4th week,May-Food sources and processing

Where does food come from and what processes does it have to go through before it reaches our tables?-
These some of the points we tried to discuss upon on this week's session.The importance of farms and the amount of work that goes into getting the final products we buy from our markets.How close and how far are some products from their original ingredients.

We showed the children mustard seeds, mustard plants and the obtainable products like mustard oil and mustard paste as well as wheat berries, wheat plants and flour and explained the stages  of the cycle they go through.

We were lucky enough to have to our disposal a stone hand mill(see pic. above) on which the kids had the chance to experiment and, hopefully, they realized how much hard work is needed to work manually(as many people do in this country).

We then took the particular case of the flour obtained by grinding the wheat berries and discussed the possible ways that it could further be processed.Hence the pasta making session that followed.
You will find the recipe that we used on one of our sister blogs http://homemadewave.blogspot.com/2014/01/homemade-pasta.html

The kids were divide into groups of three, taking turns for whisking, adding ingredients, kneading, rolling and cutting.They followed instructions wonderfully and made their own dough.Since the dough needed to rest for at least half an hour before cutting, I had previously made another dough that they could use right away and they were very excited to take their own dough home and experiment on it once more.

All in all this day was a success and the children have hopefully learnt the value of hard work and were introduced to a skill both enjoyable and useful.