Written by Carson Stehling, Garden Education Intern
Studying how things grow can hugely impact someone’s confidence in the kitchen, and last year interning in The Sylvia Center’s Learning Garden has made this clearer to me than ever. I learned to cook before I connected with my passion for farming, but I didn’t really know how to think like a chef until I’d practiced thinking like a farmer. I could’ve had a head start on understanding the relationship between farm and table. My dad is an amazing cook who owned a restaurant in South Carolina when I was growing up. He also has a green thumb and, for many years, somehow found time to garden on his days off. I helped him in the garden and kitchen enough to know the fundamentals of both areas, but at that age I wasn’t really paying enough attention to see the connection between the two. One of my first realizations when I moved into my college apartment was that, despite being raised with food at the center of everything, I had no idea how to properly feed myself. When I went to the grocery store and tried to pick out ingredients for a week’s worth of dinners, I felt lost. It had never occurred to me to ask how my favorite dishes were prepared, what produce went together, or where the ingredients came from.
It was my first job on a farm that reconnected me with cooking. When I started farming, I started to understand flavor in a different way. Onions and carrots grow together, so they go together; tomatoes and corn ripen and are ready to harvest at the same time, so they naturally make the tastiest salad in the world. I discovered that cooking confidently is often about knowing how to choose ingredients, which I learned to do by learning how to grow them.
This is what eventually made me feel like a chef. Now I cook every day, and I almost always plan my meals around the side dishes, depending on what veggies are ready to harvest. This summer I did a lot of experimentation with tomatoes, making shakshuka, salads, salsas, and tarts. Then, in September, I ate tons of carrots, which used to be my least favorite vegetable. But growing carrots had been a project of mine on the farm, so I was extremely proud of them. Being proud of my carrots made me excited to go home and cook with them.
This is why I love my work at The Sylvia Center. When I’m in the garden with students, tasting something right off the plant, or talking about seeds and pollen, I feel like I’m part of the first step towards them feeling masterful in the kitchen. I love being able to bring produce from the TSC Learning Garden into a classroom and share with the students about the process of growing what we’re eating. But you don’t have to get your produce straight from a farm to have a relationship with your food. Thinking about the people and the land that produces the food you eat every day is important. Understanding where something comes from creates the foundation for thinking like a chef.
Until next time, be powerful in the kitchen!
Carson
