Get your Peanuts! Popcorn! Salads?

Once again Roots for the Home Team will be bringing fresh, local, and youth-grown salads to the Twins stadium. Early this March, Urban Roots interns teamed up with Roots for the Home Team and some of the Twin Cities’ expert chefs for the annual salad creation session.  Roots for the Home Team Director, Sue Moores, gathered Urban Roots, Appetite for Change, and Urban Ventures youth and their food narratives and recipe ideas for a testing and refinement session at St. Paul College.  “Every dish has a narrative,” noted Union Kitchen founder, Yia Vang.  It was up to youth participants to create that narrative by bringing their stories, foods we grow, and favorite flavors together.  This year, youth created three amazing salads that will be for sale at the Twins and Gopher Stadiums this summer: “Ode to MN,” “East Side Pad Thai,” and “Home Run Super Crunch.”

“East Side Pad Thai” is a fresh, crunchy twist to the classic comfort-food noodle dish developed with Yia Vang of Union Kitchen.  The dish is a gorgeous, savory combo of veggies: sugar snap peas, matchstick carrots, baby bok choi, and red cabbage, drizzled with a Pad Thai sesame oil dressing and finished with a sprinkle of cilantro.

“Ode to MN” features all MN grown veggies, raw and finely chopped, mixed with MN barley.  It is dressed with a gorgeous pink, sweet and tangy cranberry vinaigrette and topped with salty sesame seeds.  Target Field’s own chef, Paul Johnson, coached the youth through this recipe creation.

“Home Run Super Crunch” incorporates the signature pickling methods of Chef Shack’s Lisa Carlson and Carrie Summer, with Urban Roots’ home-grown kohlrabi, cherry tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, mint, and green onions, arriving at a tangy, savory, crunchy dish topped with toasted pecans.  Make sure to visit us on the weekends at Target Field this summer (see our calendar for game dates) and enjoy a tasty, fresh salad!