We Made Applesauce!

Tuesday is an exciting day for fourth graders. It's nutrition day with Mara from Common Threads Farm! 

This week is also the Whatcom Farm to School Harvest Lunch. Thanks to Whatcom Farm to School for the resources we were able to share on our blog. We used the poster below, the PowerPoint, and the Apple Trivia from their materials. 

This month's Featured Item:

In honor of our Featured Item, we made applesauce from scratch! I had no idea making applesauce was so much fun or that it was so easy! 

Thanks to our bloggers: Sarah M., Angelina, Elizabeth, Sebastian R., and Benjamin!

The class is getting ready to make apple sauce for nutrition class in room 12. They cut the apples up with a cutter that cuts out the core and cuts the other parts up. 

First we chop up the apples from the core and into slices.  They are very hard but they made it through. It is a little messy and sticky.  The juice from the apples is getting everywhere.

Once they are finished doing that, they use the corer again to chop them into smaller chunks, (the smaller they are the faster they cook). 

What they did next is they put the apples in a skillet along with ½ cup of water. Daniele is putting the apples in the skillet for one of the groups. While David is stirring the apples in his skillet, Brian is cutting the apple with the apple cutter. Brody carefully pours the water into the skillet.

Now we add half a cup of water in the hot skillet plus the apples go in too!  Students are taking the wooden spoon and mixing the apples in the skillet.  The smell is so rich and very apple.

Then they close the lid to the skillet for about 5 minutes.

Waiting for the apples to cook will take a while.  Ms. Mara, our nutrition teacher, calls every one over to their seat to let the apple sauce to cook. Mara tells us about local apples and how Washington is the biggest apple supplement in the U.S. and she shows us a slide show.  Brian checks in his group to make sure the apples don’t burn. Ms. Mara passes out a sheet that asks questions about apples like “how many does the average consumer eat every year?” Brian answers 10 lbs.

Each person from a group will take out the apples from the skillet.  Once the apples got out of the skillet, the apples almost smell like applesauce to me.  When you mash the apple the apple juice comes all out.

As you mash up the apples the heat starts to raise up your hand.   By the time you open the cinnamon lid the cinnamon smell rises up your nose.  Next,  Izabelle mashes the apples; then lets Hanna go. The room starts to smell of the sweet cinnamon that they are putting in the apple sauce. Yolibeth remarks that it is very hot.

Everyone think that the applesauce is really good but it is a little hot. I can taste the applesauce.

  

While the apples were cooking, we took this Apple Trivia Quiz. Give it a try and see how you do!