MARK BRODIE: James Beard Award-winning chef Charleen Badman founded the Blue Watermelon Project a decade ago as a way to address many things: childhood hunger, poor diets, a lack of knowledge about how our food grows. And she started it at Echo Canyon School by planting a garden and cooking with the kids.
She was their first chef in the garden, and she still cooks with the kids there today. She knows their names, their stories, the recipes they've liked the most. But this week was their last time cooking in the garden together.
While the Blue Watermelon Project has expanded to more than 50 schools across the state, Echo Canyon is closing its doors, the latest in a string of school closures happening here and across the country. The students will be going to new schools around the Valley, and the gardens and orchards that Chef Char, as they call her, and a team of volunteers and students have cultivated for years could just dry up.
My co-host, Lauren Gilger, and our producer, Amber Victoria Singer, got the chance to be in the garden with them all this week on their last day. Here's a taste of what it sounded like:
KIDS: Double this this, double double that that. Double this, double that. Double double this that. (laughing)
LAUREN GILGER: It’s an unusually cool May morning in the courtyard of Echo Canyon School, and a group of middle schoolers are gathering around a big round table with piles of Swiss chard on it. Chef Charleen Badman is getting them ready to make one of their favorite recipes from years of classes like this.
CHARLEEN BADMAN: Swiss chard pancakes.
LAUREN GILGER: The Swiss chard pancakes are memorable. They’re bright green, surprisingly savory and packed full of a vegetable these kids grew in the garden beds next to them.
CHARLEEN BADMAN: They’re very green. I mean, they’re bright green. That’s why I think they call them the green zombie pancakes.
LAUREN GILGER: But really, they’re cooking these today in honor of Principal Kat Hughes.
KAT HUGHES: This is one of my favorite things on the entire planet to eat, and I love it.
LAUREN GILGER: She’s leaving the Scottsdale Unified School District at the end of this year, following the vote from the school board to close the school she’s ran for the last decade. But she told me she’s determined to end it right.
KAT HUGHES: We decided that we were going to honor our legacy the best way we knew how and to enjoy our last year together rather than wallow in sadness.
CHARLEEN BADMAN: Watch those fingers. Keep them back. Remember: Use your claw.
CHARLEEN BADMAN: I understand there’s budget cuts, but t’s an amazing school, and it’s given so much opportunity and growth for students, and it’s a shame. When I was pulling up, I started to get a little weepy, and I was like, “You got to keep it together.” So—
LAUREN GILGER: Chef Badman says when she was first asked to come cook with the kids at Echo Canyon, she told them one important thing.
(To Badman) For a chef who’s worked at this particular school and in schools around the state for so many years now, you didn’t like kids, right?
CHARLEEN BADMAN: No.
LAUREN GILGER: Wasn’t that your first response?
CHARLEEN BADMAN: That was my first response. If it wasn’t a somebody that I knew that wasn’t a friend that said, “Would you come and do this?” And I did say that. I said, “You know, I just I’m letting you know ahead of time, kind of my disclaimer: I don’t really like kids.”
And I finished the first lessons with the students, and I just said, “How can I come back and do this again?”
LAUREN GILGER: All of the kids here today to make these bright green pancakes were chosen because they’ve been participating in Badman’s homegrown cooking classes here since kindergarten. And talking to them, it’s clear how much this program has impacted them.
CHLOE: My name’s Chloe. I’m in eighth grade.
LAUREN GILGER: And you’ve been doing this program for a long time, it sounds like?
CHLOE: Yeah, I’ve been a part of it since kindergarten.
LAUREN GILGER: Any meals that stick out to you?
CHLOE: Um, well, I really like the Swiss chard pancakes, and I like the I’itoi onion rice. I feel like they were all so good.
EMMANUEL: I remember I made this dish they call like snow pea stir fry, which was really good. I think like everything was my favorite. My name’s Emmanuel. I’m in sixth grade.
JONAH: Jonah. I am in 8th grade. I have been here since kindergarten. It was weird because I remember like a while ago, especially like maybe like a year or two ago, I was really picky. I didn’t like eating new things.
I think this program really helped me experience a bunch of new tastes. I definitely learned about a bunch of new plants. I didn’t know about like Swiss chard, or I remember we did one about squash blossoms last year. I’m like, “I never knew what that was before. I never knew you could eat blossoms!”
EMMANUEL: With this program here at our school, it’s like you get to like try new things, like eating food and like working with other people, even if you don’t like it too, but I liked it a lot here.
ADEEN: My name is Adeen, I’m a sixth grader. I remember one time there was like peach trees outside my classroom, so we got to go and pick them and eat them. There was always a garden outside our classroom. We always got to like play there before we had to go in. We usually like played hide and seek and hid behind the plants.
EMMANUEL: I think the gardens are like really important here.
JONAH: I feel like I’ve seen these gardens in like tons of different shapes and sizes.
CLOE: I remember always walking through the halls and seeing the sunflowers grow really tall.
EMMANUEL: I planted many flowers, and think it was like a potato or something.
LAUREN GILGER: And then you get to eat them?
EMMANUEL: Yeah, then like it just like you make it into something you like a lot.
LAUREN GILGER: So, you’re going to have to change schools next year?
ADEEN: Yeah, it’s scary because I kind of have only ever gone here. I’ve gone here since forever.
CHLOE: I really am sad because it’s been 9 years of me doing this, and it’s kind of like all I’ve known. And then I’m going to high school next year, so it’s — I’m kind of not going to get it either way, but it’s definitely sad that I won’t be able to come back for senior grad walk. I’m happy that I get to participate in this one last time, but it’s sad. Yeah.
EMMANUEL: I wish I could stay here longer because I think it’s a really good school.
JONAH: It’s weird that I’m leaving this all behind and everyone else is also leaving.
LAUREN GILGER: Are you sad to say goodbye to this school?
JONAH: 100%, but it’s just like leaving is — it’s hard.
LAUREN GILGER: What will you miss most?
JONAH: Probably the people.
EMMANUEL: I’ll miss like everything here, like this program here where we get to cook. And I’ll miss a lot of the gardens and all the teachers and my classmates.
ADEEN: I kind of wish I could take all the people here with me because the teachers and all the people here that have been here with me for a long time, it’s kind of like home.
JONAH: It’s a big, like, 300-kid family.
LAUREN GILGER: And as they say goodbye to the program and to their school on this day, Badman says she owes them a lot.
CHARLEEN BADMAN: It’s definitely a passion my staff sees when I come back, and they’re like, “From the person who didn’t like kids, you you are so excited about coming back from a school and what they said, how they responded, the fact that they had this new experience, all of those things.”
LAUREN GILGER: Has it kept you going over the years, like because I mean, it’s a hard job being a chef. Like it’s every day it’s physical. Is this one of the things that’s made you kind of stick with it?
CHARLEEN BADMAN: I think so. I mean, it’s it is, it’s tough. Your body gets really tired. I mean, 10 years ago, I was like, “I’m going to be cooking on the line forever.” And now I’m cooking on the line, and I’m like, “Oh, my foot hurts.”
but I come here and hang out with the kids, and I get so inspired to go back to the restaurant and do dinner service, and it’s just like the momentum of working with them continues on into my work at the restaurant.
LAUREN GILGER: Kids are inspirational.
CHARLEEN BADMAN: Absolutely, 100%. from the things they say to the joy they bring you to how they just, again, they inspire me to want to continue pushing. Like how many more other crazy vegetables can we try? What can I get them excited about that I’m excited about?
LAUREN GILGER: You’re the vegetable whisperer, yep. So, I mean, this school in particular has been special because this is where it began, and I know you do this all over. The program’s not ending, but the school is closing. So I wonder how you’re feeling about that?
CHARLEEN BADMAN: I mean, I’m very sad about that. I wish it wasn’t happening. This school I’ve seen throughout the years has been a different sort of way of teaching a student, and that students that maybe have a harder time have really been able to be successful.
And I know a lot of students that have come from this school that are now from farmers to doctors to nurses. I mean, I was in a store yesterday picking up some stuff and and somebody came up to me and started talking to me, and she said, “Oh, my granddaughter went to Echo Canyon,” and I said, "Well, that’s where I’m going to be tomorrow.”
LAUREN GILGER: What a coincidence.
CHARLEEN BADMAN: Yeah, it’s crazy.
LAUREN GILGER: Tell me about the gardens here in particular because we’re not sure what’s going to happen to them?
CHARLEEN BADMAN: We don’t have any idea. We don’t have any idea. And there’s beautiful trees here. There are pomegranates and Meyer lemon trees and peaches and apples and so many things growing throughout this entire campus. I really hope however they see of repurposing the space, that somebody sees these spaces as an opportunity to continue to have things growing.
LAUREN GILGER: What will you miss most?
CHARLEEN BADMAN: Echo just has a different feeling than a lot of other schools. The gardens are really super important. We had an opportunity at one point where Alice Waters came and saw the campus, and she’s like, “Oh, this is a garden with a school.” And I think that says it all, and the students that are around here being able to share this opportunity. So, yeah, it’s going to be sad.
LAUREN GILGER: Going to miss it all, it sounds like.
CHARLEEN BADMAN: Absolutely, absolutely, 100%.
LAUREN GILGER: All right, you got to serve up some pancakes here.
KAT HUGHES: What do we say?
KIDS: Thank you!
CHARLEEN BADMAN: Enjoy! Bon appétit!
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