Everyone loves latkes (even Santa)

Last spring, during the last week of school, I corralled a handful of second grade boys into planting a bed full of potatoes.  They, to be honest, would have rather been playing tetherball.  But I told them, panic rising in my voice: “but if we don’t plant the potatoes, we won’t have latkes next winter!”  That got ‘em digging.  Everyone loves latkes, even the kids who don’t know what they are.

Truth be told, our potato bed didn’t fare as well as usual and this year’s latke potatoes were storebought.  But the kids did follow the rhythm of it, spring planting for winter food. 

The third grade focusses its learning around Hebrew culture, so this last week before winter break, latkes are always on the menu.  They’ve been learning “Oh, Hanukkah” since kindergarten, so they are well primed by “Gather round the table, we'll give you a treat/Dreidels to play with and latkes to eat…”  Though somehow, the religious significance of the oil and the festival of lights seems somewhat watered down by the proliferation of Santa hats around the table.  Ah, well, we feed them, and some of it they absorb, right?

The Two (no-so-secret) Secrets to making good Latkes

Secret Number One: get the starch OUT of the potatoes! 

Give each kid a good-sized potato to grate.  Have two at a time dump their grated potato into a thin muslin cloth, twist it up and squeeze all the liquid out.  Squeeze hard, then dump now-dry grated potato into a large bowl.  Repeat for each pair of kids.  Meanwhile, discuss all the possible uses for potato starch if you chose to save the “squozed-out” liquid and dry the starch. 

Have each kid beat one egg and add to potato bowl, throw in a teaspoon or so of salt (we used about 1.5 teaspoons per dozen potatoes), and mix. 

Secret Number Two: have the oil HOT!

This means that really, you have to read the kids a story while a parent fries the latkes in an insane frenzy of hot oil and flame.  Remind them of the significance of the oil and the menorah.  Serve those latkes hot off the stove (after a quick drain on paper towels), with the applesauce they made last week.  Keep frying until everyone has had thirds and you are out of potato mixture.

Then, since they gobbled so fast, let them play in the woods until the time for garden class is over.  ‘Cause there’s nothing like muddy feet to add a sense of the sacred into any day.

Pollinating the brain, with mashed potatoes on the side

Jane, the ever-efficient scheduler of garden volunteers, is down here with me getting ready, adding pollinator worksheets into the kids’ folders before class starts. I notice she is getting about twice as many done as I am. “You are so efficient,” I say, admiring. “In this moment,” she answers, and then proceeds to tell me about some research she has been reading about brain function and how there is just so much more going on in our brains than we are conscious of. “So,” she adds, “this is one aspect: efficiency. I also have a totally inefficient aspect which wins out at times. Our brains have more going on than we can imagine.” As we continue our task of opening the folders, unfolding the metal strips, and adding the “choose a flower and draw it, with the pollinator who visits it most often while you are drawing” sheets, Jane illustrates her explanation of the brain’s vast range with a story from last week. She was with two girls, one of whom was afraid of bees, the other of whom was completely unafraid and pointing them out avidly, much to the distress of her frightened friend. Jane is trying, in some enlightened-adult way, to manage this dynamic and make the bees seem less scary, and in the course of doing so she says, “look, they are really all around us,” only to discover that her brain has suddenly allowed a shift in perception: in that instant she becomes aware of a swell of buzzing vibration around her and the air fills with bees, not newly arrived, but newly noticed. And she stands with the girls, allowing them all to feel the wonder of how our very lives depend on these tiny flying insects, and how they are ever-present, physically, here and now, and how we do not always see them even though they are beside us. Did I ever mention that there is magic in a school garden?

And the kids arrive, and draw their flowers, and dig out the potatoes they planted just before school let out for the summer, and peel gigantic sweet cloves of heirloom garlic, and stay past the start of recess as the potatoes took too long to cook, and they want their garlic-mashed potatoes. And we are all nourished.

Garlic-mashed potatoes

Dig up potatoes, all different varieties jumbled together like only a second-grader would plant them. Wash, peel, rinse, and chop into chunks. Carefully place potato chunks into boiling salted water. Meanwhile, peel and slice garlic. Sauté in a generous portion of olive oil and melted soy butter (vegan-sensitive class) until oil is fragrant (that’s when the kids start saying “Wow, that smells GOOD!”) and garlic is browned. When potatoes are cooked soft enough to mash, drain them, put them back into the pot, add sea salt and the oil/soy butter/garlic, and mash all together. Serve large portions and expect many to plead for seconds. Promise to give them the recipe.