Champlain Elementary School: Mobile Kitchen Cart

Champlain Elementary School: Mobile Kitchen Cart - Initial Grant Award: $5,000 (actual check: $6,685.94)

Champlain Elementary School’s Mobile Kitchen Cart project will assemble a kitchen cart to be used by teaching and food service staff to bring the kitchen to the classroom, as an integral part of Champlain’s broader plan to implement a comprehensive farm-to-school program. The Mobile Kitchen Cart will be designed and assembled in time to be used in classrooms and outdoors in the school garden by the spring semester of 2016. The Cart will be equipped with small appliances – an induction range, electric griddle, food processor, small convection oven, immersion blender, and a hand mixer. It will carry utensils, small-wares, pots and pans, dinnerware, and basic pantry supplies. In short, it will have everything necessary for a teacher and a class of young students to prepare healthy food from scratch.

Hands on learning through the Mobile Kitchen Cart will introduce students to nutritional concepts, influence positive attitudes around food and foster lifelong healthy eating habits. The Cart will connect the garden, where students learn how food is grown, to cooking, where students learn skills and how food is at the heart of our lives and cultures. Additionally, local farmers, chefs, new American members of the community and parent volunteers will be invited to use the Cart to instruct Champlain students in local agriculture, culinary history and cultural nuances present in international cuisine.

2016 Update!

Champlain Elementary School is using their grant funds to purchase a "Charlie Cart," which will be used for food education in the classroom.  The mobile cooking cart underwent an unanticipated redesign during 2016, so the school is anticipating receiving their cart at the end of January 2017.  For more information about Charlie Cart, please view this presentation.