After discovering earlier this year that the “fresh cooked” meals being served in D.C. schools were actually industrially-processed convenience food, I went looking for a school district that was really making food from scratch. I turned to Ann Cooper, the “renegade lunch lady” famous for advocating healthy school food made with fresh ingredients. Cooper this past [...]
After spending hours sorting chicken pieces my first day on the job in the Berkeley school system’s central kitchen, I got a break. “How would you like to serve the kids at lunch?” asked Joan Gallagher, the sous chef in charge of kitchen production. “It’s the most exciting part of the day. You’ll get to [...]
Until five years ago, all of the food served to children in Berkeley, CA, schools was highly processed. One of the primary goals of the initiative to improve Berkeley school food was to eliminate processed foods and switch to meals cooked from scratch using fresh ingredients, including local and organic produce to the greatest extent possible. [...]
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.
What's in your turkey? We killed and butchered more than 80 birds on the farm of Mike and Michelle Klein in Prince George's County. Thankfully, Michelle did the gutting. Unfortunately, Mike bought his turkey chicks earlier than usual and they did not stop growing. Our prize for helping was a carcass that weighed nearly 40 pounds. It barely fit in the oven. Here, Mike is subjecting a slaughtered bird to the "magic fingers," a machine with a nubby, rotating barrel that removes most of the feathers. 
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