Chef Charleen Badman’s Blue Watermelon Project shows children the whole cycle of healthy eating, from planting produce to making meals.
By Madeline Nguyen | Photography courtesy Jill Richards; Digital Sunrise
To her pint-size students, Charleen Badman is the cool, tattooed teacher with a flash of carrot-orange hair who lets them handle kitchen knives. But to their parents, the James Beard Award-winning chef is a magician. She’s the woman who makes their picky kids try foods like napa cabbage – and enjoy it, too.
Badman’s magic is the essence of her nonprofit Blue Watermelon Project (BWP), which links professional chefs with children in schools across Arizona to cultivate healthier eating habits. From garden-to-table cooking lessons to culinary contests, BWP’s goal is to involve kids of all backgrounds in the cooking process and to expand their palates along the way.
“It’s just about being open-minded to trying something different,” Badman says. “I hope that translates into, when they choose something in the lunchroom, being a little bit open-minded to trying a salad or a protein bowl over pizza.”
The 2023-2024 school year has been a period of dynamic growth for BWP, which now brings its services to 30 schools and counting across Phoenix and Tucson with the help of grants from donors like the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation. In BWP’s popular Chef in the Garden program, chefs persuade picky eaters to jump headfirst into what may be uncharted culinary territory for them by guiding them along the entire life cycle of a dish – from plant to plate. Here’s the garden-to-table process.
Step 1
The journey begins where all food begins — the Earth. Each student in BWP’s partner schools receives a kit containing the supplies they’ll need to plant their own food in their school gardens, with the help of volunteers. “The garden part, where they’re actually growing something, it creates ownership,” Badman says. From alienesque kohlrabi to flamingo-pink watermelon radishes, no crop is too unconventional.
Step 2
Once the seeds are planted, the hard work of gardening commences, like uprooting carrots from dirt and aerating the soil with wriggling worms. “[The children] get into the whole process,” Badman says. “I want them to touch and feel and smell because those are all really important parts of it.” Because BWP’s partner schools are located in different parts of the state, the program must factor in different local climates and growing seasons when cultivating crops with the children.
Step 3
Once the crops are finally grown, it’s time for harvest. “When they’re able to harvest something and you can hand them something that they’ve been growing – say, a Swiss chard or broccoli, peas – you can see the accomplishment on their face,” Badman says. But before students actually cook the ingredients, they’ll typically watch a video prepared by a BWP chef like Don Guerra of Barrio Bread or Donald Hawk of Valentine, explaining the steps of the recipe.
Step 4
Now, the little chefs can get to cooking. In this stage, Badman or another chef from BWP will travel to the classroom to demonstrate culturally diverse recipes while the kids follow along. “I love when somebody says, ‘Hey, my grandparents make something very similar to this,’” she says. “They might never see that in their classroom, but they’re able to share with their friends that this is something that is close to them.”
Step 5
Once the meals are cooked, BWP follows up with a reflection period to help students foster mindful eating habits. The chef will typically ask the students a few reflective questions, like, “What did you see? What did you smell? What did you like about it? What was something you didn’t know before you started this?” Badman says. “Being open, being thoughtful, being mindful about eating – those are all good things.”
Step 6
Finally, the students arrive at the end goal of any cooking process: a feast. BWP’s hope is that by fostering a connection between the students and diverse, healthy eating, they’ll carry the recipes and habits they’ve learned into the future. “Yeah, it’s just food, but it isn’t just food,” Badman says. “These are things that roll into other things that are even more important. So, we try to include being healthy, having healthy choices and including more fruits and vegetables.”
