Living Root Garden School • Design • Name: ______________________
🔍 The Case
The case of the dinner that grew itself — tonight's meal is hiding in the garden. Find it and cook it.
Plan the meal around the garden, not the other way around: start with a walk and see what is ready right now — tomatoes heavy on the vine, basil begging to be picked, peppers turning red. Pick one thing fresh (a salad, a salsa), one thing cooked (roasted tomatoes, a stir-fry), and one thing you grew that makes it special, like your herb butter on the bread.
Follow the harvest rules: pick in the morning, when the plants are cool and crisp from the night. Snip herbs with scissors instead of yanking them, and pick tomatoes when they are fully colored and come off with a gentle tug.
Wash everything, always: garden food grows in real soil with real bugs and real dirt, so a good rinse under running water and a rub with your hands is part of cooking, not an optional extra. Clean hands, clean food, clean cutting board.
Know your jobs: yours are wash, tear, snap, stir cold things, squeeze, and taste-test — taste-testing is quality control, and it is a real job. Grown-up jobs are knives, the stove, the oven, and anything hot or sharp.
Ask: What do you think is ready to pick in the garden today — and what meal could it become?
Try: Walk the garden, see what is ready, and plan one meal around it: one thing fresh, one thing cooked, one thing you grew that makes it special. Do your jobs, then eat it together.
Stretch (Teens & Growers ready for more): Cost the meal against store prices and write the recipe in your own words, with the garden jobs and the grown-up jobs marked.
Tell: Fill in the log below — date, what you cooked, what surprised you — then finish this sentence in words or a labeled drawing: “Our meal tasted ___ because ___.”
Date
What I saw
What surprised me
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
🛠️ Build It
Draw your garden meal on a plate, from above — every dish in its place, and a star on the thing you grew.
🗣️ Be the Teacher
Tell someone the harvest rules — pick in the morning, snip don't yank, and always wash — in your own words, no reading off the packet.
🏅 I can…
☐ I can cook a meal from my own garden.
Portfolio check
☐ Guide read
☐ Case solved
☐ Ask, Try, Tell done
☐ Build It filed: Meal plan + recipe
☐ Taught someone
☐ Badge earned: I can cook a meal from my own garden.
Living Root Garden School • livingrootgarden.com/homeschool/ • Free — print as many copies as you like. File this sheet with your portfolio log. Sprouts do the Read, the Case, and Build It; Growers try the Ask, Try, Tell stretch when ready; Teens do the whole packet — including teaching it back.