvest to feast.

Staff, parents and students are involved in hands-on learning and experience a deep connection to healthy foods. The heart of the home is the kitchen. The heart of a school should be a kitchen as well. As a community we are dedicated to the idea that preparing and eating food is a greater act than it appears. Community comes together around food, and learning is deep when many hands do the work and many mouths do the tasting.

In the summer and fall of 2007 our community of teachers and parents worked together to create a large kitchen area appropriate for student learning. We have space for a class to cook together. Using recycled materials and sharing the sink and dishwasher with Nutrition Services allowed us to create kitchen that fits our community values of shared space and thoughtful use of resources.

A variety of food preparation projects happen in our kitchen. Just a peek into the kitchen on a given week may find:

  • Middle school students making of bag lunches for a social service organization.
  • Upper elementary students making the breads of the world.
  • Kindergarteners peeling and slicing fresh vegetables from Jean’s Farm.
  • First and second graders making stuffed mushrooms as part of studying the forest floor.
  • Parent volunteers preparing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to be served in our lunch line.
  • A middle school class hosting a monthly Community Meal (which can range from a full meal to a lighter snack).

To volunteer for a cooking project, please contact a teacher or room parent. Volunteers prepare peanut butter and jam sandwiches on Wednesday mornings for our students to purchase at lunch time. To volunteer for this project, contact Mia Yang at <miapisano[at]yahoo[dot]com> or 503-234-6330. Our thanks to Grand Central Baking for their support for our PBJ program.

Our school garden and our partner Jean’s Farm provide us seasonal produce to use in cooking projects. For information about Jean’s Farm contact Portland State University at http://www.piiecl.pdx.edu/

Come join us in our Community Kitchen!

Below are links to documents to help with our cooking projects at our school.

  • If you are a teacher, parent or community volunteer, please refer to our Kitchen Guidelines before beginning a cooking project.
  • For guidelines on using our Cafeteria Kitchen (including instruction on using the commercial dishwasher) refer to the Cafeteria Guidelines.
  • For guidelines on bringing foods from our school garden or Jean’s Farm into the community kitchen, refer to Food Grown In Gardens.
  • For our most current inventory of staples, equipment and serving ware, click here .
  • For Community Kitchen tested recipes suitable to doing with students, click here.

We encourage all Community Kitchen volunteers to hold a current Multnomah County Food Handler’s card. Please leave a photocopy of your card in our food handler file box located above the first stove. Click here, http://www.mchealth.org/foodhand/, to find further information on obtaining your card.

For general questions about the Community Kitchen, please contact Cindi Carrell at ccarrell@gmail.com

Our thanks to our parents, staff, SES PTSA, PPS Nutrition Services, the ReBuilding Center and Lowe’s for their generous support for our Community Kitchen.