D.C. School Food in ‘Flavor’ Magazine
August 14th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Posted in food news
Processed beef teryaki bites and cooked-to-death veggies
Flavor magazine, covering food news in the Washington, D.C., area, asked me to recap what I’ve learned about the food D.C. serves in its public schools since I first spent a week some months ago as an observer in the kitchen of my daughter’s elementary school. Of course, if you ‘ve been reading this blog, or the Better D.C. School Food blog, you already know the answer to that. Otherwise, you can find the piece under the heading, “The Scary Truth About D.C.’s School Food.”
Mr. Bruske and Co;
I have read the article. I have a couple comments.
First, my wife and I, while volunteering for a community that served several hundred people at a sitting, all you can eat, managed ‘more or less fresh’ cooked food, based on non-discounted SYSCO as the supplier (so nothing you can’t buy at a school) for under $1.35 a head. It is possible but non-trivial. It included coffee and tea, milk, real juice from concentrate, and a variety of other good things. Meat came as fresh or frozen, not processed. Vegetables were mostly frozen, fruit mostly fresh. Frozen vegetables can be great when cooked appropriately.
This food was eaten by professionals (doctors, lawyers, professors, and their families) who had plenty of other options. In short, this wasn’t a soup kitchen. We wouldn’t have dreamed of serving flavored milks – but we did make our own hot cocoa mix.
I’ve seen Jamie Oliver’s mini-series and applaud his basic insights. It was indeed the biggest challenge to figure out the labor piece; we used volunteers, the school districts have to pay people. This is a serious issue. I can’t help but think that if we could get parents involved, it might help somewhat – in every aspect of a school.
I hope you keep working on the system, and get rid of the precooked eggs (pre-broken and pasteurized seems to be fine, in my experience, but scrambling itself is non-trivial and seems to require pan liners or lots of labor, when cooking for hundreds). Keep the frozen veggies.
Thanks.
Slow Cook:
This pic is precisely why I always pack my kids’ lunch. I know most families are on the go and pressed for time but I find it only takes a few minutes at most to make a lunch. It helps to get the kids involved with their own lunches and to make them the night before. We usually throw in raw broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and celery( veggies of their choice) with ranch dressing, then grilled meat from the night before or sliced cold cuts on multigrain bread. Toss in a handful of pretzels, two kinds of any fresh seasonal fruit (loving peaches, plums, nectarines, berries) and a sweet like sugar free jello or handful of cookies. We include a 100% juice box and a water bottle. The lunches are usually completely eaten between the two snack times and lunch throughout the day and no complaints. It’s fairly cheap, especially using leftovers from the night before and since the kids pack it themselves, they have only themselves to blame for their lunches! LOL
Stephanie Jenson