Plan Your Weekend: Children Can Tickle Their Taste Buds
Posted in Exhibitions, Programs and Events, The Orchid Show on March 26 2010, by Plant Talk
Delight Your Senses with Chocolate & Vanilla
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Noelle V. Dor is Museum Education Intern in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden. |
As the days grow longer and the first signs of spring emerge throughout the landscape, the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden is heating up with Chocolate and Vanilla Adventures. While this flavorful exploration focuses on the botanical origins of these two popular food ingredients, it also offers a taste of cultural history.
From ice cream and milkshakes to candy and cakes, we learn early on to identify chocolate and vanilla as standards of deliciousness. But there’s much more beneath that sweet surface. Before the rise of dark chocolate as a healthier alternative to common milk chocolate, few people knew that pure cacao (chocolate) is actually bitter. As well, the taste of real vanilla is just as obscure, due to its high cost and limited usage in mainstream food products.
Considering how chocolate and vanilla have been modified, added to, and substituted, it’s no wonder many of us have no clue about their plant origins! As both an educator and a learner at the Children’s Adventure Garden, I’m thrilled this program can bring everyone back to the “root” of the matter, so to speak.
Children are encouraged to put on their science hats and use all five senses throughout the adventure. They explore the life stories of the cacao tree and vanilla orchid, touch and smell the fruits of each, collect seed samples for their field notebooks, and taste raw cacao nibs. There’s even more tasting as children experiment with various flavors of jellybeans and compare two types of hot chocolate drinks.
New this year is a chocolate-and-vanilla plant postcard: Visitors illustrate it by stamping it with leaves, flowers, and fruits; afterward they can write a note to be mailed. And for those craving even more chocolate and vanilla, a visit to the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory will provide up-close views of the epiphytic vanilla orchid and two cacao trees!
“Spring” into action: Come join the fun and tickle your taste buds in the Children’s Adventure Garden. With so many exciting things for children to discover about their favorite treats, Chocolate and Vanilla Adventures is a most delightful program.
For a list of other events during spring break from school, click here.
