A Healthy Snack for Tommie Barfield’s Junior Gardeners

If you want to encourage your children to eat more veggies, a simple homemade salsa served as a healthy snack dip option might be the answer. For the Tommie Barfield Elementary School (TBE) Junior Gardeners after school enrichment program, growing your own veggie and tasting it raw is nothing new.

In late January, the students participating in the Calusa Garden Club sponsored after school program harvested the vegetables they had planted in their Earth Gardens. This was the exciting part—to harvest and to taste raw herbs and vegetables they had planted in October.

In Mid-February, with the help of their Calusa Garden Club mentors, the students got to taste homemade salsa made from the fresh vegetables and herbs they planted in their garden.

If you want to encourage children to eat their veggies, salsa is a simple and healthy dip option. Store-bought salsa might be overwhelming for young taste buds. Replicating the fresh vegetables and herbs the Junior Gardeners grew in their Earth Boxes, the Calusa Garden Club mentors mixed together a non-spicy kid-friendly salsa dip—one in red and a batch of “Salsa Verde.”

For the red spicy tomato salsa, CGC members used fresh tomatoes, onions, chili peppers (jalapeño) and lime juice. For spices, they used salt to taste, pepper, oregano and cumin.

The green sauce, or Salsa Verde, used fresh green tomatillos, chili peppers, cilantro, onion with salt to tastes. These were kid-friendly salsa with a nutritional boost and it was presented to the gardeners as a healthy afternoon snack option with corn tortilla chips.

Both salsa recipes used simple ingredients that taste delicious and even picky eaters can’t resist. Just toss all the ingredients in a food processor until it is chunky—in whatever way you like it. No chopping or lengthy food prepping.

In October, the Herb Garden group planted chives, beans, sage, thyme, mints and oregano. The Salsa, Salad and Stir-Fry Garden group planted tomatoes, swiss chards, sweet peppers, basil, broccoli. The squash group had insects in their garden, but they did grow healthy onions. Tasting their veggies raw without condiments such as melted cheese or salad dressing was a new experience for most of the students.

After tasting the two types of salsa, the TBE Junior Gardeners had to vote for their choice. Red or Green Salsa—which did they prefer? The vote came up unanimous for Red Spicy Tomato Salsa because it had an “exotic” taste. The Salsa Verde, or green tomatillo salsa, tasted too much like “vegetable.”

The TBE Junior Gardeners planted a new set of vegetables for the spring season—which they were going to harvest in May, but with school closing indefinitely, harvest time is uncertain.