- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
What does it take to win the best-of-show award for baked goods at a county fair?
Well, if you're Angelina Gonzalez, an alumnus of the Sherwood Forest 4-H Club, Vallejo, and now the Solano County's 4-H SET (Science, Engineering and Technology) Program representative, sometimes practice makes perfect, and sometimes perfect doesn't need practice.
Gonzalez's salted caramel butter bars swept all five awards in the adult baked goods section of the 2014 Solano County Fair. Judges first awarded the bars a blue ribbon, and then best-of-division, followed by...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
There’s an old saying that “4-H isn’t just about cows and chickens.”
Well, sometimes (tongue in cheek), it’s also about chili!
As in chili cookoffs.
Every year since 2005, the Solano County 4-H Youth Development Program has sponsored a Chili Cookoff Contest as part of its Project Skills Day, where the youths share what they’ve learned in their projects. The scores of projects generally fall under the wide umbrellas of animal sciences, biological sciences, civic engagement, communication and expressive arts, community and volunteer service, environmental education and earth sciences, health, leadership and personal development, personal safety, physical...
- Author: Rose Hayden-Smith
“The school garden has come to stay.”
In 1909, Ventura schoolteacher Zilda M. Rogers wrote to the Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of California, Berkeley, then the flagship agricultural campus for California’s land grant institution, and a primary proponent and provider of garden education resources for schoolteachers. Rogers wrote in some detail about how her school garden work had progressed, what the successes and failures were, how the children were responding to the opportunity to garden, how her relationship with the children had changed as a result of the garden work, and what she saw as potential for the future.
“With the love of the school garden has grown the desire...
- Author: Jim Coats
Spring is a big time of year for celebrating with a very cheap (cheep?), common, protein-rich food: the chicken egg. And because the hard-boiled egg has a special place at the Seder table and an important role in Easter morning hunts and afternoon picnics, eggs right now are selling like hotcakes. Problem is, the more eggs your market sells, the more likely you are to get them extra fresh, and consequently, the more trouble you're likely to have getting the things to peel when it's time to eat them up.
Chemistry is at the root of the egg-peeling problem: a newly laid egg has a slightly lower, more acidic pH value than the raw egg that you've stored in the refrigerator for a few days. The higher pH of the stored egg allows its...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
When Solano County 4-H’ers compete in their annual Chili Cookoff, part of the countywide Project Skills Day, the competition is as fierce as some of the hot peppers. This year’s cookoff was no different.
When it was all over but the tasting, the “Beanless Babes Do Beans,” a duo from the Maine Prairie 4-H Club, Dixon, won the championship, followed by “The Golden Spice Girls,” a trio from the Tremont 4-H Club, Dixon.
Both teams provided unusual recipes: the Beanless Babes opted for elk burger instead of the traditional beef and named their chili, “Hunter’s Chili.” The Golden Spice Girls used beer, chocolate, coffee and sugar in their chili, naming it “Bad Character Chili.” The Tremont 4-H’ers derived the name from a...