Remember when they cooked lunch at school?
Here’s a news flash: The District of Columbia public school system is in the process of ditching pre-made, heat-and-serve meals and converting to fresh-cooked lunches. In some school, the meals will actually be cooked in on-site kitchens.
This move seems to have flown under the radar. But the intel we have as of today is that 74 public schools in the city are involved in the transition from so-called “preferred” meals to “fresh-cooked.” Up to now, lunch had been delivered to D.C. schools in the form of little plastic boxes assembled in a food factory, then warmed in an electric hot box at the school. Kids line up at lunch time and take their warmed boxes, each sealed with clear plastic like something you’d get out of a vending machine.
Of the 74 schools currently involved in the transition, 22 were already equipped with kitchens and now will be making meals on site. The rest–those without kitchens of their own–will be receiving fresh-cooked meals from 11 different high school kitchens around the city.
Say goodbye to all those little plastic boxes. Say hello to actual plates of freshly made food–just like the old days, more or less.
Food service in the District is contracted to Chartwells, a large service provider that also supplies school meals in Chicago and is a subsidiary of the giant, international food conglomerate Compass Group. Chartwells serves approximately 30,000 school lunches here every day. Compass also own Bon Appetit, which provides the meals at universities such as American University here in D.C.
When it comes to institutional food service, it’s not such a very big world after all.
At some point we are hoping to score a visit to one of the D.C. schools where they are actually cooking their own food. Unfortunately, we also hear that part of the change in meal preparation involves switching from re-usable plastic food trays to disposable styrofoam trays. What’s up with that?
Oh, and the lunch menu for D.C. schools today: turkey and gravy with steamed rice, mashed sweet potatoes, “fruit choice,” milk.
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
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