by TAMARA LEIGH
VANCOUVER – Students from Sir Charles Tupper Secondary School tabled a lunch worthy of Vancouver’s fine restaurants to express their gratitude for the products and opportunities afforded by the Take a Bite of B.C. program.
The lunch showcased products provided by B.C. producers and distributors through Take a Bite of B.C. – barbequed salmon, roasted potatoes, melon salsa and a blueberry beurreblanc sauce, and mushroom risotto with roasted parsnips.
Student-chef Elisabeth Rink demonstrated how to melt the butter into a blueberry reduction to make the beurreblanc sauce and talks about the benefits of the program.
“I really like the variety of products that we get through the Take a Bite of B.C. program. We get fruit because in the Okanagan and various parts of B.C. we grow a lot of fruit. We get herbs,” she says.
Her face lights up as she explains how she and her classmates each received their own B.C. farmed salmon to clean, portion and prepare.
“How many 17-year olds can really say I gutted out a salmon today?” she says proudly.
Rink is part of the Accelerated Credit Enrollment Industry Trades (ACE IT) program, a technical cooking program where students earn college credit for work done in the teaching kitchen and through apprenticeships at local restaurants. Chef Dave Snider leads the program at Sir Charles Tupper Secondary.
“Take a Bite of B.C., Agriculture in the Classroom and all the food that we get from the farmers really helps us sustain our programs,” he says. “It can be quite expensive. We do all kinds of things from meat cutting and seafood to sauces and soup stocks.”
The students benefit from the opportunity to work with high end, local products – learning, feeling and tasting what B.C. farmers produce. They get an information sheet about each product with information about how and where it is grown. The meals that the student-chefs make in the school teaching kitchens are sold in the cafeteria.
“We post the products that have been donated and what’s being served that day so the students in the cafeteria know what is local as well,” says Chef Snider.
Take a Bite of B.C. was developed by B.C. Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation in partnership with the B.C. Culinary Arts Association. Forty different suppliers, growers and associations contribute to the program.
B.C. grown products are donated and delivered to participating school teaching kitchens over a four-month period. This year the program was delivered to 37 schools, reaching over 40,000 students and teachers.
“It’s a very positive program,” says Tammy Watson, program operations manager for B.C. Agriculture in the Classroom. “The biggest challenge is extending it.”