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Food Education Center

  • Pilot Light: Reintroducing the Language of Food

    Pilot Light: Reintroducing the Language of Food

    For this week’s blog post, we want to share some insight on Pilot Light’s mission and what we aim to accomplish in our partner schools throughout Chicago. Check out this video by Whimsy City Productions and Spring Creative below to hear from our founding chefs Matthias Merges (Yusho, Billy Sunday, A10 Hyde Park) and Jason Hammel (Lula Café), along with Dr. Whitmore, the principal at our partner school Smyth Elementary, just what we mean when we say we want to reintroduce the language of food back into our schools and communities.

    Let us know how you plan to reintroduce the language of food to your families using #languageoffood! If you are interested in bringing the language of food into your schools, please contact us at info@pilotlightchefs.org to find out more on how to get involved.

     

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  • Lifeway Joins Pilot Light to Feed Minds and Fuel Appetites!

    Lifeway Joins Pilot Light to Feed Minds and Fuel Appetites!

    The Pilot Light Chefs were back in the classroom earlier this week, bringing their unique nutrition education program and approach to Chicago-area elementary school students at Disney Magnet II.

    As proud and enthusiastic sponsor of Pilot Light, members of the Lifeway team were on hand to help with chef-led lessons, serve a tasty and nutritious lunch, and speak with students about their experiences.

     

    Learn more here!

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  • Pilot Light Chefs Takeover Classrooms & Cafeteria at Disney II Magnet

    Pilot Light Chefs Takeover Classrooms & Cafeteria at Disney II Magnet

    This week, our Pilot Light Chefs teamed up with teachers at Disney II Magnet Elementary, our founding school, to create lessons that built food into what students were already learning in the classroom.  Even more, the chefs developed and served a delicious, healthy lunch to the students!

    Some of the great chef-led lessons included learned how to write a recipe (kindergarten), regions of the United States and their popular dishes (4th grade), and families around the world and traditional rice dishes (2nd grade).  Along the way, students tasted peapods, succotash, kale, wild rice, roasted sweet potatoes… you name it, they tried it (and for the most part, they loved it!). By teaching the students their regular lessons through food, they not only came away with a better understanding of classroom lessons but an understanding of food and its relevance to their everyday lives.

    For the lunch takeover, our talented chefs tied in what the students were learning in the classroom and put it on their plates. The lunch was a tasty Chicken Hot Pocket (filled with a chicken tikka masala), served with brown rice, and cucumber and carrot sticks. To finish the meal off with a bang, dessert featured a raspberry preserves and kefir panna cotta. We are so grateful to Lifeway for their generous kefir donation to the lunch.  Stay tuned for the recipes and check out all of photos on our Facebook page.

    We had a blast taking over the classroom and the lunchroom for a day. Interested in bringing Pilot Light into your school? Email info@pilotlightchefs.org for more details on how to get your school involved.

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  • Chattin’ with Our Chefs: Favorite Food Movies

    Chattin’ with Our Chefs: Favorite Food Movies

    Image courtesy of Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Pixar Animation Studios.

    Once a month on our blog, we want to give you a backstage pass to our Pilot Light Chefs with our new “Chattin’ with Our Chefs” series. We’ll feature fun Q&A’s that ask our chefs for their advice on all sorts of topics, like how to make better schools lunches or stock a home pantry.  To kick this series off and in the spirit of the Oscars, we thought it would be fun to ask our Pilot Light Chefs to share their top 10 favorite food movies.
    Here is our list. Enjoy!

     

    10. Chef (2014): A comedy-drama about a chef that quits his job at a popular LA restaurant and opens a food truck in Miami with his ex-wife and son.
    9. Tampopo (1985): A comedy about a truck driver who stops into a small noodle restaurant and decides to help their business.
    8. Super Size Me (2004): A documentary that follows director Morgan Spurlock on his social experiment of eating only food from McDonald’s for a month.
    7. Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011): A documentary that follows 85 year-old sushi master Jiro Oro and his relationship with his son and heir of his Tokyo restaurant.
    6. The Cook the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989): A movie about an abused wife and how she finds comfort from one of the guest in her husband’s restaurant.
    5. Step Up to the Plate (2012): A family documentary that follows French chef Sébastian Bras as he prepares to take over his father’s restaurant.
    4. Eat Drink Man Woman (1994): A comedy-drama that about a semi-retired Master Chef that lives at home with his three unmarried daughters and their elaborate Sunday dinners.
    3. The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014): A comedy-drama about a talented self-taught culinary novice who decides to open an Indian restaurant.
    2. Big Night (1996): A comedy-drama about the struggle that two immigrant brothers from Italy go through with opening their own restaurant in New Jersey.
    1. Ratatouille (2007): A fun family comedy about a cooking rat who makes an alliance with a kitchen worker at his restaurant.

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  • A Look Inside One of Our Lessons from a Teacher’s Point of View: Ms. Halligan, 5th Grade

    Our partner schools will start a new round of Pilot Light lessons in the month of February. To kick it off, we want to give you a glimpse on the impact that our lessons have on our partner school students through the eyes of one of our teachers.

    Meet Ms. Halligan, one of the 5th grade teachers at Darwin Elementary. Ms. Halligan has been teaching Pilot Light’s curriculum for two years. During the winter quarter, Ms. Halligan took our “Tea and the Trouble in Boston” lesson and integrated it into her Social Studies lessons. This lesson has students work through a series of activities that depict different tax acts enacted by the British government and argued by the colonists leading up to the American Revolution.

    “Working with Pilot Light has been wonderful. I was able to take the lessons given to me and use them as the structure for facilitating learning within my classroom. This introduction by Pilot Light has been the catalyst to a whole Social Studies unit on Colonization and the American Revolution. I incorporated the lessons supplied, a history textbook and several internet sources, including Schoolhouse Rock!”

    To culminate this series of lessons, our 5th grade Darwin students also participated in a fun lesson with one of the Pilot Light Chefs where they boycotted the heavily taxed “King’s Tea” like the colonists and worked together to create their own brand of tea. “The students were very excited about the culmination with the chef and enjoyed making their own tea!  This has been a fabulous experience and I would recommend Pilot Light to any teacher!”

    We will start back up at all of our partner schools in February with even more engaging curriculum that ties in food and nutrition into their usual school subjects. Next, Ms. Halligan’s students will learn about the migration of people and how hunter-gatherers began learning about agriculture and farming.

    Don’t miss out on all the fun! Please visit www.pilotlightchefs.org/bring/ if you are interested in bringing Pilot Light into your school.

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  • Valentine’s Day Chocolate Panna Cotta Courtesy of Pilot Light Chefs Amy Biller, Matthias Merges and John Vermiglio

    Try making this delicious chocolate treat with your family this Valentine’s Day!

    Yield = 6  servings

    INGREDIENTS:

    2 teaspoons Unflavored Powdered Gelatin

    2 3/4 cups Whole Milk

    3/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons Sugar

    1/4 teaspoon Salt

    6 ounces Chocolate chips

    PREPARATION:

    1. In a small bowl, sprinkle the powdered gelatin over 1/4 cup of the milk and let stand until the gelatin is softened, about 5 minutes. In a medium saucepan, combine the remaining 2 1/2 cups of milk with 2 tablespoons of the sugar and the salt and bring just to a simmer over moderate heat. Remove the milk from the heat and whisk in the softened gelatin mixture until dissolved.

    2. In a large microwave-safe bowl, melt the chocolate chips at high power in 10 second intervals stirring after each 10 seconds to ensure even melting.  Gradually whisk in the hot milk mixture until creamy.  Strain the panna cotta through a fine mesh strainer into a large measuring cup.

    3. Set six 1/2 cup ramekins or small bowls on a baking sheet.  Carefully fill the ramekins with the panna cotta mixture and refrigerate them for about 2 hours, until the panna cottas are firm.

    Optional: Top with mango slivers, like our Pilot Light chefs did!

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