The Environmental Charter School runs an Exploratory Cooking Class in which middle school students research a different dish each week. Throughout the week, students shop for ingredients, cook the dish and document the experience in recipe books.  Conflict Kitchen co-taught the class for a week as students learned about the preparation and cultural significance of ogösäse:’, a succotash of corn, beans and squash.

Students shopped for ingredients at the East End Food Co-op before cooking two variations of ogösäse:’ for 80 fourth grade students at ECS, one with an emphasis on traditional ingredients and one that highlighted crops that were introduced to the Pennsylvania region more recently. Members of the Exploratory Cooking Class cooked, served and discussed the dish with the fourth graders and each other.  At the end of the week, students created recipe pages (pictured below). Students have invited Conflict Kitchen to judge an ogösäse:’ competition later this year.