Five Easy Pieces is a pro bono program of PSGC that brings PPS faculty, staff and administration into the PPS Teaching Kitchens for hands-on, five-senses cooking and dining exploration of fast, frugal, and simple foods using NJ-grown produce featured in the district’s Garden State on Your Plate program.
The Garden State on Your Plate program, introduced in 2010, is the foundational program and leading edge of food systems literacy at Princeton Public Schools. The program brings chefs and farmers into school cafeterias, where all students gather for lunchtime in shifts, to serve up samples of simply prepared seasonal produce. The school-wide tastings illustrate and amplify subject-specific and interdisciplinary curriculum, connect to campus lands and to school meals, and celebrate culture and history of the district’s diverse student body.
This one-evening edible seminar, the completion of which provides Flex Professional Development (PD) hours for faculty, is under the direction of acclaimed chef Chris Albrecht, who has directed culinary efforts at New Jersey’s lauded Ryland Inn, and Eno Terra, and now guides cuisine at the collection of statewide restaurants that include Agricola, the Dinky Bar, and Roots Ocean Prime, all in Princeton.
Chef Albrecht teaches basic and not-so-basic culinary techniques that optimize conversation-stopping deliciousness of five fast, cheap, and easy dishes using the 10 produce items, all of which are grown in each of the district’s Edible Gardens, and, during its spotlight month, appears weekly as part of the National School Lunch Program by Pomptonian Food Service.