Monthly Archives: September 2010

Day 105: salisbury steak

School Lunches, , , , ,
Today’s menu: Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, two slices bread, apple.
The kids eat this as a sandwich, but I eat it like I think I’m supposed to: one sporkful at a time. I never got potatoes before! Remember when I said I thought potatoes would be a good accompaniment to this lunch? I guess somebody was listening! *tap, tap tap* (knocking on screen) I guess someone is really inside my computer!
Not a big Salisbury steak fan. But I ate it along with the apple and everything else.
Almost perfectly square bread!
(Peanut butter from my snack stash. I spread it with the spork)
The trash left over

My husband and me. Tonight. Chatting over the toddler jumping on couch risking life and limb as usual.

Mrs. Q: “Today I had Salisbury steak for lunch today.”
Hubby: “You know that was my favorite meal as a child.”
Mrs. Q, remembering: “Oh yeah…I think you mentioned that before.”
Hubby: “My mom would ask what I wanted for dinner and I’d reply, ‘Salibury steak TV dinner.'”
Mrs. Q: Laughing silently.
Toddler pretends to feed us food, “cold!” “hot!” “brr, cold!”
Hubby: “It was easy for her, just throw it into the oven. They were in foil then. The Salisbury steak was in the triangular part, the corn, the brownie, and the mashed potatoes were in little squares on top.”
Mrs. Q, chuckling: “You’d choose [other amazing food cooked by his mom] for Salisbury steak in a package?”
Hubby: “Yep. Crazy, right?”
Mrs. Q: “I’m blogging this!”

End scene
Just another crazy night in the Q household talking about food (even the toddler)

***

I want to announce the winner of the giveaway of Lunch Lessons by Ann Cooper. I announced it a week ago when Chef Ann’s Great American Salad Bar Project did a guest post. There we 40 comments on that post and the random number chosen was: #15 

Fifteenth comment by reader: cynthiesmom (Please email me at fedupwithlunchATgmailDOTcom with your address and I’ll mail it out to you.)

***

Speaking about Chef Ann, she will be in the Midwest at the 2010 REAP Food for Thought Festival in Madison, Wisconsin (September 24th and 25th). If you live in the area, you might want to check it out! Maybe I could swing a quick road trip up north… Man, I’d love to meet her in person!

Day 104: pizza

School Lunches, , , , ,
Today’s menu: pepperoni pizza (whole wheat/grain crust), fruit cup (pears/pineapple), baby carrots, ranch dressing
Oh hi pizza, we’ve been there done that before, eh? Remember when Brave New Lunch told us pizza like this has 62 ingredients? Oh yes, that was a revelation.
So good, down to the last 62nd filler!

Seriously though, the pizza is bland. In the Spring I thought that eating this much pizza at school would spoil it forever for me. But my taste buds rebounded and I did have pizza over the summer and it was ok. It has to have basil on it though or I’m out.

The “bunny-luv” carrots!? Cute. It made me smile. I don’t remember having that packaging last year. The carrots are definitely a favorite of mine. Unfortunately one of you kind readers had to spoil them for me. Cliff notes: baby carrots are cut and processed from big carrots and the peel is where the nutrition is (who knew?)…also they are rinsed in chlorine, which is probably ok since I swam in chlorinated pools this summer with my toddler. Course I usually didn’t lick myself after my chlorinated bath… Anyway, down they went!

And I drank the fruit cup. I don’t even bother eating the fruit when the best part is drinking the “juice.” Bottoms up!

***

Yesterday I commented that I hadn’t had a quesadilla before and that was in reference to school lunch. I hadn’t eaten one at school before. Certainly I have eaten a quesadilla. In celebration of my successful completion of the first half of the project, I went out and bought myself a real Mexican taco lunch. I love to eat.

Commenting on the quesadilla post one of you kind readers invited me to Texas for a real quesadilla and you’re on! I have never set foot in Texas (unless you count the Dallas airport for a layover). If I have occasion to visit, then we’ll have a real quesadilla lunch together. Homemade tortillas sound like something my soul needs right about now.

(A lunch lady commented on the quesadilla post too and it was very insightful… I love lunch ladies — they tell it like it is!)

***

Although my health report from June was actually pretty good after eating school lunch for six months (sugar went up but cholesterol went down), I did see an allergist in June because I was having some trouble breathing. I chatted with the doctor about my symptoms: every time I was getting sick, it was going to my lungs and sometimes I felt like I had trouble breathing. Allergy testing revealed a pretty severe dust allergy.

At the time of my appointment I was actually sick and so they did some breathing tests and had me take some puffs from an inhaler. I could physically feel the difference in my chest as everything opened up. The doctor prescribed a rescue inhaler. I felt ambiguious about taking it, but I filled the prescription.

My sister has had mild asthma since childhood. I never had trouble breathing until this year. So I have a little family history, but I couldn’t help but wonder, “Are school lunches making it hard for me to breathe? Is there a connection between processed foods and asthma?” Using Dr. Google, I found three small articles. They say that salt is bad for asthmatics. That is one aspect of school lunch not regulated by the USDA. What do you think? I’m probably overreacting.

I’m sick already this week. Last night I had to open up the medicine cabinet and find that inhaler. So I used it for the first time yesterday and then this morning too. I hope I get over this quickly!

Guest blogger: Healthy Schools Campaign (wants your ideas)

Guest Blogs,
In classrooms across the country, teachers are making a difference for kids’ health. Now, our friends at Healthy Schools Campaign (HSC) are gathering innovative strategies, fun ideas and practical tips to help teachers create a culture of wellness in their classrooms. To do this, they need your help!

Share your ideas. Do you have a favorite book you read to your class that includes messages about food and fitness? Have you found a few minutes during the day for a physical activity break? Do your celebrations focus on games rather than junk food? Please take a moment to share your ideas and experiences!

Be part of the movement.  Across the nation, from the White House to the school yard, we’re seeing a movement to help kids live healthy lives. By sharing your ideas, you’ll provide invaluable guidance to other teachers and be a leader in promoting wellness.

Win prizes. When you share your idea, you’ll be entered in a raffle to win fabulous prizes for your classroom, including kits from The OrganWise Guys, Skillastics and  School Health Corp.

Earn recognition. HSC will feature selected ideas in several publications and share them with teachers nationwide. If your idea is used, you will be recognized in HSC’s communications and in any published materials that include your ideas.

Enter today! Click here to learn more and share your ideas. To be eligible for the raffle, ideas must be submitted by Sept. 15, 2010.

Thank you for this valuable contribution for kids’ health!

Day 103: quesadilla

School Lunches, , , , ,
Today’s menu: quesadilla, orange, baked beans, oatmeal cookie

I was given a choice of cheese sandwich (whole wheat bread!) or quesadilla. I decided on the quesadilla because I had never eaten one before. I think it was a good move. The cheese didn’t seem to be as processed as the stuff in the cheese sandwiches I ate last school year. I know that yellowish orange cheese doesn’t necessarily mean less processed, but somehow it seems more natural than the processed cheese sandwiches. And it tasted ok too.

I’m a baked bean fan so they were fine. Still bummed the oranges aren’t sliced up for the kids to eat quickly, but you know I think it’s because there really isn’t that much prep space for that and I wonder if they even have the manpower to chop them.

I had a student puke today though it wasn’t related to school lunch. Puking from illness on the second day of school? That’s gotta be a record!

Getting back to the subject, overall not a bad lunch…compared to others….

***

Hello to all the new readers! Let’s see if I can answer your questions. First, I came up with the idea for the project last year in December when I was working on personal goals for the “new” year 2010. So I am eating school lunches in 2010 so the project awkwardly includes parts of two school years. If I’d had any sense I would have done it over one school year, but it just shows you how un-premeditated the project was.

I still maintain that I couldn’t have done it over one school year because summer break was necessary for my stomach! We also get to see if the meals get better this year compared to last year. I can tell you that the menu looks very similar to last year, but I noticed that many breads and the pasta are specified as “whole grain” instead of white bread like last year.

For those of you new to the USDA regulations, more than two grains per day need to be offered (and those who know better please do correct me – I’m getting fuzzy on this one. The USDA rules are convoluted). So the cookie is the second grain. I guess I’m happy to see the “oatmeal” cookie over the “chocolate chip” cookies of last year. But I do not consider it a grain…hmm… Pizza counts as two grains, which is odd. And sometimes meals randomly include pretzels again to satisfy the extra grain requirement. There is a method to the USDA madness however obscure it may seem.

Some of you commented on the abundance of packaging. That’s part of what shocked me when I first saw these meals. That was not my experience with school lunch as a child. I thought that maybe this was just my district doing this, but in talking to other people I have found that the company that serves these meals is national. A lot of kids in this country (mostly East Coast though, right?) get their food in these odd containers.

The reason? Their school doesn’t have much of a kitchen. Everything is brought in frozen (95% of school food is brought in frozen nationally) and then heated up in massive ovens. Staff has been slimmed as real cooking gets cut from the budget. Aside from the packaging, the food is the same stuff being served all over this country to kids in school. Poor kids and rich ones eat food like this every day.

***

To the “old” readers, thanks so much for hanging in there with me! I’m back in the groove at school and loving life. Let’s finish out this year of school lunches! Yee haw!

(NOTE: This post has been delayed because the screams of an unhappy toddler…probably getting sick yet again…my poor baby)

Day 102: chicken parm – back in the saddle again!

School Lunches, , , , , ,

Today’s menu: chicken parmesan, garlic bread, peas/carrots blend, (red) applesauce, (milk – not pictured as I’m lactose-intolerant for those new to the blog)

Today I guess I’m like Gene Autry strumming a guitar singing “Back in the saddle again.” He’s got a horse and I’ve got a spork!

The garlic bread and the peas/carrots were fine. I couldn’t eat the entire chicken parmesan patty. That’s because this summer I saw this picture of mechanically separated chicken (gross!). When I bit into the chicken patty, it wasn’t a chicken patty. It was this spongy stuff cleverly disguised with crumbs and slightly burnt sauce as chicken. I took a close up of the the patty so you can see the inside:

The lines? “Spork tracks” in the “chicken”

The red applesauce was something else. I would normally eat it, but I just couldn’t take more than a sporkful. Can you taste red dye? Because it really tasted different than applesauce I would eat at home. Sweeter in a way. I guess we do buy the unsweetened, organic version at home (because apples are one of the foods you should buy organic). I couldn’t eat anymore. Normally I’m not a waster, but I am in this case…

How did the kids do after this meal? Well, actually everyone seemed scared straight. It’s a big day, there’s a lot of “new” and all the kids are trying to feel out a new environment. Plus they didn’t get a lot of time to eat it. Lunch is 20 minutes including lining up and things were moving slow today. Guessing from stains I saw on some kids’ shirts I would say they drank chocolate milk, ate applesauce and the garlic bread. Maybe a couple bites of chicken patty…

***

I feel lucky to live in a country that provides free lunch to needy, hungry children. I haven’t said that before, but I believe it. Many poor countries cannot afford to even educate their children and here in the US we provide a free education (and lunch) for anyone even children with special needs. It’s one of the things that makes America as great as it is. “Rags to riches” is part of the mythology of America and it’s built on an American education.

I came from immigrants. My great-great-grandmother sold fish on the street and my grandfather (now age 90) would tease her about it by yelling “fresh fish!” The GI bill sent my grandpa to college and it changed his life and the lives of his three children. Education is everything.

Theses lunches nutritionally “check the box” and empty tummies get at least partially full of calories. I just wish our country could do better: more fresh food and less processed “stuff,” more time to eat, and a little nutrition/cooking education thrown in. It’s time to re-imagine school lunch and value it as a legitimate part of the school day.

Guest blogger: Laptop lunches

Guest Blogs, ,

Improving School Lunches: It Takes a Village
By Amy Hemmert and Tammy Pelstring

Jamie Oliver, Rachael Ray, Chef Ann Cooper, Michelle Obama, these well-respected school lunch advocates are voicing what teachers like Mrs. Q have known for years: the majority of school lunch programs in the US are failing to provide healthy lunches for our kids.

We first became aware of the poor quality of school lunches back when our (now high school!) kids were little. While many parents, teachers, and other school lunch advocates were working to improve school lunch programs for the long haul, we decided to create a more immediate solution that would empower parents with the tools they needed to pack wholesome home-made lunches joyfully and with ease. That’s when we came up with the Laptop Lunches American bento concept.

Featuring 5 stay-fresh containers nestled inside a tray and a set of all-stainless utensils, our bento box allows endless healthy lunch creations from salads, to sushi, to wraps and more. Once packed with wholesome foods, the bento box can be placed inside an insulated mini-laptop case or sleeve, which will keep food fresh and intact until lunchtime.

Because we are strongly committed to providing inspiration and support, each bento set comes with a handy book of creative lunch ideas. And each week, we update our website with healthy lunch menus and photos that will keep your lunches fresh and stress-free. To help jump-start your back-to-school lunch prep, we’ve included a few of our kids’ favorite recipes here.

  
Egg Salad English Muffin: Add some pizzazz to your everyday egg salad.
  • Pile it atop a whole grain English muffin and add a lettuce leaf, some sprouts, or sliced tomatoes.
  • Oranges can be cut in many ways, and they look great when packed with dark green broccoli, red bell pepper, and yellow egg salad.
  • Your favorite dressing will jazz up the veggies as well.

Zucchini Sauté: This garden delight is one of our summer favorites. It’s best prepared when fresh zucchini, garlic, basil, and tomatoes are still in summer abundance. Be sure to try it before fall arrives in earnest.

  • Cook the wild rice per the instructions on the package.
  • Prepare the zucchini sauté.
  • Heat olive oil in a skillet, then add 2 cloves of minced garlic.
  • Sauté 1 sliced zucchini, 2 medium diced tomatoes until tender (but not mushy).
  • Add ½ a can of cannellini beans and ¼ cup chopped basil.
  • Stir to heat thoroughly, then add salt and pepper to taste
  • Top with parmesan cheese and if you like it spicy, add dried, crushed hot peppers.
  • Serve with sliced cucumbers in one container a handful of cherry tomatoes and blackberries in the others.

Check out Laptop Lunches at http://www.laptoplunches.com/ for more great bento lunch box recipes!

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Laptop lunches would like to giveaway a bento product to a lucky reader. To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment below and describe how you would use a laptop lunch bento if you won. I will pick randomly from the comments. If you already won a prize last week, please refrain from entering (thanks guys). The lucky reader will have a choice of any color of the Bento System (purple example below) or the new Bento kit (blue example below):
Bento System (above) and the new Bento Kit (below)
Note to readers: I want change to happen in school lunch served in schools, but I recognize that many parents want to pack to avoid having their student consume school lunch in its present form, to avoid exposure to food allergens, and to even save money.

Guest blog: A Salad Bar in Every School

Guest Blogs,
A Salad Bar in Every School!
The smells of back-to-school: freshly sharpened pencils, old leather seats of yellow busses, chalk dust, and lettuce?  This fall, my foundation’s premier project, Food Family Farming Foundation’s, The Lunch Box is partnering with Whole Foods Market to implement a remarkable new program, which will change school lunch-rooms across the nation – The Great American Salad Bar Project.  With rates of nutrition-related disease and childhood obesity on the rise, now is the time to start making positive change in the way we feed our children. The initial phase of the Great American Salad Bar Project will raise enough money, via local Whole Foods Markets, thru in-store and online donations, to grant at least one salad bar a school within fifty miles of the store.  That’s almost 300 salad bars!  Schools that meet the requirements are encouraged to apply on the Great American Salad Bar Project website for review and will be chosen by a simple set of criteria. 
A salad bar in a school cafeteria provides a healthy option for students on a daily basis.  A typical salad bar will include: fresh multi-colored lettuce, a variety of vegetable “toppings” such as beets, carrots, and jicama, proteins such as chicken, beans, cottage cheese or tofu, whole grains, fresh fruit and healthy salad dressings. One requirement for schools who wish to apply is that they participate in the National School Lunch Program.  The National School Lunch Program is a federally funded program that provides low-cost or free meals to children across the country.  Children who participate in the National School Lunch Program are often most at-risk for the effects of a poor diet. 
School is a sacred space for learning, so why shouldn’t this extend into the cafeteria? School meals should not only provide the nourishment children need to excel throughout the school day, but should also serve as a lesson in making life-long wellness choices. Offering salad at lunch helps to provide this lesson and teaches children to include a variety of fresh vegetables, fruit, whole grains and healthy proteins in their diet.  The salad bar provides an array of options and allows students to try new items on their own.  Often students will make choices from the salad bar and create delicious and colorful dishes to suit their taste.
The facts are simple: this could quite possibly be the first generation of children in our country’s history to die at a younger age than their parents. 
It is predicted by the Center for Disease Control that of all children born in the year 2000, one-third will contract diabetes.  These outrageous statistics can only be stopped by a massive overhaul of the way our children eat and the Great American Salad Bar Project is one giant step in the right direction.
Take this wonderful opportunity to do something good for yourself and your community.  Take a trip to your local Whole Foods, purchase some of the healthy food they offer for yourself and your family, and then donate what you can to the Great American Salad Bar project. Know that with your donation you are participating in an effort to change the future health of our country.
Eat well, use your dollar to vote for healthy food, and help us change the way kids eat across the country for the better.  
To donate online or to find out more about the Great American Salad Bar Project please visit our website at: http://www.saladbarproject.org/

***

Mrs Q here–Over the summer I had the pleasure to chat with Chef Ann by phone. I billed it as a “Q&A” as I had plenty of questions for her, but it ended up turning into a friendly chat. I forgot to take notes, but I left the conversation happy…  and in awe. She is a dynamic woman and I’m so impressed by what she has taken on to make children’s lives healthier through food.

Without notes I didn’t have much of a blog post to write. It’s easy to look up information about Chef Ann and what she is doing now, but I wanted to know more about her as a person, her story. Back when she wanted to be a chef (in the 1970s), it was not the thing people did as it was considered more of a domestic duty. The Food Network had yet to be born (and me too!) to glamorize cooking.

But Chef Ann persisted and made it her life’s work. And look at what she has done as the “Renegade Lunch Lady.” Congrats! Check her redesigned Lunch Box website.

I’m pretty thrilled to hear about her effort to put a salad bar in every school. It is one of the motivations behind putting advertising on my blog: I would love to raise enough money to purchase a salad bar for my school.

In honor of Chef Ann’s hard work, I’m giving away a copy of Lunch lessons: Changing the way we feed our children by Ann Cooper and Liza M. Holmes. To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment on this post regarding your opinion on salad bars in the schools. I never had a salad bar at any of the schools I attended but my husband had a salad bar in his middle school and told me that he loved piling a plate with veggies. Comments will be closed on Wednesday September 8th.