''The thing about produce is, they have it, but they don't take care of it,'' she said. ''They don't water it, and they don't throw away the old, bad stuff.''
"When I came here, I couldn't eat for a week," Ismail, 17, said. "The food smells good, but it doesn't taste good."
Ali and Ismail, who are both originally from Somalia, and many of their fellow students in a gardening and cooking program at Crawford High School in San Diego, grew up in countries where eating food when it's very fresh was a way of life. When they wanted vegetables, someone went outside and pulled tomatoes off a vine or dug potatoes from the earth. When they had a taste for meat, they went to a store and bought part of a cow or chicken that had just been killed that day.
But thanks to the zucchini, basil and peppers they're growing for themselves in a little plot at school, they're recapturing the taste of fresh food and learning to cook healthful American dishes such as zucchini bread, pesto and veggie pizza.
"Gardening is good because you can take control of it and eat it when it's good," Ali said.
Though food seems ubiquitous throughout San Diego, access to fresh and healthful food can depend on where you live. In the less-affluent neighborhood of City Heights, about 25,000 people live at or below the federal poverty line, which is $20,650 for a family of four. In areas where many people depend on public transportation or shared rides, they're more likely to eat what they can find nearby. There's no farmers market.
"It's not just people making poor choices," said Tia Anzellotti, executive director of the San Diego Hunger Coalition. "It's also a fact that they don't have the resources or the access to healthful foods."
Spurred to action by the lack of fresh and organic produce in many less affluent neighborhoods, and inspired by school garden projects such as Alice Waters' Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, Calif., a coalition of social groups are using garden projects as a medium for teaching a range of topics such as food justice and cooking.
They're working to make sure the 2007 Farm Bill that the U.S. Senate will soon take up gives less funding to farmers growing corn and soybeans and more to community projects like these. The House's version of the bill gives $30 million to the Community Food Project but makes the funding discretionary. Activists hope the Senate version will make the funding mandatory.
At Morse High School, also in San Diego, eight summer interns are learning to grow Swiss chard, tomatoes and artichokes using organic farming methods. Julia Dashe, who works at the predominantly Filipino, Latino and African-American school, secured a grant to pay for the program, called the Seeds of Leadership Youth Garden Program.
"There were many kids who said they weren't eating three meals a day - and those were the ones who felt comfortable saying it," Dashe said. "Many don't because there's shame around that."
The students will talk to their neighbors about the importance of healthful eating and urban agriculture. Dashe hopes they will eventually be able to sell the produce they're raising in the neighborhood.
At Crawford High School, 11 students were selected to work in the garden and learn healthful cooking under a program run by the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit organization that provides a range of services to refugees. In the San Diego region, they've visited the Ocean Beach community garden for inspiration and gone to City Farms, an independent nursery with a fascinating array of animals and exotic fruit trees. They are studying for food-handling permits. Since the program is called The Food Justice and Culinary Arts Internship, they're also pondering what food justice means.
"Why is it that in City Heights you can't buy organic food ... and when you go two miles west, there's a Whole Foods or a place with organic food?" said Julia Gundling, a school garden coordinator with the IRC. "Culturally, politically and economically, there are so many ways of looking at food."
"This is so exciting because this has all (sprung) up since February," said Kate Hughes, a community development specialist with the IRC. "I have far too often been frustrated with education because it's embedded in four walls. There's so much you can teach through experience."
Famo Musa wears a black and white head scarf in place of a traditional hijab head covering, a red shirt that says "San Diego" and a long red cotton skirt that skims the dirt. Her outfit isn't what you'd expect for gardening. But she and the other Muslim girls are expected to cover their hair and bodies any time they're outside the house.
They take turns breaking up the clumps of earth. Daisy Doan is using the group's one hand rake, while Musa uses an old piece of splintered wood to claw the earth. Next they'll soak the beds. Ali and Rahmo Muse carry cinder blocks and bags of steer manure up the hill. They arrange the cinder blocks in a V-shape and fill the center with dirt to create more beds that they will fill with muskmelon, watermelon, and pumpkins.
The students have big dreams for their little garden, including adding flowers, medicinal herbs and foods the African girls love, like spinach, potatoes and a mango tree. Every so often, Doan, a native of Vietnam, whips out her black Nokia cell phone and takes a picture of a flower or a vegetable. She misses sugar cane, coconut trees and lotus plant, which has tasty leaves and roots. It was one of the foods her uncle, a farmer, used to grow.
"In Vietnam, I lived in a city," said Doan, 16. "Here I can put myself in a garden and say I did this."
Nicole Wheeler, 16, said her dad was thrilled with the cucumbers and zucchini bread she brought home one afternoon. The cooking classes are in a large, bright, professional-looking kitchen in the City Heights Wellness Center. In recent weeks, students have created hamburgers laced with vegetables and guacamole. Learning cooking skills is especially important to the girls who are Somali because all of them are at the age where they are considered adults and expected to take care of their families.
"Right now, if I go home, I'd have to cook dinner," said Musa, 16. She might make mashed potatoes or a cornmeal dish called ugali with cabbage or green beans.
Muslims follow a set of dietary laws called halal. Forbidden foods include pork and alcohol of any kind - even the sugar alcohol that is used to sweeten many foods. Lisa Vandervort, manager of the Wellness Center, said malnutrition is a bigger problem for many East African immigrants than obesity.
"Kids are afraid to eat because it goes against their religion, and they're afraid to ask sometimes if it's halal," Vandervort said. Faduma Bakar, 15, held up a lemon cucumber that was picked from their garden earlier in the week. She studied it and then confided to Sudi Mohamed that she was not going to eat it. It might not be halal.
"It's from a (vine), so I think I can eat it," Mohamed reasoned aloud. "The only thing we don't eat is pork and alcohol," Muse explained.
Leaving the cucumbers aside, the girls made individual French bread pizzas with the pesto they'd made that day, mozzarella and grape tomatoes. Waiting for the fragrant pizzas to come out of the oven, Ellee Igoe, an IRC community development coordinator, had the girls join hands and share what they were grateful for. Soon the pizzas were done. The room got quiet as everyone picked out her creation and started to eat.
"This food tastes fresh," said Muse, smiling.
Hughes said the cooking classes show that teenagers can appreciate healthful food if they're exposed to it in the right way.
"So many people have stereotypes about young people that they don't want to eat produce and they just want to eat junk food," Hughes said. "When they're in charge of preparing meals and making stir-fries and guacamole, they love to eat the food.
"It's making sure the students have the ability to learn how to cook for themselves. It's a lost art in the schools."
