Monthly Archives: January 2011

Guest blogger: Catalyst in Minnesota

Guest Blogs,
I think you’ll enjoy the cute video at the bottom of this post. It was sent to me by Catalyst. I asked them to submit a little introduction to their organization. I love what they do! (Note: there’s loud music at the beginning so turn your speakers down) 

Catalyst Cooks up Healthy Change
Catalyst is a statewide movement of young people based in Minnesota working on promoting healthy eating and nutrition education. We use hands-on advocacy and activism to spread our message.

Since students eat at school five days a week, creating healthy school lunch items is an important focus for us. Recently, we worked with a great group of students at Henry Sibley High school in Minnesota, the school’s food service staff, and a local chef, to come up with a new, nutritious school lunch menu item. After brainstorming a bunch of ideas, we came up with a plan. The students then helped cook a great Greek meal, and served it to their peers. It was an awesome experience for all.

We created a video about this experience so we could share it, and perhaps inspire other students to bring about healthy change in their own schools. Check it out below, and visit bethecatalyst.org to learn more.

Lunch Wrap Up #3 (and a survey)

Packed lunches
Since the end of blogging my school lunches, content here has been a bit of hodge-podge. I’ve blogged a bit about everything (lunches, food, ads, personal stuff, book club, etc).
I’ve been thinking that maybe I should start another blog, a personal one. I’ve been developing it on the side. Many of you are here for the school lunch information. Considering recent developments, it seems to make sense to keep this blog aligned with my original purpose. I can put some of my other crazy ideas on a different blog. But I would mention it here in a one liner — “today I blogged about this over there, click on the link if you want to read about it.”
I’m curious and would love your opinion so I put together this survey. Please click here to take survey and answer just six questions. Thanks!
Without further delay, here are last week’s lunches (as usual they are gluten free and dairy free because of both of our tummy issues):
MY SON’S LUNCHES
MONDAY
Jasmine rice, sweet potato fries (from a bag), coconut milk yogurt
applesauce, mandarin orange slices, chopped chicken sausage, snack bar, bag of crunchy green beans

The daycare menu on the same day was cheese ravioli, bread, diced pears, green beans with snacks of fruit and ice cream. I have confirmed that the daycare serves all the kids ice cream as a snack when it’s listed on the menu. I didn’t want to believe that was true. Actually, I just confirmed that today while on a playdate with my son’s three closest daycare pals and their moms. They are not happy about it. We’ve all made a recent transition to a “big boy room” and the changes have been hard to get used to…for everyone. (Only one of the moms knows about the blog, the two others know I have an exciting “side project.” I bring people into my inner circle by wading in with them first. I can’t just drop a bomb on them. It takes weeks to bring people up to speed and sometimes it’s still hard to process everything that happened last year. You and me both!)

Anyway, one of the moms is going to write a letter about how she feels about the menu (this is one of the moms who doesn’t know about my online identity). I encouraged her even though I’m not sure she’s going to get much traction. I know that I was told that I needed to provide food for my child if I wanted him to eat something different than the menu. Additionally, I ended up having to provide an official doctor’s note to opt out of the daycare food. Ah huh. His own mother couldn’t pack a lunch and snacks without doctor’s approval.

Anyway my husband made jasmine rice again. It was great. Some of you asked for a recipe. He photocopied it from the library and I can’t figure out which book it came from. I want to give credit where credit is due. It’s called “Caju Pullao,” but I can’t find an online listing for a recipe with that name. Anyway, it was good.

My husband bought sweet potato fries in a bag at the store. In and of itself, not a bad purchase, but now that I can make these at home myself, it’s not a convenience item we need to purchase. They were fine.

I pushed the limits of the daycare rules by sending my son with chicken sausage. I was told no sausage due to fears over choking. I never knew how serious that was until an ER doctor commented on the blog about seeing kids choking at the ER on graps. The daycare menu often offers “diced ham,” so I thought if I chopped up the chicken sausage into little cubes maybe, just maybe, I could get away with sending that. No one said anything so I think I was ok. Phew! He didn’t eat much of the sausage though.

TUESDAY
Roasted chicken, carrots, potatoes with rice, raspberry yogurt, sliced pears, snack bar, pretzels
The daycare menu was ground beef, rice, bananas, diced carrots with snacks of yogurt, and pretzels with cream cheese. I’m using Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution cookbook for the roasted chicken/vegetables recipe, but instead of a whole chicken, I just used about eight drumsticks. They were soooo tasty.
 WEDNESDAY
 
Tomato soup, baked lamb (take two), yogurt, mandarin orange slices, “rice vegan” cheese,
silver bag with crackers, snack bar, and the rest of the crunchy green beans.
My husband made that baked lamb dish again with onions and a yogurt sauce and this time he didn’t burn it. I know it looks like poo in the photo, but it turned out to be fantastic. I’ll have to see if he can find the cookbook where he got all of these recipes. The prep was outrageous, working late the night before to prep the meat. But I know it was worth it. He told me that getting it right was a huge confidence boost.
Daycare menu was American cheese sandwich, tomato soup, mandarin oranges, peas with fruit to drink and cheese and crackers. The mom that is really pissed about the ice cream is also mad that her kid got processed cheese twice in the same day. No joke, right? 
THURSDAY
 “mac and cheeze” with peas, two hard boiled eggs, pears, passionfruit yogurt, bar, applesauce

Hello monochrome, yellow meal. At least it didn’t taste boring as these are favorite foods of my son. Daycare menu was diced ham, mashed potatoes, appleasauce, green beans with snacks of fruit and ice cream.

FRIDAY
applesauce, mandarin oranges, pita bread, sardines (!), corn and plain rice, chocolate yogurt
(I ended up putting the bread in a snackTAXI)
I’ve been eating more salmon and sardines because I’m trying to get my Vitamin D levels to go up. My son saw me eating sardines in the kitchen and demanded some. I offered sardines to him a long time ago and he refused them. But when it appeared like Mommy was hiding a food from him, well then he had to have some. So I sat down with him, I showed him how to take the bones out (fascinating for a two-year-old), and he  gobbled down 1.5 sardines. Ever since then whenever I’ve asked him if he wants to eat sardines with Mommy he says, “cited!!!” (excited) while smiling and waving his hands around. So I sent sardines in his lunch. I bet his childcare providers were shocked!
The daycare menu was ground beef with pasta in a cheese sauce, bread, diced pears, diced carrots with snacks of yogurt and fruit. Lots of beef, lots of wheat, lots of milk…repeat…
I’m going to write a letter to the daycare and ask them to survey parents about their food preferences. I’ve been taking my son there for 18 months and I’ve never completed any kind of survey.
MY LUNCHES
MONDAY
Amy’s pizza, salad. Not pictured: six cookies and my husband

Notice my son got a packed lunch on Monday, but I had a home lunch? Yep. He went to daycare while I stayed home for MLK Jr Day. Even better? My husband had Monday off too, which came as a surprise to both of us. Monday was a very nice day indeed. I loved eating lunch with my husband and without our son. It’s a rare treat, but wonderful to have adult conversation. Of course our conversation is all about our boy, but still.

TUESDAY
Roasted chicken drumsticks, carrots, potatoes, rice, mandarin oranges, pictachios, bar

I like baking more than I like frying. Roasting and baking in the oven is just more tasty. On Friday night, we did salmon with just olive oil and salt. Amazing.

WEDNESDAY
tomato soup (like my son), chicken drumstick, carrots, potatoes, onions, oranges, bar

Yum! I don’t need variety.

THURSDAY
“mac and cheeze” with hard boiled eggs, mandarin oranges, bar
That pasta is really good. Love me some eggs too.
FRIDAY
tuna salad in a container, pita in a bag with spinach leaves, mixed up yogurt, oranges, bar
When I open up a yogurt for my son and pour it into a container, there’s some left over, which is often not enough for me to save for my own lunch. So I just scarf it down for breakfast. There was enough of the chocolate yogurt left so I dumped it into a container and swirled in some raspberry — terrific combo. I spooned the tuna into the pita and we were off and running!

So there you go!

Open thread: Your favorite lunch is…

Open threads,

I have to tell you that although I find packing to be a hassle, I absolutely love to eat my own lunch. I treasure it. I feel special when I open up my lunch box and find something I packed for myself. Rediscovering lunch has been wonderful.

Friday was pizza day and in the teacher’s lounge there was a teacher eating it. I could barely look at her. Been there done that — 29 times to be exact.

What’s your favorite thing to eat for lunch? What was your favorite thing to eat as a child for lunch? I don’t know if I can nail it done to one lunch. But this week I enjoyed tomato soup one day and yesterday I ate tuna. Comforting. When I was a kid I loved bologna sandwiches, whole wheat bread, little bit of mayo, and a crisp piece of lettuce on top. Those were the days before organic, back when food was just food. Simple pleasure of a sandwich.

(I’m going to share pics of our week in lunches in a later post. It’s nap time and I need to do some stuff. Are you sure you still want to see what my son and I are eating? Let me know if they are boring to you and you want me to stop!)

Hello Friday

Miscellaneous

Thank you to everyone who congratulated me on the book! After I pushed “publish” yesterday, I sat here staring at my computer…lost in thought. Then today an article on CNN.com (with a really cute quiz) went up and wheeeeee. It’s official: I have lost the ability to concentrate.

I picked my son up from daycare and while driving home, he said, “I want moogis!(music)” So I turned on the radio. It was U2, my favorite band – I love Bono. Cue a smallish teary episode. I’m a such a sap!

Exposure like that brings wonderful things, but also some criticism. If you stop to read some of the comments on that CNN article (all 1,000 of them), so many people support reform. But some people don’t believe that schools should be paying for school lunches at all and that people should start packing lunches for their own kids.

In the past, I’ve blogged about how my own dad felt similarly. Today I got the following email from a reader:

I understand that the public schools are providing low nutrition food to the school children. But hasn’t it crossed your mind that the parents of these children can pack lunches for their children? If parents collectively make their kids pack their lunches, then the school cafeteria will not have any “customers.” Stop complaining, just do!

[…]Americans think they are entitled to good nutritious food in the free public school they send their kids to. “I am a tax paying citizen, my kids deserved nutritious food!” If you expect other people to teach (babysit actually, in certain parts of the nation) and feed your child, what else is your role as a parent?? You are only a landlord.

When someone suggests parents “just pack,” they assume there is healthy food in the house, the parents have some idea about nutrition, and they have the time. In our country, 43.6 million Americans live in poverty. How many of them are children? By chance, have you ever read the statistics on alcoholism? Not pretty. Some 14 million Americans are addicted to alcohol or abuse alcohol. One in seven Americans is on foodstamps. How many of them are parents just trying to get by?
 
I think about the financial struggles of the parents of my students. Moms and dads working night jobs, factory jobs, two jobs… Packing lunch? They’re trying to find time and money to grab dinner and breakfast.
 
I pack for my son at daycare and you know what? It’s a commitment. I have to wake up early to assemble his lunch and sometimes even cook before work (fun!). This morning my son woke up when I did, which meant I didn’t have that chunk of alone time to work quietly in the kitchen. So it was a big challenge to get both his breakfast and his lunch together, even with my husband’s support. Mornings are nuts around here.
 
The School Nutrition Association was interviewed for the CNN article and I wasn’t surprised by their comments. Yep, I’m pretty sure they hate me. But you know what? We actually share the same goals: kids eating well at school! We know that packed lunches often are nowhere near as healthy was what they could get in school. And frankly, the school needs the money from the lunch program.
 
I got a lot of touching comments over the past twenty-four hours. Oh great, I’m getting verklempt again…  But this one stands out in light of the “just pack” email:

As a child, I ate free or reduced price lunch meals throughout K-12. In college I had enough left over money from financial aid and loans to support a very bare-bones diet typical of many college students. Now, finally in the real world, I discover that I have no idea how to shop for real groceries or how to cook a healthy meal. One recipe called for lentils, and I had to Google what they were. I didn’t realize til I was 23 that I hadn’t been eating real food my entire life. I hope changes to school lunch menus can address this kind of problem. Us poor kids really aren’t getting real food any other way.

Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s the kids like you who inspired me in the first place.

(Tomorrow I’ll have the regular “lunch wrap-up” with the pics of my packed lunches and my son’s — Have I said it before? I’m really liking eating my own lunches!)

I guess I have some news…

The book
I don’t know how else to say this.

I’ve been working on a big project.
Gulp.
It’s actually a book…
Over the past six months, every spare moment of my time was devoted to writing. One of my friends asked, “How is that humanly possible with a full-time job, a toddler, and a daily blog?”

It wasn’t easy, but I loved writing.
Well, I worked seven days a week; I worked through the holidays. And, luckily, I didn’t suffer from writer’s block. How could I? There is so much to tell. So much to reveal…
Aside from talking about the school lunches and the kids, how I survived the year and more about Mrs. Q, there is a guide for school lunch reform that is uniquely my own. The book is a story about one person— me — doing something because I cared enough to take action. And then, I give you some tips on what you can do in your community.
Every time I read a few pages, I chuckle. Although I take this issue very seriously, I used humor to tell my story. Food can be funny, especially school lunch food!
I don’t have all the details yet, but the book scheduled to be published later this year by Chronicle Books. This whole thing came as a happy surprise, but it is a logical continuation of the blog’s campaign to raise awareness about school lunch.

Oh yeah, and then I will come out, too…

Thank you so much for what you have contributed to the blog project. There is no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be where I am today if you hadn’t helped me along, guiding me with comments and teaching me with emails. I’m grateful that we all care about the food kids eat at school and I hope that my book contributes in a meaningful way.

Now I’m going to go find a nice paper bag and use it to breathe.

Titanium Spork Award – Two Acceptance Speeches and One Poll

Spork Award,

Titanium Spork Awards are given monthly to people working towards better school lunches in the best way they know how. The readers nominate recipients and then vote on the winners.

I have put up a poll based on your nominations for December’s Titanium Spork Award. Please vote!

I’m running a little behind schedule. Here are the acceptance speeches from two of last year’s winners:

September 2010 Winner – Dr. Susan Rubin

I want to thank you so very much to all of you who voted for me to receive the September Titanium Spork award. It feels good to be recognized for the work I’ve done with raising awareness of the school food issue.

Having more than a decade under my belt doing this work, I guess you could say I’m an elder in the school food movement. It’s not a glitzy or glamorous position to be in, but it is worthwhile and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I don’t have a salary, Better School Food is an all volunteer 501c3 organization. My work as a school food activist has been very idealistic and altruistic. I never got a book deal, or even a day’s worth of pay, for the Two Angry Moms movie that featured my work. What I did receive was satisfaction of knowing that I inspired and supported people across the country to take a stand for children’s health.

While school food has been a big piece of my life for many years, this year, 2011, I’m feeling called to a bigger, even more scary issue. The combination of climate change/ peak oil and economic instability will impact everything. Especially everything we eat. I am extremely concerned that food security will be a far bigger issue than childhood obesity in the years to come.

It is my lot in life to be ahead of the curve. I remember trying to convince school administrators that declining children’s health and childhood obesity would be front page news and could bankrupt our healthcare system. I was one of the few people speaking publicly about these unpleasant topics.

Years later, they now realize my prediction was not so crazy after all.

Today, as I read about the floods in Australia, last summer’s record heat in Moscow and massive flooding in Pakistan and so many other instances of “global weirding”, I realize that this weather will ultimately impact our food supply.

Last year as I wondered why the heck BP would drill for oil 2 miles underneath the gulf of Mexico, and now as I watch oil prices climb above $90 a barrel, I ask myself at which point our food system will collapse? Our food system is heavily dependent upon easy, cheap fossil fuel, but the oil left in the earth is no longer easy to get and no longer cheap.

Just like with school food, I now see the writing on the wall: We have to create a smaller, diverse and more resilient food supply. To create that better food system, we need to raise the Food IQ. This is not about calories, fat grams and carbs, it never really was. Nutrition has been a distraction from the really important piece: We’ve gotten too disconnected from real food and where it comes from. We need a garden in every school for more reasons than obesity. Gardens are the answer to our current and future problems.

The more kids and teachers who can learn how easy (and fun) it is to grow food, the better chance we’ll have of feeding ourselves locally in the years ahead as climate change becomes obvious and fossil fuels become even more expensive and not so readily available. I know that may sound crazy, just like childhood obesity did 10+ years ago when I talked to school administrators.

As a reader of Mrs Q’s blog, I already know you care about our kid’s future. What can you do to take the next step to help pave the way for a more food secure system that will nourish them? Here are a few ideas:

Check out the Nourish curriculum ( link: http://nourishlife.org/curriculum.html ) that Mrs Q blogged about. Download the curriculum, buy the DVD and create a school or community event to share the info.

Read and/or watch The No Impact Man (link: http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/ )

Get involved with your local Slow Food chapter. (link: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ )They are working towards a food system that is good, clean and fair. Start a Slow Food in Schools project in your school or community.

Get growing! Grow some herbs in a sunny window. Dig up part of your lawn and grow some veggies. Join a community garden, support your local farmer.

Thank you again, MrsQ and your readers for the lovely spork! It will bring a smile to my face every time I use it.

October/November 2010 Winner – Ed Bruske

I am extremely grateful for being awarded not one, but two titanium sporks by readers of the “Fed Up With Lunch” blog. Being a citizen journalist engaged in covering school food issues on a daily basis is a lonely business. Being recognized for the work that I do is more important than you know in fueling my ongoing pursuit.

I fell into this role accidentally when I was given a chance to observe first-hand how the food was being prepared at my daughter’s elementary school here in the District of Columbia. It was quite a shock to me to see how bad the food was, just blocks from the White House where Michelle Obama is waging her anti-obesity campaign. After seeing kids as young as five being fed Apple Jacks cereal, strawberry milk, Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins–the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar–first thing in the morning, I had to wonder what kind of adult minds thought this was appropriate food for children in the middle of an obesity epidemic.

I was also disappointed to see how little interest the mainstream media show in school food issues. Unfortunately, the general public has a rather simplistic idea that all the program needs is more money from Washington. In fact, there are many serious and nuanced aspects to the federal school meals program that deserve our sustained, in-depth attention. School food consultant Kate Adamick, for instance, is showing how to capture millions of dollars in school district programs simply by eliminating a multitude of inefficiencies. Other districts have made school food healthier without spending any extra money by eliminating sugary products and other junk food. Still others have found ways to marshal local community resources to make vast improvements to their cafeterias.

In short, I think precious time and effort is wasted waiting for Washington to solve the school food dilemma. Michelle Obama and bloggers such as Mrs. Q are doing invaluable work maintaining public awareness. We all need to educate ourselves on the subject of what really makes the school meals program work–or not work–and imagine new ways to make it better.

Jamie Oliver is in LA

News

I’ve been reading about how Jamie Oliver is having trouble getting an audience with the folks at LAUSD. Tough crowd over there. Although the district representatives say they don’t want to allow him to reorganize their kitchens because they don’t want “the drama,” they have created a heck of a lot of it over the past week. You’d think they’d be familiar with movie crews and reality shows.

Change is hard, but it’s not every day that Jamie Oliver shows up and tries to help. If you want to sign a petition encouraging the school board to reverse its decision, then you can go to change.org. I believe LAUSD is missing out on an opportunity. Face the music: change is coming to school food, whether you like it or not. Might as well make it fun and televise it.

Interestingly, Dr. Susan Rubin offered an alternative solution: go to preschool and childcare centers. As a mother of a toddler in daycare, I think that is a great idea. Let’s get the kids when they are young. Many childcare centers accept federal funds, but also have a bit more leeway because they receive private funds too (from parents like me). I know my son’s daycare needs to offer better food. I’m only lucky that we can afford to opt out.

Food Justice on Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday!

News
courtesy: famous-people.info

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’m reflecting on Martin Luther King Jr’s life. He passed away at the age of 39. Hearing that hits me hard. He seemed so much older. Most of us aren’t even close to being that wise by the age of 39. In fact, I hope to accumulate just some wisdom by the end of my life. Many people get uptight about growing old, getting ugly. Truth is, it’s a privilege to age. If I make it, I’ll be a feisty old lady.

Dr. King talked about justice. I love that word, it sounds metallic and strong in my mouth, but yet it’s still pretty. He was focused on social justice. What would he have thought about food justice? Is there such a thing? (that’s rhetoric, I know there is)

Some think that food reform is the next big movement for our country. I like that thought. In March of last year, I started thinking about marching on Washington. I’ve had conversations with Ed Bruske (Better DC School Food and The Slow Cook) and when he gets riled up, he wants to get out into the streets. It’s easy for him to march on Washington DC — he lives there!

Will I march in Washington one day? It’s on my bucket list. I’m concerned about the food we are eating in our country. Whether it’s the 29 million pounds of antibiotics US livestock ingest yearly (by some estimates that figure is 70% of all antibiotics administer to people and animals) or the genetically modified fish possibly being sold without a label or genetically modified alfalfa possibly getting approved by the USDA or that one out of every three toys given to American children is from a fast food company, making McDonald’s the biggest toy company in the world, (Chew On This, Eric Schlosser) and food deserts and on and on…

Sometimes, people call me a complainer and even say they feel bad for my husband! Other times I’m called an elitist and a bitch, or worse. You can believe what you want to. I’m voicing opinions on my blog. If you want to read a vanilla blog, you can find many (I know, I read and enjoy lots of different types of blogs).

In the comments last week I wrote: My little blog and my opinion are whispers in a hurricane, but at least I’m not quiet. Until I get the chance to walk that lawn with my son’s hand in mine, listening to amazing people speak about American food and our rights as eaters, I’ll march here, on my blog.

courtesy: latimesblogs.latimes.com