Volunteers in the garden, Jericho lettuce and workshop celebrations!
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Watermelon Wednesday
January 2026 Issue #16
The second workshop in our School Food Workshop series was a great success! During this session, Elevate Your School Cafeteria Baking, Chef Tracy Dempsey and Chef Charleen Badman shared recipe tips and tricks and offered attendees plenty of hands-on opportunities to try out recipes that can be recreated in their school kitchens. Recipes included butternut squash cranberry streusel muffins, cinnamon butternut squash and apple crisp, spiced butternut squash snack cakes and cheddar bay drop biscuits.
Whether a seasoned pro or just brainstorming ways to begin, all attendees gained knowledge around utilizing local grains, minimizing waste and practical volume baking techniques. We loved meeting all of the hard-working school food professionals, and are looking forward to our next workshop in February!
And speaking of school food...
Feeding the Future is less than three weeks away!
You don't want to miss sampling the creative menus designed by students and professional chefs. Tickets are selling fast!
Students participating in our December Chef in the Garden lesson enjoyed Chef Alyssa's Lemon Parmesan Salad recipe, a light and refreshing salad using locally grown Jericho lettuce from Ocotillo Farm in San Tan Valley, AZ! The simple and delicious lemon dressing recipe taught students about emulsification-whisking vigorously to disperse two liquids, creating texture and combining flavors. Click the button below to watch the video of Chef Alyssa walking us through her recipe, and see below for more information about December's featured chef and farm!
In 2017, Chef Alyssa started her own Native foods business, called Alyssa’s Kosin. Chef Alyssa cooks healthy, nutritious foods that intertwine ancestral Akimel O’odham ingredients and is very particular about where she sources these ingredients from - she loves to use items from within the Akimel O’odham Community.
Chef Alyssa’s passion for Native foods is what drove her to create Alyssa’s Kosin, where she says she is “...just trying to start a conversation around Indigenous foods, ancestral foods, of the Akimel O’odham….and learn different traditional ways of cooking, consuming, and learning how we can do that more day to day.”
Founded in 2021, Ocotillo Farm’s journey began with a simple desire: to cultivate better food for their family and community.
Driven by a passion for sustainable agriculture and a commitment to enhancing the lives of those around them, Ocotillo Farm has grown into a haven for natural, wholesome produce. With each passing season, Ocotillo works tirelessly to enrich the farm’s soil life and manage the land sustainably.
By nurturing the soil, they pave the way for abundant and nutrient-dense produce. Visit Ocotillo Farm at the Old Town Farmer’s Market!
Check out what our students had to say about Chef Alyssa's recipe!
"It tastes like a rainbow!"
- Kindergartener, Borton Elementary
"It prepared me for trying more things like salads and lemon together and I really enjoyed it."
-6th grader, Biltmore Prep
"This is one of the best salads I’ve had in a while and I would love to make this recipe again at home. I really liked working in the kitchen, cutting lettuce and grating cheese. Thank you for sharing this recipe with us, I loved it a lot!"
- 8th grader, Catalina Ventura
Volunteer with School Gardens
Blue Watermelon Project is always excited for new volunteers to support our efforts in the community, and as we jump into the New Year, we are looking for volunteers who are Master Gardeners or have a passion for gardening to help us support school gardens! Interested in learning more or know someone who may be a good fit? Reach out to Erin Fang at erin@bluewatermelonproject.org!
Start Your Volunteer Journey!
Ready to join us? New volunteers can click the button below to sign up for a Volgistics account to see all of the upcoming shifts on our calendar.
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