Today’s menu: cheese pizza, fresh carrots, apple
I walked in the hallway towards the cafeteria and noticed that characteristic smell: it was pizza day! I was starving so I didn’t much care what I ate. Breakfast was a distant memory…in fact I wasn’t sure I even had more than a few bites of my son’s scrambled eggs.
At home mornings are rushed because I’m focused on feeding my son breakfast and packing his lunch. I try to mimic what is served at daycare so that my son wants to eat his lunch and not what everyone else is eating (peer pressure starts young). Today’s menu at daycare was scrambled eggs and hash browns, which sounds terrific in name alone, but it comes from a package. Better menu choice than the days when it’s fish nuggets and alfredo noodles (who dreams up these combos?)
So I made him scrambled eggs and potatoes this morning so I know what’s in them. At daycare almost all fruit and veggies come from a can. I know this because I have seen them. Once the daycare menu listed “baby peas” on a day I happened to drop him off before lunch. When I saw what the kids were getting, they had the unmistakable palor of peas from a can (and they weren’t baby peas either). Oddly, I liked peas from a can as a child, so why am I so anti-canned peas? BPA! It lines the interior of cans. I don’t mind if my son has the occasional canned fruit or veggie at home (I just made chili and used some varieties of canned beans), but not every day at daycare when I can easily send veggies (today he got peas actually). (Check out this recent story about BPA in baby bottles)
The veggies that I eat at school for school lunch are not from a can: at least they taste like they were never canned.
I was interrupted twice during my lunch today. I’m rarely interrupted, but today one person stopped by to chat with me while I was mid-bite of my pizza. My desk is towards the back of the room and I heard a knock on the door. I frantically threw the tray and what was left of my pizza to the side, trying to hide and yelled out curiously, “Yes?” No one answered so I went to the door thinking…this could be it. Thankfully the coworker was waiting outside the door and didn’t just barge right in.
We chatted about a particular student we are worried about and then I went back to my meal. Looking down at my pizza, I knew I didn’t have time to eat the rest of it, but I wanted to eat the carrots. I started digging in and knock, knock someone else arrived! I shoved the tray over, but this time everything was in plain sight.
I started walking towards the door and she was already in the room. She had a question about something computer-based. You have no idea how much tech support I provide to coworkers on a daily basis. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind at all. I’m pretty savvy with the computer and get asked a lot of questions. I have found out that many don’t check their work email accounts every day. We have been told to check email once a day and it’s the first thing I do when I get a spare moment in the day. Anyway, we made our way over to my desk where all of my lunch “evidence” was. She seemed oblivious to anything around the computer and so I showed her how to do something technical. That was the abrupt end to my lunch.
The other thing in my purse is my Droid Eris. I really love this phone, my very first smart phone that I bought towards the end of January. Yep, I started the project with just a regular cell phone and emailed the photos into the blog. You can go back through the archives and see when I bought the fancy pants phone. I don’t see myself being able to go back to a regular phone after having this one in my possession. I love it.
I can’t take a photo with my cell of my cell so tonight I cracked out a camera and took a shot of my trusty, hard-working Droid.
***
Do me a favor and call, email or fax your representative (it already passed the Senate) and urge him/her to take action on renewing the Child Nutrition Act during the “lame duck” session. The bill will be debated on 12/1 or 12/2 right after Thanksgiving, which is a great holiday to get family talking about nutrition!
Click here to send your representative an email (through the Healthy Schools Campaign).
Thanks!
I prefer to eat my breakfast alone and in silence on school days. I am cranky at 6 in the morning. Haha!
Just Better Together
if calling my congresscritter would make any difference for social or progressive causes, i would. but i have pete "taliban" sessions, who would rather abolish public schools entirely than worry about them.
I am not keen on canned food due to the BPA levels in the food. What upsets me most is when I see organic food in cans or plastic containers. I always think to myself, what is the point? But I'm forced to buy some of it as they are not a available in glass, but I do buy as much in glass as possible. I do hope one day manufacturers will take out the BPA from their containers, but do worry what horrible chemical will be added in it's place.
Too bad your pizza wasn't partially burned or dried out, so at least the interruptions would have saved you from an undesirable pizza, but oh well. The pizza did look unbelievably good.
Good luck with your phone. I have an iPhone, which I love. I love verizon, but do not like that they nickel and dime you for additional services. I didn't have a smart phone on verizon, so it may be different, not sure.
I emailed my reps, hope that others reach out to their reps too!
Why do you hide the fact that you eat lunch at your desk? Is it against school rules? I figure, if someone comes to your room at lunch time, they should expect that you'd be eating your lunch.
I asked some of my readers to share what their school serves – one school serves PopTarts! Can you imagine- got to school, eat a PopTart, try to do well in Math, go to lunch, eat a corndog and chocolate milk, try to well on your math test…
I was surprised to see that my district (breaded and beige) lunches seem to be pretty good compared to other schools.
http://www.milehimama.com/2010/11/18/school-lunches/
I just got a Droid phone too and I love it! I thought people were exaggerating when they said they couldn't live without their iPhones.
My favorite Android Apps: "Out of Milk" – grocery and to-do list (free) and Free Christmas List (free) which lets me put in everyone's sizes, preferences, etc. then lets me track what I've bought, how much I spent, etc.
I'm with anonymous above. Is it somehow against the rules for a teacher to be eating a school lunch – and if so, why are you still working there? I would think it would be more than okay and if so, a coworker would just notice you eating lunch which isn't a crime.
I believe it's Eden's Organics that doesn't use BPA on their can lining. I buy any canned food I can from them.
Sadly, the worst culprit is tomatoes, which Eden's doesn't make (or at least, have at our stores). The acid disintegrates some of the lining which leaches into the product. Sad times for tomato sauce.
Is it sad or wrong that for once your photos of your lunch made my mouth water? I wonder… as in think… but now I will wonder off to go and find something to eat!
I think that she is hiding eating the "SCHOOL" lunch at her desk to keep her identity under wraps.
I faxed a letter to my congressman this morning, Mrs. Q. Thanks for reminding us!
This is an interesting Consumer Reports article about BPA that was published in their Dec. '09 issue after they conducted their own tests on a number of canned foods some of which were labelled "BPA free": http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/december-2009/food/bpa/overview/bisphenol-a-ov.htm
The article is broken into 5 parts, each on a separate page. To access each part, see the menu on the left side of your screen under "In This Report." The video on the Overview page is also informative.
When I read this article a year ago, I was outraged to learn that the FDA limits for BPA are based on industry research, a clear conflict of interest. Consumer Reports accepts no advertising and hires its own independent researchers so I have more faith in their reports and recommendations than I have in guidelines set by bureaucrats who think it's acceptable to rely on research funded by the very manufacturers of the products themselves.
I had email with Eden Foods over the summer about using glass containers for their tomato products. They told me they are working on getting the equipment to handle glass. So keep your eyes peeled for Eden Food using glass — a great Michigan company.
Currently ALL canned tomato products have BPA liners, including Eden Organics, because that's the only liner approved for tomato canning. However I heard that Eden Organics is working to bring back the old liners, which were in use before BPA- it's some kind of epoxy resin.
Those products I heard would be in stores around Feb. hopefully but last I heard EO wasn't planning to label the cans BPA Free.