Garden State on Your Plate: Posters & newsletters

The Garden State on Your Plate farm-to-school palate education program brings chefs and farmers into school cafeteria at mealtime to serve up sample sizes of very simple recipes made with seasonal and local produce. Garden State on Your Plate informational posters originally were conceived and created by Fran McManus, Princeton School Gardens Cooperative co-founder, former board chair, and coordinator of this farm-to-school tastings program, but now are being expanded and updated by RD Diamond, our graphics designer.

Since its beginning in 2010, the Garden State on Your Plate program has deepened and broadened its reach. Today, it is a monthly, district-wide, k12 interdisciplinary and multi-solving exploration of said produce item that:

• is among those that school-age children aren’t consuming in sufficient quantities, according to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans; 
• illustrates and amplifies curriculum, especially NJ Climate Change Education mandate k12;

and optimizes existing resources to:

• ensure that school meals illustrate and amplify curriculum, especially NJ Climate Change Education mandate k12;
• increase quality of and participation in NSLP by increasing local seasonal produce and decreasing hyper-processed items and items with disproportionate climate impact;
• connect students, faculty, staff and administration to campus lands and natural systems that are prerequisites to all life;
• maximize use of Teaching Kitchens in support of individual agency; and,
• celebrate global demographics of students.

Working with your school and its administration and its school meal purveyor, use our posters and make connections with local chefs and farmers and your school’s food service to host your own Garden State on Your Plate tastings.

Scroll down to view produce items we have featured, some of which are among our state’s top crops, as shown by the NJDA chart at right (click on the image to read more about farms and agriculture in the state).

Images below are PDFs, available for viewing, downloading or printing. Each of the links will lead you to a collection of informational posters plus the displayed vocabulary page – and two posters that may clear the connections of food and climate change, as part of the NJ Climate Change Education mandate. The posters are suitable for display in your own school cafeteria and provide discussion points for elementary school students, grades k-5. Bear with us as we update older poster/newsletter packages and add new produce items: eggplant, peppers, summer squash, cucumbers, and sweet corn!