Getting Kids Hooked on Hash

The best parts of our work with Wellness in the Schools are the Cafe Days we do at our partner school, PS 84 in Williamsburg. On these days, we come in and cook a special dish featuring a vegetable that the school’s resident WITS chef, Carly Gould, has been teaching kids to understand. In the past we’ve served roasted carrots with yogurt & coriander, lima beans with pickled onions and sambal olek, and fennel-apple salad. You’d be surprised how many elementary school kids were into those slightly exotic (for 2nd graders) dishes.

This week the featured vegetable was potatoes, and we went for something a little closer to home–and dearer to our hearts: hash. We served 400 kids cheese & arugula hash at lunch and it was by far the most popular dish we’ve done–kids came back for 3rds and 4ths, they asked for the recipe, they told us they wanted to make it at home for their parents. Seeing the kids get excited about it made cooking it all the more fun. The arugula we snuck inside gave some kids pause, at first, but once they’d eaten it almost all came back for more, spicy greens be damned.

ps84hash 

Maybe my favorite moment over the day was listening to one kid trying to persuade another to try it:
“you had McDonald’s hash browns?”
“Yeah”
“These are like those, but waaaay better, because they’re FRESH.”

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