Welcome back! I hope you have all been well even with my absence in the past 3 months. A lot has changed! I began my club and we got compost bins (not buckets) from our school's waste company (Republic Services)!
We left off at the end of my first semester Garde Manger class final which went quite swimmingly if I do say so myself (besides us forgetting the food coloring for our noodles to make it look like the character our dish was inspired by)!
However, we are now after bigger fish to fry in our Advanced Baking and Pastry class. We started off with some basic quick breads, which weren't super exciting, but then we quickly upgraded to laminated doughs (like croissants). Unfortunately, while we were forming the layers in our dough, we had an "extended" fire drill in which we had to wait for a couple hours before being let back into the building. Our layers (of butter) melted, and so our pastries ended up being a bit dense. I also got a scale to start measuring the impact we are making! The following week, we made spritz cookies (a softer shortbread with jam in it) which were one of my favorites from this semester! I also took some photos of Roosevelt Walker Community Center's garden where our compost is used to make healthier soil!
The former Compost Club president also passed the torch on to me! Kaya was the first member to go along with me to the garden!
Recently, we've done plated desserts. The first few didn't turn out so well, but I'm proud of my most recent one before spring break started!
Both of our kitchens also got new compost bins from Republic Services, so we (at least our conservatory) are in compliance with SB 1383, which requires every jurisdiction in California to provide organic waste collection services to all residents and businesses. “Jurisdiction” refers to cities, counties, or special districts that provide solid waste collection services. At first, I thought that this would mean the end of the club, but I would like to continue showing the children at Roosevelt Community Center a continued effort in composting (in hopes of inspiring them to do it as well) and provide food waste to make the compost used for the community center's garden!
If you made it this far and are an OCSA student, feel free to reach out to me at ryan.yoo@ocsarts.net to join the OCSA compost club! See you next year, and thank you for reading my blogs!
love ur blog ryan! i genuinely thoroughly enjoyed reading this even tho i was there for it 🙌
Love the shenanigans! Can’t wait to see what else you have in store.