I’m now in my last full week of my OSU Extension internship. This summer has flown by with so many fun events and learning experiences. I can’t believe my internship is almost finished. Throughout this summer, I have had the opportunity to help with and plan many projects. I got to assist with a Farm to School Camp. I got to help teach kids about healthy eating, gardening and making some Food Hero recipes. I started this project right at the beginning of my internship and it taught me a lot about Food Hero and the vast range of topics SNAP-Ed covers.

I have also had the opportunity to help with teaching the Growing Healthy Kids curriculum in the Hermiston Library. This project was run by the Hermiston SNAP-Ed team, but I was very excited to be able to assist in the class. This class was unique compared to the other events I participated in because it was usually the same families every week. This meant we could start to develop a relationship with these families and see them grow and get more comfortable with the class.

I’ve also had the opportunity to hand out free food samples and educate the public about Food Hero at both the Pendleton Farmers Market and the Milton-Freewater farmers market. I’ve always loved attending the Pendleton farmers market, so getting to hand out free food samples was a very fun experience. I got to choose the recipes, make the food, make handouts of the recipe and hand out the food samples to the public.

The project that I’m the proudest of is handing out free food samples at the summer meal site in Pendleton. For this project I picked all the recipes, made all of the handouts and handed out the food samples by myself. I decided to do an around-the-world theme for the food samples for the month of July. I wanted to show that you can edit and combine Food Hero recipes to make dishes from all over the world, and I wanted to introduce people to flavors and new recipes. I also wanted to show people that you can make interesting meals while on a budget. I love cooking and creating recipes, so I really loved this project.

Overall, I feel so proud of all my work with OSU Extension this summer. I was able to help and take the lead on such a variety of projects. I want to give a huge thank you to Shevon Hatcher for knowing the answer to every single question I could ever think of; Maria-Ximena Williams for letting me take the lead on projects while also always being there to support me; and Carolina Muniz for including me in some of Hermiston’s projects.

-Madeline Breiling