by Suzanna U.
With Mother’s Day coming up this Sunday, we wanted to share a classic no-bake, no-heat recipe that can be made by children in honor of this auspicious holiday. Who remembers bringing crispy toast, over-sweetened cereal, and lovingly prepared fruit cups on a tray to their mother on a sleepy Sunday morning? If you want to join in the fun and offer a chance for the kids to take charge in the kitchen, check out this no-cook Raisin Bar Recipe.
The recipe is adapted from a dog-eared copy of Cooking With Young Children, put out by the Delaware Valley Association For the Education of Young Children (now known as First Up) in the 1970s. The Free Library’s Youth Services and Programs has long collaborated with First Up on best practices for early childhood education in the Philadelphia area. And here at the Free Library’s Culinary Literacy Center, our public classes often include opportunities for families to get together in the kitchen – both in our industrial-style kitchen classroom and in home kitchens citywide using recipes we develop here at the library. Taking a cue from Cooking With Young Children, we encourage everyone to use this Teacher’s Success Recipe:
Abundance of Courage
Plenty of Patience
Ample Planning
Dash of Humor
Sufficient directions, well understood
Mix thoroughly with an appreciation of children.
Time: Longer than you think.
Temperature: Cool and calm.
Raisin Bars
Ingredients:
Directions:
Wash hands. Place graham crackers in freezer bag and use hands to crush into crumbs.
In bowl, mix graham crumbs, raisins and marshmallows use large spoon. Pour in cream and stir until crumbs are moist. Spoon mixture into square pan and refrigerate. When cold, slice into small square bars using a butter knife (ask for a grownup to help as needed). Keeps in refrigerator for up to 1 week.
Variations: Try chopped dates, coconut flakes, chocolate chips, or roasted pumpkin seeds to the mixture before chilling for added flavor and texture.
Substitutions: You can substitute coconut milk for heavy cream if you wish.
Looking for additional ways to engage children in the kitchen? Check out our cookbooks, for both adults and childrens, for more ideas! For culinary literacy classes, visit freelibrary.org/cook. And THANK YOU to all the mothers around the world who nourish their children year-round and inspire our next generation of eaters to use food and cooking as a vehicle for learning!
by Shayna M.
Summer is right around the corner and the Culinary Literacy Center is looking forward to another season of Summer Thyme Cooks! This year we are offering a week-long library and cooking program for youth entering grades 5-12 , presented by the Nourishing Literacy Kitchen Team.
Summer Thyme students will participate in one full week of programming at Parkway Central Library during the week of July 22, for middle school students, or the week of August 5, for high school students, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.
In addition to spending time in our kitchen classroom, each day will include short visits and activities with different library departments and people who work in the library.
Copies of our featured Summer Thyme book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: Youth Readers Edition, will be available for check out before joining us. We will be incorporating this book into activities throughout the week.
Lunch and snacks are provided, and allergies are accommodated. Recipes are youth-friendly, featuring fruits and vegetables, and practical skill-building. At the close of the week, students will receive a bag of produce celebrating their work, in sharing cooking skills and recipes with their loved ones!
We ask that all interested youth complete an application with their caregiver’s involvement:
Applications for students entering grades 5-8 »
Applications for students entering grades 9-12 »
The deadline for submitting applications is Friday, June 7. We will be in touch with caregivers by Friday, June 15. Spots are very limited. Applications will be processed and prioritized using the following guidelines
Representation from a range of neighborhood libraries: Calling youth from all areas of Philly!
New cooks to this program: If you have not had the opportunity to participate in Summer Thyme Cooks, you are encouraged to apply!
Commitment to be present and on time at Parkway Central Library from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. each day, throughout the entire week: Students and caregivers will be asked to sign a contract. We anticipate a lot of interest in this program. Those who are selected to be involved are ask to be fully involved.
Questions can be sent to Nourishing Literacy Program Manager, Shayna Marmar at marmars@freelibrary.org.
This program is offered on a sliding scale of $0 to $75 per student, for the week. Ability to contribute does not impact the application process.
by Lindsay S.
This past week, the Culinary Literacy Center piloted our very first Spanish-language cooking class: Edible Alphabet en Español! In this class, we used the model of Edible Alphabet: Learn English through Cooking to create a hands-on educational experience for adults interested in learning and practicing Spanish. Participants learned new vocabulary and practiced reading, writing, and speaking in Spanish while making black bean empanadas from scratch.
Thanks to the hard work of our language and chef instructors, library staff, and volunteers, the class was a great success. If you are interested in attending an upcoming Edible Alphabet en Español class, you can join the waitlist for our class on May 21 (which is already sold out) or purchase tickets for the June 20 session, which will feature The World Traveling Trunk from Peru.
Tickets are $30 and can be purchased online. SNAP eligible participants are provided with a free ticket, with advance communication. Please call the Culinary Literacy Center at 215-686-5323 to receive one of these reserved tickets, no questions asked.
Both classes will take place at the Culinary Literacy Center, located on the 4th floor of Parkway Central Library, 1901 Vine Street.
Interested in other opportunities for learning and practicing Spanish at the library? Stop by the information session on Spanish Learning Circles tonight, Tuesday, May 7 from 6:00 pm - 6:30 pm, in the Languages and Learning Center, located on the 2nd floor of Parkway Central Library in the Education, Philosophy, and Religion Department or check out other Free Library Spanish-language programs.
For questions about world langauge learning at the library, please email adultlearning@freelibrary.org.
¡Nos vemos pronto en la biblioteca!
by Kate C.
The Free Library of Philadelphia’s Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (LBPH) and Culinary Literacy Center (CLC) will receive a Community Partner Award from Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ASB) at the Louis Braille Awards luncheon on Friday, May 3.
In its 59th year, the Louis Braille Awards honors individuals and partner organizations that have made significant contributions on behalf of those who are blind or visually impaired. This year’s awards celebrate Accessibility to the Arts in Philadelphia.
Both the LBPH and the CLC have impacted the lives of many of ASB’s clients and their families throughout the partnership between the organizations. In addition to programming in the community and library events, LPBH has instituted an on-site book club for ASB clients, while many ASB clients have participated in CLC programs, gaining lasting skills and knowledge on healthier eating habits.
The Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped – now located at 1500 Spring Garden Street – is part of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress (NLS), and serves Pennsylvania residents who have difficulty reading due to a physical impairment, a reading disability, or a vision challenge. Library offerings include books in Braille, large print books, screen magnify tools, and screen-reading software.
The Culinary Literacy Center, opened in 2014, is a commercial-grade, state-of-the-art kitchen within the Parkway Central Library on Vine Street that serves as a classroom and dining space for Philadelphians. The CLC encourages a love of food and cooking through a variety of free and ticketed programming. It provides literacy training and fosters the development of problem-solving skills through cooking, supporting healthy lifestyles for people of all ages, and a healthy planet for generations to come.
Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ASB) is a nonprofit human services organization that promotes independence and self-sufficiency in individuals facing blindness or loss of vision. Building on a history of nearly 145 years, ASB is the Philadelphia area’s largest and oldest provider of education and training services for the visually impaired. ASB fosters individualized, goal-oriented plans for its clients and works to create strong strategic partnerships with organizations within the Greater Philadelphia Area to provide additional resources and opportunities.
The public is welcome to attend the awards ceremony. Tickets can be purcahsed though Eventbrite.
by Suzanna U.
Here at the Culinary Literacy Center, we use food as a lens to see and experience the world around us. Unfortunately, the food system we take part in can also mirror larger societal inequities. For far too many Philadelphia residents young and old, everyday experiences with food include inconsistent access to adequate nourishment. According to a study released in 2018 by Hunger Free America, food insecurity affects 1 in 5 Philadelphians.
Now in its fifth year, our annual Good Food For All Conference welcomes hunger fighters, food educators, people who are facing food insecurity, and advocates for food access on Thursday, May 9 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The conference includes a wide variety of offerings including food demonstrations, panels, and workshops. Presented by the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger and the Free Library of Philadelphia's Culinary Literacy Center, the conference will offer opportunities to learn about eating well on a budget, reducing food waste, self-care for providers, food workers' rights and more.
We are excited to announce this year’s keynote speaker, Neftali Duran, chef, advocate, educator, and organizer, working toward an equitable food system. Neftali is a Salzburg Global Fellow, and co-founder of the I-Collective, an indigenous collective that promotes a healthy food system that values people, traditional knowledge, and the planet over profit. His writing and culinary projects have been featured at the Smithsonian Native American Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Native American Culinary Association, LongHouse Food Revival, Food52, and the Cooking Channel. He has also been a featured speaker on The Moth Mainstage, Harvard University, Smith College and more. Come learn more about how Neftali’s larger contributions to building equity can impact Philadelphia’s eaters.
Register today for the Good Food For All Conference!
by Violet L.
March 20 is the Great American Meatout – an annual challenge to pass up meat for just one day and give the vegetarian (or vegan) life a try. What you choose to eat is a very personal choice, but if you’ve been contemplating making the switch to a plant-based diet and all its benefits, know that you’ll be in very good company! Here’s a whole shopping cart full of vegetarians and vegans – we’ll just collectively call them "Veggies" here – whose work you can explore at the Free Library while you’re chomping down that veggie burger and coconut milkshake.
So are you in for the MeatOut? The Free Library's got lots of vegan and vegetarian recipe books to get you started (even some for kids), and if you're interested in more reading, check out Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, Melanie Joy's Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, and Eric Lindstrom's The Skeptical Vegan. So what are you waiting for? Get those vegan tacos cranking and let us know how your MeatOut went in the comments below!
by Christine M.
I have a confession to make—I am that friend who always wants to get a trivia team together on a Tuesday night. I’m also that kid who read Trivial Pursuit cards for fun to see if I could guess the answers. And I ask Santa for those one-a-day calendars of random facts every year.
I love learning about something new, especially in bite-sized tidbits. It gives me endless joy that it is socially acceptable to sit around at a bar with some friends and compete with strangers to see who knows the most about baseball history or French royalty.
Despite this love of all things trivia, however, I’m pretty rubbish at actually knowing the answers to most questions. Throw out an obscure Harry Potter or Broadway musical question, and I’m your gal, but my random knowledge of how many points Bulgaria scored in the 1994 Quidditch World Cup rarely comes in handy in your everyday quizzo session. (It’s 160 points, in case you were wondering... and yes they still lost to Ireland. Quidditch is weird.)
As a self-designated trivia nerd, I’m always on the lookout for ways to beef up my knowledge of all things random. So in honor of National Trivia Day, I’ve gathered some tips on how the Free Library supports the trivia nerd in us all by sharing content from some of the top trivia categories. I also threw in some top trivia questions for a little gamified learning along the way!
(answers at bottom of blog entry)
Food
Globe and Jerusalem are types of what?
From classes in the Culinary Literacy Center to cookbooks to a graphic novel about a family caught between the two warring sides of a civil war among people who have artichoke leaves instead of hair, the Free Library has all your food facts covered.
And if you’re looking to brush up on your food facts while surrounded by some real foodie history, Richmond Library is your place. The first incarnation of the Richmond Library was in 1897 as a "Traveling Library" of 300 books in a flour and feed store that was open two nights a week.
Science
Which planet in our solar system has the most moons?
Animals
What is the world’s largest fish?
Movies/TV
In Back to the Future, what does Marty McFly's license plate say?
All those movie trivia questions (or my favorite, audio clips of a movie where you have to name the title!) are where I shine at quizzo, but I can always use a refresher. Luckily, you don’t have to leave your house for this one. With your Free Library card, you have access to 30,000 documentaries and classic movies through the Kanopy streaming service and movies/television shows (along with audiobooks, ebooks, music, and graphic novels) with Hoopla.
History
Who was the 'mad monk' of Russian history?
Though I’m a big nerd for Revolutionary War and World War II history, I also love digging into the history of where I’m living. Parkway Central Library hosts the region’s largest collection of newspapers from the Philadelphia metropolitan area, with over 400 newspapers on microfilm dating back to 1720. If you’re interested in more contemporary history, the newly opened At These Crossroads: The Legacies of Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois exhibition in Parkway Central’s West Gallery is worth a visit.
Music
What is Paul McCartney's middle name?
If your trivia knowledge gap lives in music-land, try becoming a musician and learn by doing! Parkway Central Library’s Music Department has instruments (from guitars to steel drums) available to borrow for free with your library card.
Sports
Which player was the last to hit at over a .400 average in Major League Baseball?
Want a shortcut to the ultimate trivia knowledge? We have you covered there too.
Did I miss your favorite quizzo category? Are you also a hopeless trivia nerd? Let me know in the comments!
Answers:
by Paul M.
Ever wonder what to do with that slightly wrinkled bell pepper sitting in your produce drawer, or that Tupperware of cooked rice? Have you ever felt an overpowering sense of humdrum eating, heated up leftovers? One’s first instinct is to simply throw it away for the sake of saving precious energy thinking about what to do with it next. What you are experiencing is a condition I like to call "Leftovers Syndrome," a sense of not knowing how to prepare or utilize leftover foods.
Extreme cases happen around Thanksgiving.
Do not be alarmed. I am here to alleviate some of your problems, as November 23 just happens to be National Leftovers Day! This unofficial holiday has been designated to be the day after Thanksgiving. Rightly so, it has become the day of creative ingenuity and boundless possibilities. Your friends at the Culinary Literacy Center have a few ideas that we would like to share with you.
Vegetables
Rice
Mac & Cheese
Beans & Legumes
Stuffing (or Dressing)
Cranberry Sauce
Turkey
Don't forget about the unltimate Thanksgiving sandwich, piled high with turkey, stuffing (or dressing), and a wondefrul cranberry mayo!
H a p p y H o l i d a y s !
by Shayna M.
Nourishing Literacy is the Culinary Literacy Center’s school visit program, enjoyed by thousands of Philly students every school year. Hands-on cooking classes connecting to Common Core standards, culinary skills, and nutrition concepts are offered to school students in Pre-K through 8th grade, multiple times throughout the week in our kitchen classroom.
We have launched a series of youth-centered educational videos, designed to prepare students for their kitchen classroom visit. Our first completed video is a handwashing video for our youngest visitors, children ages 3 through 8 years old!
Thank you to videographers and youth mentors, Steve Jackson and Malik Harris, for their wonderful work and care. Special thank you to all of the Free Library families whose children are featured in this video! The kids did a super job of bringing learning to life and making handwashing something that viewers are inspired to do! It is meaningful to have the children of Free Library staff members as the stars of our Nourishing Literacy educational videos.
Our hope is that these videos will not only inspire kitchen safety and an interest in healthy cooking, but also offer another point of connection to the Free Library. The Nourishing Literacy team feels extremely fortunate to be able to encourage and witness our students’ lifelong relationship to the library, from cutting board to library card.
Thank you to all of the departments and department representatives who have enhanced the library experience for our Nourishing Literacy students through enriching activities and presentations including Children’s, Teen Central, Special Collections & Rare Books, Music, BRIC, Security, and CPSD! A recent Culinary Literacy blog post captures one of these great extensions. We are looking forward to continuing this work and to introducing Nourishing Literacy students to even more departments throughout Parkway Central Library!
If interested in learning more about Nourishing Literacy and/or how to involve a child in your life in our program, please email Shayna Marmar, marmars@freelibrary.org, for more information.
by Suzanna U.
When we think of food, many of us recall the well-worn kitchen tables at which our families welcome friends and neighbors to share dishes that tell our stories. As a first generation American, I have long been drawn to the ways in which personal narratives can be told through cooking and food. In my family, stories about celebration and survival alike are inextricably tied in with the bittersweet tastes of those times. Who prepares the recipe and how it is prepared gives way to remarks of how the ingredients have changed across the years and borders and why we eat what we eat now.
Here at the Free Library’s Culinary Literacy Center, our work to serve Philadelphia’s many communities extends to a range of approaches that advance literacy through food and cooking around a communal table. For English language learners, our Edible Alphabet program offers immigrants and refugees an opportunity to build conversational English skills through a series of classes that weave together cooking and literacy.
For a broader audience, we’ve worked with chefs to offer public classes with everyone from the venerable restaurateur Cristina Martinez to bring attention to the work of undocumented immigrants in the food service industry to home chefs who emigrated from Indonesia and Laos and use food as a narrative medium to explore culture and community.
This fall, we’ve partnered with Swarthmore College’s Friends, Peace and Sanctuary project to bring you a three-part Syrian cooking series with family-friendly, hands-on opportunities to cook alongside men and women who came to Philadelphia to make a home with families of their own after repeated displacement. On November 15, we’ll be bringing you Becoming US: Food and Culture, in partnership with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, as all-star chefs Ange Kampar, Ari Miller, and Chris Paul examine how transition and settlement can be experienced while maintaining and exploring cultural identities.
Beyond Philadelphia’s yearly participation in national initiatives such as Welcoming Week, we look to our city’s residents to tell their stories of food and cooking as it relates to where we come from – and where we are going.
What foods tell your stories?
We invite you to the table to share – please join us!
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