No processed sugar in these muffins

If you’re trying to reduce the saturated fat and processed sugar in your diet, these muffins definitely fall into the category of “healthy.” Orange juice, apple sauce and the blueberries lend a bit of sweetness. And for fat, we have canola oil, which contains even more mono-unsaturated fatty acids than olive oil.

But we can’t advertise muffins as “healthy” to the kids in our food appreciation classes. The last time we tried, they turned on their heels and ran back onto the playground. No, the best way to market these muffins, we found, is to just have the kids make them. Through the magic of hands-on participation, kids somehow overlook the fact that in this case, a delicious muffin doesn’t have to knock them over with its sugar content.

The only trick to these muffins is assembling a somewhat unconventional list of ingredients. For instance, you may not have oat bran–full of vitamins and fiber–or whole wheat pastry flour on your pantry shelf. But we found these readily available at the local Whole Foods. The blueberries in this case were the frozen variety, a stock item in most supermarkets.

Start by whisking together your dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl: 1 1/2 cups oat bran, 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon salt.

In a separate bowl, beat 2 large eggs, then mix in 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened apple sauce, 1/2 cup orange juice, 2 tablespoons canola oil, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl, just until everything is incorporated. Then fold in 1 1/4 cups blueberries.

Grease a standard muffin tin (we used cooking spray) and spoon in the batter. Scatter about 1/4 cup rolled oats over the tops of the muffins and give them a gentle pat. Then place the tin in a 400 degree oven for 18 minutes.

The finished muffins turn out light, moist and bursting with blueberries. Pour yourself a tall glass of cold buttermilk to wash it down.

Note: You can also add 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnut pieces to the muffin batter for a bit of crunch.

Squeezing water out of zucchini

The secret to a great zucchini bread, apparently, is getting the water out of the zucchini.

You don’t want a wet, leaden bread. And as the kids in my food appreciation classes learned, squash–like most vegetables–is mostly water. Salt or sugar added to grated zucchini penetrates the cell walls on a molecular level, drawing out copious amounts of liquid. Left standing in a colander over a bowl for an hour (or overnight) will produce a cup of water or more from a pound of squash. You can then squeeze out even more with your hands, or by twisting the zucchini in batches in a tea towel.

(One of the kids wanted to taste the water after we’d given the sugar treatment. We did. Not bad! Green and sweet.)

So start your zucchini bread with a pound of squash. Trim off the ends, cut into manageable pieces and grate using the large holes of a box grater. Placed the grated zucchini in a colander set over a bowl and toss in 2 tablespoons sugar. Allow to sit at least an hour–or overnight–then squeeze as much of the remaining liquid out of the zucchini as you can. Set aside.

Meanwhile, whisk together 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt. These are your dry ingredients for the bread.

In a separate bowl, beat two eggs. Add 1/4 cup plain yogurt, the juice from 1/2 lemon (strain out the seeds), 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar and 6 tablespoons melted butter. Combine well. These are your wet ingredients. Stir in the grated zucchini.

Add the wet ingredients to the flour mix and gently combine with a rubber spatula, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl. Pour the mix into a 9-inch by 5-inch loaf pan that has been greased and dusted with flour. (We sprayed with Baker’s Joy).

Place the loaf pan in a 375-degree oven and bake for 55 minutes, or until the top is nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Invert the pan to remove the loaf and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Scraping batter into the load pan takes teamwork

Our kids loved the zucchini bread just as it was. In truth, even though the bread is flaked with zucchini, making it quite pretty, you can’t really taste the vegetable. In an ideal world, you would serve the bread warm, slathered with cream cheese and washed down with a tall glass of cold buttermilk.

Filling quiche takes teamwork

How do you get kids to eat spinach? Make quiche!

Even I was surprised by how eagerly kids took to quiche when it was filled with spinach and mushrooms. Well, not every kid was overjoyed about the mushrooms. Or the spinach. Still, this quiche was a huge hit in our baking classes this week, leaving me to wonder why, in all the years I’ve been teaching food appreciation at a private elementary school here in the District of Columbia, quiche had never made it onto the menu before.

It’s a great project for the kids, loaded with all kinds of kitchen skills to learn.

First, the crust. No store-bought crust for us. The trick to a flaky, delicious, made-from scratch pie crust is to keep the ingredients–especially the butter–very cold and add only enough water to get the flour to bind together. You don’t want to add too much liquid, or work the dough at all. And ideally you’ll want to start on this a day ahead, or at least several hours.

To make one 9-inch quiche, whisk together in a large mixing bowl 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon sugar. Add to that 1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled, unsalted butter cut into pieces. Using a pastry cutter or two knives (most people would do this pulsing in a food processor), cut the butter into the flour until the mix is granular, with a few pea-size pieces. The butter should be thoroughly incorporated into the flour, but you don’t want to work it too much. In fact, when you roll the dough out later, you will see flecks of butter in the flour.

To this mix add 1 or 2 tablespoons ice water. That’s right, we’re dealing with tablespoons of water. Use a spatula to turn and press the flour to incorporate the water. Continue adding water a tablespoon at a time until a dough begins to form. It won’t look like a dough yet, but you should be able to gather it with your hands and press it together. When it just holds together, you can stop adding water. Pour the dough onto a floured work surface, press it into a disk about 3/4-inch thick and wrap in plastic. Store the dough in the refrigerator several hours or overnight.

Pre-bake your crust by again turning the dough onto a floured work surface and rolling it out into a circle large enough to overlap the edges of a 9-inch pie plate. Now, wrap the dough around your rolling pin–dusted with flour–lift and transfer the dough to the pie plate. Press the dough into the bottom edge of the pan. Use a sharp knife to trim away the excess dough from the edges and crimp the edge with your fingers to make a decorative presentation. (We then lined the inside of the dough with aluminum foil and filled the bottom with ceramic pie weights–little marbles that hold the crust’s shape while it’s in the oven. Skip this if you don’t have the pie weights.)

Do try this at home

Bake the dough in a 375-degree oven for 20 minutes, or until it is fairly firm to the touch and beginning to lightly brown. Remove and set on a wire rack to cool.

Meanwhile, for the custard, mix together in a large bowl 2 large eggs plus two yolks. (The kids always have a blast with this. We separate the eggs by cracking them into their cupped hands.) Add 1 cup milk, 1 cup heavy cream. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon white pepper and a generous pinch nutmeg.

Use about 2 ounces each chopped frozen spinach (wrung dry), chopped mushrooms and grated Gruyere cheese. The original recipe I used as a guide for this called for a ridiculous amount of these ingredients. We just eyeballed it, adding only enough to make their presence known in the finished pie. Add too much, and you won’t have room for the egg custard, which binds everything together. As it was, we had some of the egg mix left over.

Place the crust with the filling on a sheet pan and place this on the middle rack of the oven heated to 375 degrees. Only now do you pour the egg mix into the pie shell. You don’t want to be to carrying a shell filled to the brim with egg liquid across the kitchen after all.

Bake for 38 minutes, or until the quiche is firm to the touch and cooked through. Allow to cool for a while–but do try serving it warm. It makes such an impression, fresh from the oven. Serve with your favorite salad, breakfast, lunch or dinner.

It tastes as good as it looks

Coconut cake is a tradition in southern parts of the United States, but it also reminds us that somewhere in the world it’s warmer, even when the snow flies here.

Traditional coconut cake calls for at least two layers. That presented a bit of a problem for our baking classes, since a whole cake made according to the original recipe would have been far more than we could have eaten. I talked about this with my wife, the baking expert in our family, and we decided to cut the recipe in half, but use a smaller, taller cake pan so that we could cut the finished cake in half and still end up with two layers. So instead of baking in two standard 9-inch pans, we chose a single 6-inch pan that’s 3 inches tall.

The only problem with this approach is that it throws the cooking time off a bit. The taller cake takes somewhat longer to cook all the way through the middle. After a bit of experimentation, we came up with an ideal cooking time of 58 minutes in a 350-degree oven. I also placed a sheet of aluminum foil over the cake when there was about 10 minutes left on the clock to prevent the top from browning too much.

The result is just a teensy bit of crustiness around the edges of this cake. But no one notices when the cake is finally frosted. And the finished cake is just the right size for a class of 12 kids, and more than enough for the typical family. Otherwise, you can simply double this recipe and go back to making two layers in separate 9-inch pans.

Start by creaming together 1 1/2 sticks butter (16 tablespoons) and 1 cup sugar. Most people would do this in an electric mixer, but we do everything by hand. I make it easier by allowing the butter to come to room temperature and soften overnight. After incorporating the sugar into the butter, beat at least five minutes with the back of a wooden spoon or a firm rubber spatula until the mix is fluffy and lighter in color. Then, beat in 3 eggs, one at a time, as well as 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract and 3/4 teaspoon almond extract. At this point, the mix will look like scrambled eggs but smell more like marzipan.

Creaming butter and sugar

Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, sift together 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour along with 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Fold about 1/2 cup of the flour mix into the batter, followed by 1/4 cup milk, then another 1/2 cup flour mix and another 1/4 cup milk. Finally, fold in the remaining flour mix until it is just incorporated. Stir in 2 ounces shredded, sweetened coconut.

Prepare your can pan (or pans) by greasing well with butter or oil spray. We also cut a piece of parchment paper to fit into the bottom of the pan and gave it a spray of oil as well. Scoop the batter into the pan and tap it hard on your work surface to smooth it out. Place in the middle of a 350-degree oven and bake 58 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Allow the cake to cool for 20 minutes in the pan. Then use a sharp knife to trace around the edge of the pan. Invert the pan to remove the cake and place it on a wire rack at least an hour to cool. If making a smaller, taller cake as we did, slice the cake cross-wise to create two layers.

Cutting parchment paper

For the frosting, cream together 1 stick butter and 1 8-ounce package cream cheese. As I did for the cake, I left the butter and cream cheese out overnight to soften. Creaming them together with a rubber spatula is easy at that point. Add 3/8 teaspoon vanilla extract and a dash of almost extract. Stir well, then work  1/2 pound sifted confectioner’s sugar into the mix and stir until very smooth.

Spread frosting over one of the cake layers, top with the second layer and spread the frosting all over the top and sides. Sprinkle the top of the cake liberally with shredded coconut and pat more coconut along the sides.

Hard as this may be to believe, some kids don’t like coconut. But the ones who do will love you for making this cake. (So will your adult friends.)

A delicious cake with seasonal fruit

What kind of fruit is seasonal in January?

That’s the question I put to the kids in my food appreciation classes this week. The answer, of course, is citrus fruit. And where can you possibly grow fruit in the middle of winter? That’s how cooking becomes a lesson about geography and  climate. Toss in baking soda, baking powder and buttermilk and you also have a science experiment.

Everyone who tries this cake has the same reaction: “It’s not too sweet.” That’s because the final flourish isn’t a thick layer of sugary icing, but a drizzle of orange and lemon juice with just enough sugar added. It’s an incredibly simple cake with just a few ingredients, but the poppy seeds also set it apart. The kids thought they looked like tiny blueberries, but then they remembered seeing them on bagels. Come to think of it, you don’t see poppy seeds in many other foods.

Start by creaming 11 tablespoons room-temperature butter (1 stick plus 3 tablespoons) along with 1 cup sugar, the grated peel of 2 oranges, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon salt. We grated the oranges on our old-fashioned box grater. It doesn’t take long at all. But you could do the same thing with a micro-plane. And while we did the creaming with the back of a wooden spoon, most people would opt for an electric mixer. Just keep beating until the mix turns a lighter color and becomes somewhat fluffy.

Grating orange peel the old-fashioned way

To the butter mix beat in 2 eggs, one at a time. Then add 2 tablespoons poppy seeds. Mix in 2/3 cup buttermilk, then gently add 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour. Stir, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl, until the flour is completely incorporated.

Grease a 9-inch bunt pan (we used Baker’s Joy) and pour in the batter. Actually, this batter doesn’t really pour. We scraped it out with a rubber spatula, then smoothed the top even. Give the pan a good tap on your table top to help spread the batter around.

Bake in a 350-degree oven for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Invert the pan over a wire rack and let the cake cool.

To “ice” the cake, poke it all over with a toothpick. This will help the orange-lemon mix seep into the cake, rather than running off the sides. Then, in a measuring cup, squeeze out 1/4 quarter cup orange juice and the juice from 1/2 lemon. Add 3 tablespoons granulated sugar and stir until the sugar is complete dissolved. Carefully drizzle the liquid all over the top and sides of the cake. Slice and serve.

This cake would go perfectly with a cold winter’s afternoon tea.

A little taste of Denmark for Christmas

These may be the easiest cookies you’ll ever make. In fact, you might say they’re downright rudimentary. But one of my favorite spices–cardamom–gives these little shortbread nuggets–called pebber nodder in Denmark–a huge lift.

I was looking for something quick and easy for our last baking class before the holiday break. These cookies certainly filled the bill, but they looked a little too plain when they came out of the oven, so we dressed them up with a sprinkling of confectioner’s sugar. They would work great in a selection of holiday cookies. And they get the kids in our food appreciation classes fully involved–creaming butter and sugar, mixing the dough, rolling it out, then taking turning cutting the dough into these little pillow shapes.

Start by creaming 1 cup (2 sticks) room temperature butter with 1 cup granulated sugar. Beat until  the mixture lightens in color, then add 2 eggs, one at a time, beating until the eggs are completely incorporated. We do this by hand in a mixing bowl using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, but of course you can also do it at home with an electric mixer.

Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, whisk together 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon each ground cinnamon and ground cardamom.

Cutting a log of dough into pebber nodder

Add the flour mix to the butter mix and gently blend until you have a smooth dough. Divide the dough into six balls–you might want to roll them in a little flour. Then, on a floured work surface, roll out one of the balls into a long, thin log–about the thickness of a cigar. Cut the log into 3/4-inch lengths and place these on an ungreased baking sheet, leaving some room around each nugget. Place in a 375-degree oven and bake 14 minutes, or until the pebber nodder are firm, the undersides lightly browned. Use an inverted spatula to move them to wire racks to cool.

Working through each ball of dough individually, we filled a total of three baking sheets. In other words, this recipe makes a lot of pebber nodder. As they cooled, we transferred them to a basket where we dusted them with powdered sugar as you see in the picture above.

They are quite delicious. I’ll bet you can’t eat just one!

Former White House aide Anita Dunn now shills for corporate food

How far behind the times are we?

Apparently, it was last October that food policy writer Marion Burros reported in Politico that the White House’s former communications director, Anita Dunn, is now leading the multi-million-dollar lobbying efforts of food corporations trying to put the kibash on Obama administrations attempts to curb junk food marketing to children.

Much has been written lately about how the food industry has pushed back against “voluntary” guidelines on food marketing proposed by a cluster of federal agencies. Now it appears that one of the Obamas’ very own is the chief strategist for the industry assault, having left the White House to join a D.C. lobbying group, SKDKnickerbocker.

Not being a regular Politico reader, I first caught wind of it from Marion Nestle’s blog this morning, where she reports on findings issued by the Sunlight Foundation that food interests–including Coca-Cola and General Mills–have poured some $37 million into the campaign to stop the marketing guidelines.

Burros reported in Politico that Dunn’s turning on Michelle Obama’s favorite project–childhood obesity–did turn some heads, but also did not come as a particular surprise, because she did not embrace the first Lady’s thinking on the subject. You can read that as, Please do not piss off our friends in the food industry!

This sort of revolving door is nothing new to Washington politics, but underscores how corporate forces have aligned against children’s health. Just to show you how incestuous things are in the nation’s capitol, Dunn’s husband, Bob Bauer, is a former White House legal counsel who continues to work on Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has been pushing for years for tougher child nutrition standards, said, “Anita Dunn and her firm should be ashamed of themselves for leading teh food industry’s panicky efforts to quash the Obama administration’s reasonable and voluntary nutrition guidelines proposed for food marketed to children.”

Ricing potatoes for lefse

There could be no greater compliment for our Norwegian lefse than the one we got from our school nurse, Elizabeth, who said the lefse–or potato crepes–we made in our food appreciation classes tasted just like the ones her Norwegian grandmother used to serve.

Who knew? The Norwegians have their own version of a French crepe, except it’s made with potatoes instead of flour and eggs. So instead pouring a thin crepe into a pan, you have to roll it out. Apparently the mark of a truly gifted lefse maker is rolling a perfectly round, paper-thin crepe. For this, Elizabeth loaned us her grandmother’s special wooden lefse roller. The roller is textured, leaving a distinct pattern on the finished crepes.

Otherwise, lefse are fairly easy. There are only only six ingredients: potatoes, heavy cream, butter, sugar, salt and all-purpose flour. The finished lefse are so simple, but delicious and comforting. Sprinkled with sugar or perhaps a dollop of fruit preserves, they make an easy dessert. Or you can stuff them with cheese for a savory snack or side dish.

Recipes vary, calling for more or less potato, more or less flour. I found that 2 1/2 pounds potatoes make plenty of lefse for our needs–about 15 large, finished crepes. We measured the flour loosely, eventually just taking handfuls from the bag until we had a manageable dough that wasn’t sticky.

A day ahead, peel 2 1/2 pounds baking potatoes, cut into large dice and cover with plenty of water in a large saucepan. Cook until the potatoes are tender, then drain in a colander and pass the potatoes through a ricer into a large mixing bowl. Add 1/2 cup heavy cream and 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) melted butter, along with 1 teaspoon salt and 1 tablespoon granulated sugar (omit if making savory lefse). Mix well, cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next day you’ll want to have some sort of griddle on hand along with butter to grease it. The Norwegians have a special electric griddle for this purpose. We made our lefse on our portable butane stove at the prep table so the kids could watch the crepes cook, using for a griddle our cast-iron Mexican comal, essentially a skillet with no sides to interfere with our efforts to get under the crepes and flip them with an inverted spatula.

To the prepared potato mix, add 1 1/2 cups flour and work it in with your hands. Continue adding flour until a soft dough forms that is no longer sticky. You may need another 1/2 cup flour or more for this. Dump the finished dough onto a floured work surface and roll into a log about 3 inches across. You will cut pieces from the log to form individual lefse.

Slice enough dough from the log to make a small fistful, roll it into a ball and, using your floured work surface and a rolling pin, roll the dough into a paper-thin, round (–ish!) crepe. Carefully work an inverted spatula under the crepe, then lift and move the disc to a buttered griddle over moderate heat. Within a minute or two, brown spots will appear on the underside of the lefse. Flip it with the spatula and cook another minute more. At this point you can sprinkle the lefse with sugar (or with grated cheese, if making savory lefse). Fold the lefse in half twice to make a triangle shape.

Finished lefse, hot off the griddle

You can line the finished lefse on a platter to cool. You need do nothing more at this point than serve them, or perhaps dress them with a dollop of lingonberry jam. For savory lefse, you might want to place them into a hot oven to melt the cheese inside.

Lefse are a simple peasant food that must have brought great comfort to Norwegian families during long, dark winters. Elizabeth also encouraged us not to worry too much about rolling our perfectly round ones. She said hers usually turn out more square.

Wire release scoop for making cookies

What’s special about Norwegian Christmas cookies?

They look like ordinary sugar cookies at first blush. But one bite is all you need to tell the difference: These cookies are chewy and full of almond, coconut and oats.

What? You say you’ve never heard of oats in Christmas cookies?

Our food appreciation classes have started their annual baking segment and with Christmas just around the corner I decided to lead off with these cookies so we could serve them at tonight’s parents night dinner, which features a buffet of all the Scandinavian food we’ve been making lately.

As simple as the cookies look, they do require quite a bit of elbow grease if you’re making them by hand. They’re much easier if you’re using an electric mixer. But in our classes, the mixer consists of a wooden spoon and kid muscle.

Start by placing 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted room-temperature butter in a large mixing bowl, alongwith 1 cup sugar and 7 ounces almond paste, grated. For the almond paste, we used the Odense brand, which comes wrapped in foil looking like a small sausage. It’s somewhat soft, so grating it on a box grater takes a bit of work–great if your trying to keep a group of kids busy.

Mix until the ingredients are combined, then add 1 egg plus 1 egg white and beat on high for 3 minute. Picture a group of third-graders armed with a wooden spoon, imitating an electric mixer turned to “high.”

Meanwhile, sift 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour with 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Add this, plus 1 cup rolled oats and 1/2 cup sweetened coconut flakes. Mix until well combined, then form into balls and place on greased cookie sheets.

Using a fine seive for sifting dry ingredients

To make balls out of the dough, we used a 1-inch metal scoop with a wire release. If you have one a little larger, so much the better. It all depends on how big you want your cookies (or what kind of scoop you have on hand). I suppose you could do this with a spoon if you didn’t have a scoop with a wire release. Once the balls are on the cookie sheets, you want to pat them down a little, either with the palm of your hand, or using the flat end of a glass moistened and dusted with granulated sugar.

We then decorated our cookies alternately with red and green sugar sprinkles. Place them in a 350-degree oven and bake just until they begin to show a little brown around the edges, or 10-11 minutes. An inverted metal spatula works best to remove the cookies from the pan and place them on wire racks to cool.

Merry Christmas from Norway!

Congress puts corporate profits over kids' health

Amid all the hysteria over pizza and potatoes this week the mainstream media missed the real story behind the USDA’s embattled school nutrition guidelines by half and mangled the other half badly.

The half they missed: These guidelines [PDF], ostensibly aimed at making school food healthier, were not the creation of Michelle Obama or the USDA. Rather, they were the result of a highly deliberative, multi-year process undertaken by an esteemed scientific body–the Institute of Medicine–to make good on a congressional mandate that the food schools feed children should align with the same nutritional advice the federal government gives everyone else: the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The part the media mangled: “Congress Declares Pizza to be a Vegetable!” Or other screaming headlines to that effect.

Here’s a news flash, folks: Pizza already is considered a vegetable in the federally-funded school lunch program. Or, rather, the tomato sauce on the pizza is counted as a vegetable for purposes of qualifying as a reimbursable “meal.” Welcome to the world of industrially processed cafeteria food.

What the USDA wanted to do was double up on the tomatoes before continuing to give pizza “vegetable” status. But frozen pizza giants such as ConAgra and Schwan Foods objected. Who would eat a pizza with all that tomato paste on it? they asked. So they got their congressmen to put the kibash on that particular rule, and pizza goes back to being counted as a vegetable just the way it is, as well as being counted as a grain.

Let’s see. Now that the dust has settled, maybe it’s time to take a little survey of where, exactly, things stand with these proposed new guidelines–the first update in 15 years–that were supposed to constitute a federal response to our childhood obesity epidemic.

First, the Senate, again playing to the interests of the processed food industry–and to industrial potato growers in particular–axed the USDA’s proposed limit on white potatoes and other starchy vegetables (corn, lima beans, peas) to just one cup per week. Does this mean french fries every day in the lunch line?

Well, it may in fact be a hollow victory for spud lovers. Because what Congress did not do was lift the USDA’s new requirement that schools serve more and larger servings of fruits and vegetables–meaning green and orange vegetables, not white potatoes–as well as legumes, like beans and lentils.

How are schools, on their extraordinarily tight food budgets–less than a $1 for ingredients per meal–supposed to continue serving french fries or any other kind of potato on a regular basis in addition to all those other vegetables? My guess: They won’t. It’s not in the budget. Or, maybe what we’ll see is a nation of school children acquiring a new taste for orange french fries. Say hello to the sweet potato!

What about the USDA’s proposed restrictions on salt? Industry would like to see those disappear. But Congress, in striking a deal behind closed doors, was only willing to go as far as telling the USDA it must certify that it has read the science on the health effects of sodium. The USDA says, Can do.

And the requirement that all grains served in schools must soon be at least “whole grain rich?” (meaning at least 51 percent whole grain). Again, the processed food industry would rather not. But Congress only says the USDA must define “whole grain.” The USDA says, No problem.

For those of you keeping score, that means pizza is back to the status quo, french fries become a budget buster, and the USDA sees clear sailing for salt restrictions and requiring more whole grains. What are we to make of all this, aside from the ugly spectacle of Congress treating children as fungible, as so much less than important compared to their deep-pocketed pals in corporate food?

There’s a fascinating subtext to this story, and it has to do with our attitude toward the schools themselves and their role in feeding children more healthfully. The nation’s 14,000 school districts are hardly innocent bystanders in this dispute. They do not have to serve industrial pizza and french fries to children every day. But many do. They pander to kids’ terrible eating habits and look the other way.

As I’ve mentioned here before, pizza doesn’t have to be junk food. Ann Cooper, the nation’s premier cafeteria reformer, serves it twice-weekly in her menu schemes. But she aims for whole grain crusts, topped with a homemade sauce containing real vegetables besides tomatoes. She does not count the sauce as a “vegetable.” In Ann Cooper’s world, pizza only passes as a grain.

Why do the rest of the nation’s school food service directors need a club over their heads to do the right thing? Aren’t they listening to Michelle Obama?

And what of the first lady? She’s been utterly silent on Congress’ mauling of nutrition rule making. She basked in public adoration when school food reform was flying high, but dove for cover when her  project blew up on Capitol Hill. When are we going to see Michelle Obama visiting one of these cafeterias, sitting down with the kids to sample the horrible food they’re eating?

Now that would make a great photo opp: More fries with that pizza, Mrs. Obama?

As this latest episode amply illustrates, fiddling with nutrition guidelines only gets you so far. Inviting the processed food industry–a group that spent more than $5 million lobbying against the USDA’s proposed new rules–to hold hands and sing Kumbaya obviously is not a winning strategy. When push comes to shove, the corporate boys pull out the brass knuckles.

And the fun may just be starting. The USDA still has to come up with new standards for the “competitive” foods sold in schools, meaning the stuff kids buy in a la carte lines, vending machines and school stores. As part of its spending authorization last year, Congress gave the USDA that particular authority for the first time. You can bet the purveyors of potato chips, corn dogs and Eskimo pies will have something to say about that as well.

If only our leaders in Washington could be honest enough to own their craven ways. But now the whole world sees plainly where things stand. When it comes to a choice between kids’ health and corporate profits, Congress has a ready response: Show me the money!

Update: Watch this hilarious send-up of the piazza fiasco courtesy of Seth Meyers and Kermit the Frog on Saturday Night Live.