Cooking Alfredo on Classroom Desks: MVPs teach Workshop #2

Chicken.  Broccoli.  Alfredo.  This trifecta of ingredients has long caused Brainfood students to swoon (and sometimes drool) in anticipation of learning how to cook the much-beloved pasta dish.  The only catch to the traditional version dish is the jaw-dropping quantity of cream and parmesan cheese that go into the sauce.  The thick, creamy sauce that we all love often has enough sodium and saturated fat to send a small child into instant food coma – which is to say, the sauce severely compromises the nutritional value of eating the lean protein and fresh vegetable in the dish.  And yet, like any unhealthy food relationship, we just can’t say no.  And that’s exactly why Brainfood MVPS chose this recipe as the perfect candidate for a healthier makeover.

Our version skips out on the cream (138% of your daily recommended amount of saturated fat in just one cup – no thanks!), and uses a little flour and low-fat cream cheese to keep the sauce thick and glossy.  We also perk up our version with lemon zest, white pepper, and garlic, for more flavor and freshness than the typical alfredo sauce.  After a few test batches and recommended recipe tweaks we were pleased with our zippier healthy pasta.  But the real question was would our next audience, the poet-athletes of DC Scores, feel the same way?

If poet-athlete isn’t a term you’re familiar with, it’s ok.  DC Scores runs a pretty unique program that uses soccer, poetry, and service-learning to build students’ physical fitness, school engagement, self-worth, and sense of belonging in the community.  (Building community through service-learning and hands-on activities that are facilitated by caring adult mentors…that  sounds familiar right?)

Quite a bit of time had passed since our first workshop, but when we arrived at MacFarland Middle School, MVPs rediscovered how the sheer energy  of cooking with a new group can turn the process of creating a pop-up teaching kitchen into an exciting challenge.  We kicked off the workshop with a short MVP presentation, including a “How to Measure to Brainfood Way” demo by resident DC Scores alumna, Nnedimma U, but quickly transitioned to cooking.  Did cooking pasta alfredo on slightly tilted school desks faze our new cooking recruits, and send them running back to the comforts of soccer field and poetry book?  Hardly.  As Da’Shia D. recalled, “There was no hesitation.  The DC Scores kids just jumped right in.”  Our middle school-aged participants took the lead on breaking down heads of broccoli into bite-sized florets, whisking the lumps out of the white sauce, and diligently measuring all the ingredients.  Their enthusiasm even took our MVPs by surprise.  As Monicia C. marveled in our recent workshop debrief, “I was so surprised by how happy they were to pitch in.  I never thought that kids would just try broccoli like that.”  And was the pasta that our workshop participants made as good as the original MVPs version?  Some MVPs (who wished to remain anonymous) said that the alfredo made by their DC Scores teams was even better than the batches that MVPs made by themselves.

As we bid goodbye to the DC Scores bunch, some of them taking home pasta to share with family and friends, it felt like our Brainfood-tweaked recipe had passed its first test.  And maybe if we’re lucky,  we also made progress towards another one of our goals as food educators: showing the DC community that eating healthy doesn’t mean saying ‘no’ to your favorite foods; it just means finding a way to say ‘yes’ on your own terms.  We may have to get there one recipe, one workshop, one neighborhood at a time, but this inaugural class of MVPS has shown that they’re more than up to the challenge. 

P.S. Check out the DC Scores write-up too for more participant quotes and Program Director Cory Chimka's take on the workshop.