Local Senior Girl Scout Troop 21133 got behind the scenes of where food comes from on Sunday, April 3, as part of their work on their “Sow What?” Journey. This journey is a collection of activities that help the girls learn about food including all the steps, from growing, harvesting and processing, to packaging, distribution and — the fun part — eating.
At Lickt Gelato, owned by Maplewood resident Margaret Woods, the girls learned about what it takes to make food on a commercial level:
- The importance of cleanliness by wiping everything down with a bleach solution, wearing a hairnet, and washing hands multiple times.
- Keeping proper records by writing down batch numbers from ingredients and times and temperatures of cooked ingredients.
- Measuring ingredients to the gram and learning about tare weight and how recipes need to be followed exactly.
The flavors were voted on by the troop with a eye on keeping it local. The votes were for watermelon and mint, and blueberry (Hammonton, NJ) and lemon balm.
The votes became Watermelon Mint sorbet and Blueberry Lemon gelato. However the girls learned about eating the seasons since the lemon balm wasn’t available in any store and regular lemons had to be used, the watermelon came from a place very far south, and the blueberries, while grown in New Jersey, were frozen.
The girls prepped some of the ingredients, labeled the containers and placed them in the blast freezer.
And while they all got samples of their handy work to take home, they also got to clean up after. Sadly, there are no photos of that part of the process….
Click on any image to enlarge.
