Hands-on Learning from Seed to Plate: How CCUA is ramping up the second half of the mission statement

In our last blog post we covered some threads related to how the kitchen within the Community Welcome Center will help increase the ability for the region to supply more fruits and vegetables through value added processing. Read more here!

This edition focuses on how this kitchen will support CCUA’s mission of “Hands-on Learning from Seed to Plate”.

A student tasting a strawberry she harvested at the farm during CCUA’s Farm to School Field Trips at Columbia’s Agriculture Park

Over the first 15 years of CCUA’s existence, a vast majority of the work toward this mission of “Hands-on Learning from Seed to Plate” has been on the first half of that arc; building healthy soil sowing seeds in the greenhouse or field, tending through the season, and harvesting for distribution to the food pantry.  In practice, there are lots and lots of steps and nuances to the process.  Furthermore, we’ve been able to set roots (and help others set roots) across Columbia at the Veterans Urban Farm, Columbia’s Agriculture Park, at the local Title One schools via Farm-to-School program, and in hundreds of backyard gardens via Opportunity Gardens mentoring program.   

Students enjoying their own “Farm Salad” made with ingredients from the farm during CCUA’s Farm to School field trips at Columbia’s Agriculture Park

Over these same years we’ve done relatively less on the other side of the arc, of getting delicious seasonal fruits and vegetables into the kitchen and on to the plate. We’ve hosted a handful of cooking classes, workshops, pilot projects, and each has been a good learning opportunity for us and the community.  We have been greatly encouraged by what we learned in each of these efforts.  Regular access to a commercial kitchen has been a primary barrier to us moving beyond the one-off, small series, or pilot phase of this work. Fortunately for us and the food lovers in Mid-Missouri, all of this is about to change!

The heart and soul of the forthcoming Community Welcome Center is in the kitchen. CCUA is beyond excited about the doors that this new space will open up for new programming and strategic partnerships with existing and new groups. This punch list aims to outline the tip of the iceberg as we see it today.  Time will continue to help us screen these opportunities and the feedback from our community and partners will also greatly influence what work ultimately takes place in this space. 

Student enjoying her own “Farm Salad” made with ingredients from the farm during CCUA’s Farm to School field trip at Columbia’s Agriculture Park

 CCUA’s educational programming in the Commercial/Teaching Kitchen

  • Meals and Meal Kits donated to hunger relief with Planting for the Pantry produce and staples from the Food Bank

    • CCUA has been donating produce to the Food Bank of Central Northeast Missouri for the last 12 years.  These donations have focused on seasonally ripe foods that both the CCUA and the Food Bank dream up in the off season.   As production has grown CCUA has been donating just shy of 50,000 pounds of produce seasonally (a mark hit the last 3 seasons).  

    • To this end, a kitchen will make it possible to make ready to eat meals. This will be done with seasonal produce like preparing meal-kits and ready to eat servings.   Balancing out this seasonal produce with basic staples sourced by the Food Bank (beans, rice, pasta, etc) will make it possible to make nutrient dense and fully balanced meals that can be donated to hunger relief efforts. 

    • Meal kits will give others the opportunity to assemble nutrient-dense meals at home and apply cooking skills in the kitchen.

  • New Volunteer tracts in the kitchen

    • We anticipate starting a new regular volunteering effort to take these less than perfect pieces of produce and make them into healthy meals. We have the makings of a meaningful and authentic place to serve the community, learn life skills, and teach others in the process.

  • Cooking Classes

    • There are many ways we envision this taking place over time and range from the basics of cooking from scratch, to seasonal ‘iron chef’ efforts of obscure local food, to complex multifaceted recipes that have a ‘wow’ factor of presentation. 

    • We’re excited to explore cuisines from around the world and learning opportunities at all levels of the learning curve. 

  • Expanding PLANTS: 

    • Our Farm-to-School curriculum helps teachers use gardening as a learning laboratory to teach all the subjects.   Adding a kitchen space into our learning space opens many more doors for helping connect the dots on grade-level-expectations (GLE).   

    • Camps -We anticipate a range of kids programming (with and without parents) taking shape over the years like our Summer Camp. The cooking parts of these camps have been very basic given the limited space/equipment, but have been received very well. We’re excited about scaling these sort of extra-curricular opportunities to help provide more enrichment during the summer and afterschool times.  

Campers at CCUA’s Summer Camp learning how to make their own pesto out of carrot tops they harvested at Columbia’s Agriculture Park

  • Partnerships:

    • Columbia Area Career Center (CACC) partnership expansion. CACC has been cooking for the Harvest Hootenanny for 9 seasons now. Highschool juniors and seniors get real-life experience planning, cooking, and serving a public event, and CCUA gets amazing food from some of the finest young chefs in the area.   

    • The University of Missouri is a big player in education in Columbia. CCUA has worked with a number of departments, professors, student clubs, and UM system divisions over the years.  

      • One such possible angle of partnership as it relates to this teaching kitchen is the need for students in nursing, nutrition, medicine, and other health professions to have a basic literacy of food.

      • Future professionals to really feel comfortable talking about food as a basis of a healthy life, they themselves need to have a personal knowledge about healthy food and the basic steps needed to grow, acquire, cook and consume the foods that will help us live our best lives.   

Columbia Area Career Center Culinary Art students serving a local meal at CCUA’s Harvest Hootenanny to gain hands-on learning skills.

Final thoughts

We foresee a system change opportunity to help people and families make life-style and habit changes in the way they grow, buy, cook and eat their food.  This is exciting stuff that has ripple effects through our personal and national health care costs, and ripple effects through to the ranches, truck farms, and small homesteads across the region.   Food is a powerful tool to build a culture, and if done well, it can build a culture of health and opportunity for everyone involved. 

Donate today to be a part of this Kitchen and the positive impact it can make in the “Food as Medicine” movement

Bernadette Crehan