Yearly Archives: 2012

Puerto Rican School Lunch

Guest Blogs, School Lunches

Fresh orange, white rice, garbanzo beans with pumpkin, seasoned pork that has been steamed & cooked in its juices, canned corn and carrots and chocolate milk

Back in November, a reader (D. Orsini) sent in the above photo of a school lunch from Puerto Rico and gave permission for me to share it with my readers. She added:

I love eating in the school cafeteria. I’m a teacher in the public school system in Puerto Rico. I regularly eat lunch in school and I praise the lunch ladies’ cooking. They are great. The picture is what I had for lunch on November 1, 2011. White rice with garbanzos and pumpkin (rice is given at almost every lunch, it is a staple in puertorrican diet), well seasoned pork cooked in its own juices, canned corn and carrots and chocolate milk (they also have white but I’m a chocoholic). Let’s just say the whole meal was delicious. The following day the meal was white rice, pink beans in a tomato base sauce (resembles the garbanzos) with sweet potato, fresh orange, breaded fish tenders and chocolate milk. Again, delicious.

Forgot to mention, IT WAS ALL FREE. Public schools in Puerto Rico offer free breakfast and lunch to all students and faculty is also welcomed. The Department of Education is very dedicated in giving the best meals to students. There is even a Free Summer Meal Program during the month of June (school year August – May), which is open to all children up to the age of 18. The school year in P. R. is from August to May. I am very proud of our School meal program.
I love how the food culture is represented in the school lunch. The main entree is stunning. I’m less crazy about the the canned veggies and the chocolate milk, but most of what is on the tray is real food. I’m intrigued that the chocolate milk is in a bag. I wonder if that’s more eco-friendly or more efficient? Thoughts?

News: More students relying on free meals

News

More and more students are relying on their school to provide them with a meal during the day. I scan the news for information about school lunch and I can tell you that virtually every day there is at least one article about a community experiencing a surge in students in participation in the free or reduced price lunch program (i.e. St. Louis, Pennsylvania, Georgia). Why now? Well, even though I guess there are signs that the economy is improving (please make it be true), I think that any rebound is going to take years. I believe we are currently suffering the effects of what happened a few years ago.

It makes me mad that children have to suffer when adults make mistakes — and I’m not talking their parents here. I’m talking the banks and the sub-prime mortgage schemes. And I’m talking about the stock market. People rolling the dice with the economic stability of our country and now families are out of work and don’t have enough money for food. The current downswing in the economy has disproportionally affected young families. Families that are just starting out…

Don’t get me wrong — I’m so grateful that schools are set up to provide food for children in need. Kids are hungry and I see it at my school. I’m furious with the corporations and investment banks that took chances with our country’s financial future and now many citizens are worse off.

At first I thought the #occupywallstreet people were crazy. But now I can’t help but wonder if they are channeling how many of us are feeling. People have lost money, their jobs, their life savings, their retirement accounts, and their homes. I’m willing to bet that you have also been affected — my family has not been spared. And now more families don’t have enough money to pay for or send their children with lunch. Of course then you can only imagine if they have food for other meals at home.

When kids are impacted, you know I’m going to get mad. Isn’t this supposed to be America? The next person who grumbles about the cost of the school lunch and how parents should “just pack” is really going to get it.

Open thread: How do you start off a new year?

Open threads

I can’t believe how little I posted this week, but I know why. I’ve two weeks off from work! Who is shocked that it’s 2012? Where has the time gone? I’m feeling an urgency. I want to do more with my life. This will be an exciting year. Stay tuned.

But unlike 2010 when I set a goal to eat a year of school lunch, I haven’t really made goals for 2012. I didn’t make any firm goals for 2011 either (aside from the big stuff: write and publish the book), which is unlike me. Sometimes keeping things hazy isn’t a bad thing.

I guess I’m lining up a series of hopes. Hoping to resolve some issues and, in the process, find my own way. Along those same lines of thought, I have chosen a word for this year. The word is INTENTION. I want to live with intention and move forward with purpose.

How do you mark the passing of a year? Do you reflect on past accomplishments? Do you set goals for yourself?

Guest blog: Berkeley Schools, A Sustainable Food Model

Guest Blogs

Carrie Fehr begins her twelfth year as Chef Teacher for the cooking & gardening program in the Berkeley Unified School District.  She has developed an expansive repertoire of cooking lessons that skillfully integrate core academic subjects, culinary concepts, and nutrition education. The cooking classroom is a perfect match for Carrie’s love and passion for teaching children.  Her goal is to bring a positive emotional connection to healthy food and to instill an appreciation of wellbeing for every student, that will be accessible lifelong (and she keeps up a blog). 

Imagine a school that serves up healthy cafeteria food sourced by local farms, respects the environment, supports garden and cooking education in the classroom, and makes a positive difference in the community.

The Berkeley Unified School District, a national model for school food reform, exemplifies such a commitment to its students, and understands the important role it has in promoting health, sustainable agriculture, and environmental restoration.

It is no surprise that Berkeley is home to visionary chef Alice Waters, who has long championed the benefits of eating seasonally, and also helped provide a grant from her Chez Panisse Foundation, to hire Ann Cooper, aka Renegade Lunch Lady, to improve the quality of the school food, district wide several years ago. Since the overhaul to food services, some of the benefits to the schools include– universal breakfast, salad bars, cooking class recipes that link to the cafeteria, along with a take-home calendar, featuring healthy recipes that kids prepare at school.

But even though there are significant changes to the school food, the heart of the programs rely on the cooking and gardening education classes that link to core subjects in the classroom, and provide students with hands-on learning opportunities about food, the environment, and nutrition.  It makes a huge difference when kids are actively involved in the farm to table process, both in the cafeteria and at home– if they grow, cook, and learn about it, they will be willing to try it and discover that healthy food tastes good.

To reinforce the vital link food has to our health, it is important to recognize the valuable relationship between local farms and the food we serve at school, to the way we treat our environment, and its impact on how we teach our children about food, and their health.

And as a nation, we have a social responsibility to take steps to improve the health of our children, with learning opportunities that begin at school.

Carrie is available for consulting please contact her at carriefehr@gmail.com or visit her blog http://www.kidseatingright.wordpress.com or on twitter at http://twitter.com/CarrieFehr

 

Blog Fog of 2011….Clear Skies in 2012!

Happening Now

Happy New Year! And happy two year blogoversary! Can you believe that two years have passed? Well, that pretty much blows my mind. I’m really excited about 2012 — it’s going to be a good one. I have some exciting stuff to share with you over the next couple months…

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this space. I love blogging, but I think I was in a fog last year. Coming off of that crazy year of school lunch eating, I continued to blog daily even when my content was so-so. Instead of giving myself a few nights to work on a concept, I would often force myself to blog about something right away without letting it percolate. Bad idea — I resented having to push myself and then what I wrote lacked oomph.

I found myself writing up a sub-par blog posts when I should have been replying to your comments and answering emails (blog maintenance, anyone?). After I revealed myself, I started sharing more personal stuff while veering off of the main topic of this blog (ahem, school lunch?). Weirdly, I lost my focus when I came out. And over the past two years to keep up with daily blogging, I often went without optimal sleep.

Now that it’s 2012 there will be some changes:

1) Fed Up with Lunch will be focused on school lunch. I will continue to write pieces about school food, discuss food politics and educational issues, open the floor to you in open thread posts, talk about the book and book appearances, share fantastic perspectives from guest bloggers, and support non-profit organizations working with food and kids.

2) I’m moving any posts that I can use the word “my” to describe to another site (to be announced). My packed lunches, my CSA (community supported agriculture) posts, my recipes, and my attempts at gardening will be housed separately. Don’t worry — I will blog a link to those posts here, giving you the option to click over or not. While many people appreciate a more personal perspective about my life, there are plenty of people who aren’t interested. Plus, even though those posts are food related they have nothing to do with school lunch, which is what started this whole thing in the first place!

3) Fed Up with Lunch will be a professional blog, and not a hodge-podge of weird stuff that strikes me at any given moment. I want to feel proud of this space and sometimes I just feel like it’s just odd. That means that there will be fewer blog posts, but better content. I’m going to do more planning the content and reflecting before hitting publish.

4) I will be a regular contributor to another site! It’s an exciting project that aligns with much of what I’ve blogged about. More to come about that in the future…

5) Prioritizing my health will come first. I’m not proud to say that I put blogging ahead of myself and any household responsibilities. This year I will turn off the computer when I need sleep — it’s as simple as that.

Eating school lunch for a year and everything that happened afterwards has transformed my views on life. I truly believe that anything is possible. How in the world did that one little idea turn into this blog and a book? Let’s all listen to ourselves, live with intention every day, and vow to not get wrapped up in fear and doubt. Let’s do this in 2012!