Cossitt Garden Club Heads to Prasino

To see the way students in Cossitt Avenue School's Garden Club suck a smoothie down, you'd think it was a milkshake.

"Can we have seconds?" First finishers asked Prasino Chef Nancy Nolan.

"They do seem to like them," laughed Nolan. "And it's nice that it's fresh fruit and yogurt."

The Garden Club , 93 S. La Grange Rd., on Monday afternoon for their first field trip of the year. The recently formed club is getting ready to plant its next round of produce at the educational garden located at . A trip to Prasino offered the students a chance to see what a restaurant like Prasino, which focuses on sustainable, local and in-season food for its menu, can do with this stuff that grows out of the ground.

"[The kids] really get to get their hands dirty [in garden club],"parent and volunteer Laura Reilly said at Prasino. "With this they get to learn in a hands on and meaningful way."

, the garden allows for students to interact with, and grow their own produce. It features a butterfly habitat, a sustainable vegetable patch and a shade garden. Last fall, students harvested their first round of crops, and they're excited to start planting again already.

When I asked one group of students what they'd like to see planted this year, they said broccoli, carrots, potatoes and beets. A look at that list might make you wonder, but now that the students know you can put just about anything in a smoothie, you might be getting some strange breakfast requests at home.

"We like to promote healthy eating and growing your own food here," Nolan said of Prasino.

The trip to Prasino is just the first of many interactions between the restaurant and the school, Nolan hopes.

"We'd like to do a cooking demonstration after they harvest," Nolan said of one possibity.

To show the kids how good eating healthy could taste, a first rate crew of chefs whipped up some tasty strawberry and mango smoothies for the kids, after giving them a tour of the restaurant.

"One girl was kind of shaking her head about mango," Nolan said. "But she tried it and really liked it."

A group of boys who finished their smoothies quickly agreed and seemed to be testing out their vocabulary on me as they shouted words like outstanding, delicious, awesome and simply, "so good!"