Yearly Archives: 2010

Day 151: chicken nuggets and Murphy’s Law

School Lunches, , , , ,

Today’s menu: chicken nuggets, collard greens, fruit cups, cornbread muffin

NUGGETS! Get your nuggets while you can! Going fast!

I chowed down. I was so hungry, I barely even remember entering the cafeteria and buying my lunch. All I could see was FOOD and I was ready to eat it. Since I plan to never again eat another chicken nugget after December 17th, might as well go whole hog, right? I’ve eaten more than my fair share this year, don’t you think? The BBQ sauce certainly helped get them down.

The chicken nugget that got its revenge…
This time a peppercorn hit me in the throat, where it decided to stay. It left me sputtering and looking for my water. School lunches usually lack a sensory experience (as compared to when I ate real Mexican tacos in June), but with yesterday’s burp and today’s peppercorn, well, I guess I need to re-evaluate that statement.
I couldn’t get through the collard greens. They are so bitter…although not as strikingly bitter as when I first had them. I’m trying to figure out if the greens have changed or if my taste buds have acclimatized. Bring back the spinach!
The kids ate what is on the right
and threw out what is on the left
I saved one of these containers and it’s in my cupboard at home!
You know, for old times’ sake…
***
Last night I “bragged” about my son, saying “he’s a great sleeper.” I must have pissed off the parenting gods who then evoked Murphy’s Law. My little boy was up in the night for about a half-hour from 12:30 until 1 am. I was in such a deep sleep that when he first started crying out I didn’t know what day it was. In the middle of the night my mind was racing, “Is it Saturday?” Strange.
I have found that when I parent I end up evoking Murphy’s Law frequently. Let that be a warning to other parents (and especially parents-to-be) — you will be smited! I should have known better. Poor kid woke up with a runny nose so there’s our reason. It’s his second cold this fall. He hasn’t gotten an ear infection this fall but he goes to daycare full-time so colds are unavoidable. No diet can stop daycare germs!
UPDATED: If you have concerns about your health or your child’s health, see a doctor and as many specialists as you see fit. Also ear tubes are fantastic. Our son was so sick (the average kid had one ear infection per year — my kid had eight by 16 months) and I’m very happy we had the procedure done. It definitely was the right choice for our family. If I had another child and an ENT said tubes were appropriate, I wouldn’t hesitate.

Call your reps today!

Advocacy,

I want to urge you to call your representative today Wednesday and urge him/her to pass the Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act. Here’s what the Healthy Schools Campaign emailed me:

Dear HSC Friend:

This Wednesday, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, the legislation that provides funding and sets standards for school food.

The House is considering the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (S. 3307) which, though far from perfect, includes excellent policy changes to improve school food now and in the future. In a time when many children face both hunger and obesity, this bill presents an opportunity to set policy that will bring healthier food to the children who need it most.

Your voice is crucial in making this policy a reality. Please call your Representative today:

Dial 1-877-698-8228 and enter your zip code to be connected directly to your Representative’s office. Deliver this simple message: “Congress must not adjourn without passing the child nutrition bill. Please vote yes for the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.”

We have urged those who care about school food to speak up about this issue several times over the past two years as reauthorization worked its way through Congress. Now, as Congress prepares to vote, your voice is more important than ever.

Thank you for taking action.

Let’s get this over with already! How long does this bill have to sit around considering how important it is to so many little people?

Day 150: cheeseburger and my metamorphosis

School Lunches, , , , , ,

Today’s menu: cheeseburger, whole wheat buns, baked beans, pear

The patty looks odd, right? I’m puzzled as to how the cheese got pock-marked. It almost looks like it was dribbled on there, but I think that it must have been placed on as a slice and then it melted during the (re)heating process…then the condensation dripped down on it? I don’t know. The baked beans were a little on the gelatinous side, but fine and the pear was great (it was a little wet so I knew it had been washed).

I have to say that the patty didn’t taste *bad* but, as usual, I shrug…who knows what I’m eating. From what I’ve read the quality of this beef is either the same as a fast food patty or worse.

I talked about lunch with a couple kids. I asked one girl, “Did you eat the baked beans?”
“No, I don’t like beans.” (I’m willing to bet this is the attitude of most of my students)

And the other girl piped in, “Did you know that beef is from… a cow?”
Smiling, “Yes, I did.”
(She even paused for dramatic effect!)

Almost exactly two hours after lunch (yes, I looked at my watch), I burped and tasted processed meat. I want this to be on record: I never want that to happen again. After December 17th, I’m done with processed meat for good. Add it to the list of things I don’t want to eat again…(ahem, gluten, dairy)
***

Take a look at the calendar. Yep, tomorrow is December 1st. Where did the year go? What happened to me?

Looking back, I started this whole thing on a whim, a crazy thought. I was sitting on the couch last December coming up with my goals for the following year (it’s a ritual of mine) and I told my husband, “I should eat school lunch every day next year! The kids eat the weirdest packaged lunches…. I could blog it…” with a laugh.

Then I stopped, “Hmmm.” He laughed too until he realized I was partially serious.

“No, we got enough on our plate.” He was referring mostly to our son, about 15 months old at the time with near constant ear infections, not a good sleeper, our chronic exhaustion….

So I did what every woman would do in that situation, I forgot about it. We went on with our lives and enjoyed the holidays, unfortunately two ER visits with our boy…

…but….

I couldn’t shake that thought. It was like December 28th or something and I was driving somewhere, maybe just around our community, running errands. The “school lunch blog” thought entered my head again. My sweet, goofy students. So broke, poor even. But so much to offer the world. Well, damn, “I’m going to attempt to eat school lunch everyday in 2010.”

And here I am. Eleven months later. 150 lunches eaten. I’m oddly sickened but proud…
My relationship to food has changed…forever…there’s no going back.

Then: I didn’t blog opinions. I was scared.
Now: I’m aware and an advocate, stating my thoughts. I’m not…as scared 🙂

Then: My son was ill, an ear infection every two weeks.
During: He got ear tubes, which meant he just got an ear infection once a month, two ER visits this summer, received prescription for daily med and home nebulizer in September.
Now: He is healthy, changed him to goat milk late spring, totally (cow’s milk) dairy-free since September and gluten-free since October. No ear infections, no tantrums, great sleeper. I’m parenting a different child.

Then: So I have chronic IBS, so what? It’s just a cross I have to bear…along with every one of my immediate family members now that I think about it, but I tested negative for Celiac’s Disease so it can’t be gluten…?
During: In June after six months of school lunches, I was diagnosed with mild asthma and got my first prescription for a rescue inhaler.
Now: In October, started the low gluten/low dairy diet outside of school is making life better. Yep, I know. Wow.

Then: I thought it was “just food.”

Now: I have learned that food is personal, food is life, food is health.

Thank you, dear readers, for following along on this wacky journey and putting up with me. If you started from the beginning, you really didn’t know what you were in for, did you? Neither did I. I’m so happy I started this blog and met all you wonderful people. If you ever needed a reminder to listen to that little voice inside you, your gut (literally), here it is!

Day 149: chicken teriyaki, art, recess and The Eat Along Challenge

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Today’s menu: chicken teriyaki, rice with peas and egg, carrots, applesauce, breadstick

Chicken patty teriyaki is one of my favorite main dishes. I thought it tasted fine — definitely better than some of the other stuff I have eaten this year. I imagine that this would be one of the more expensive dishes compared to say the hot dog or hamburger meal because it contains more real chicken and there is also egg in the dish, which doesn’t appear in any other lunchtime meal. If you zoom in on the chicken patty, you can see that it contains more actual chicken than any other chicken patty I have eaten. The texture is an interesting mix of real chicken bits and spongy interior (see second close-up).

Today’s carrots tasted more like canned carrots than previous carrots have tasted to me. Because I ate a lot of canned veggies as a kid, I actually find that flavor comforting (oddly, I like the taste of canned peas too…) Mmmm, canned carrots, remind me of home and the 1980s….

I ate the applesauce, but not the breadstick…I know that under the federal guidelines the school district needs to offer two grains per meal, but a breadstick with rice is out of place. I just can’t be persuaded to think otherwise. And I can’t even persuade myself to take a bite of a bread product in a package.

I hope you had a phenomenal Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday because it’s all about food and pretty much non-political. Usually we went to my Great Aunt Alice’s here in Illinois for the holiday with my mom’s side of the family including her favorite first cousin and his partner from San Francisco (how much cooler can you be?). We chatted until our mouths went dry, laughed until our faces hurt from smiling, and ate until our bellies ached.

I had my son more than two years ago and when he was almost two months old, Great Aunt Alice passed away. Thanksgiving had already been planned and plane tickets bought for the holiday but we didn’t know what to do. It wouldn’t be the same with her. Everyone including the Californians decided to go up to Wisconsin and make the best of it. We tried not to cry, but we were choked up pretty frequently. Thankfully my little baby made everyone smile and think of the possibilities of life.

I hope that this past holiday you got the chance to lift your glass to toast the ones you love.

***

A kid was sitting in her chair and said, “Ouch!”
We looked at her alarmed and I asked, “What’s wrong?”
She remarked, “My legs hurt.”
I needed more information, “What happened to your legs?”
She replied with a muted smile, nodding her head, “I ran too much!”
I couldn’t suppress a laugh.

***

A different student who was at another school last year told me, “When I was at X School, they had art class. I liked it. They had recess too. You know what recess is? It’s when you go outside to the park.”
My heart broke.
That a kid thinks he needs to explain to a teacher what recess is…
It makes me crazy.
Oh and yes, there is no art this year. There has been art on and off, but this year it was cut.
That broke a lot of kids’ hearts.

What is an elementary education without art and recess?
(Full disclosure: my mom used to be an art teacher).

***

The Eat Along Challenge (December 6th through December 10th)

Liz Snyder from www.ieatreal.com contacted me about an experiment she tried: The $2 Lunch Challenge, which was picked up by Civil Eats. She wanted to make good food at school lunch prices. So she made a week’s worth of lunches for her daughter at home. Each lunch was full of fresh, organic food for under $2 per lunch (not including labor) and she compared them to what I was eating. What a contrast!

Next week I’m challenging you to pack a cheap, fresh lunch Monday through Friday, photograph it, and blog it and then link it up to my daily lunch posts all week. If you feel like you have the time to do a cost calc on each lunch, then go for it. I bet you can make it for under $2 just like Liz. As a teacher I pay $3 per lunch, but that is more than the federal reimbursement rate of $2.74 (at my school). If you don’t have time to do the math (maybe you have a screaming toddler like I do), don’t fret — just link up your child’s lunch. Let’s have fun with this!

Day 148: turkey and feeling grateful

School Lunches, , , , ,

Today’s menu: turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, bread, pear, cookie

When I first saw the main dish, I thought, “Wow, that’s a lot of turkey!” I love eating turkey. While I was paying (and before I visually scanned the line) I asked, “Are there mashed potatoes too?” The lunch lady said, “No, it’s sweet potatoes!” Terrific!

I took everything back to the room thinking about my lunchtime-turkey-feast. (Bear with me please — I get excited about menu changes. I have no control over what I eat every day for lunch, which has played with my mind. Maybe it’s like Food-Stockholm-Syndrome?)

My first bite of turkey yielded some mush and I realized that under the turkey bits was formless stuffing. Not my thing, but I liked the gravy. My mom recently reminded me that one of the hot lunch meals that I purchased regularly when I was a kid was the turkey over mashed potatoes. Yum then….now, not so much.

Let’s move on to the sweet potatoes. They tasted like sweet potatoes, but were pureed to the point of having a texture not unlike jarred baby food. Eeech. The worst part is that any kid moving through the line is not going to know what they are. If I hadn’t been told that they were “sweet potatoes,” I would have assumed that they were beans, which are served way more frequently than sweet potatoes (this being the first time I have eaten sweet potatoes at school). Yes, the kids could read the menu to find out, but there are a lot of non-readers or low readers who aren’t fully able to read the menu. It would be great if the teacher could review the menu with the kids prior to lunch but the reality is that the average teacher is just trying to get everyone rustled up to get to the cafeteria on time. I fear that the sweet potatoes mostly went into the trash.

The red cookie! Well, I avoided it. I’m not into Red #40 at a the moment. A student came up to me after lunch with bright pink lips. For a split second I thought, “Is that lipstick— ooooohhhhh yeah, the cookie…” This particular kid’s mom is anti-make-up for girls this age (so she should be) and I wondered what the mom would think when she saw her daughter’s lips. Rest assured, your daughter did not get lipstick from me! Gah.

Most of the kids came back from lunch with pink lips, pink tongues and even pink teeth. I asked a different student who had pink teeth, “Why do you have pink lips and teeth?”
“Because I ate cookies!”
“Wait, you had more than one?”
“I ate five cookies!!” smiling with glee (another kid piped up in the background, “I had two!”)
“Wait, I thought you only got one? did you buy more?”
It took me about five minutes to get the whole story. They did not buy more cookies. Some kids didn’t want their cookies. So they gave theirs to other kids. At first it sounded like a bullying situation to me, but knowing the five-cookie-student, it didn’t seem like he was capable of bullying the other kids.

The five-cookie-kid was hyper. I don’t know if I should feel happy that many students didn’t want their cookies or that one student thought that five cookies was appropriate for lunchtime. I didn’t find out if that was the extent of his lunch…

The pear was delish, by the way!

No cookie for me — good thing too after seeing all those bright pink lips.
Pink lips would not have enhanced my outfit today!

A month ago or more I mentioned wanted to take some additional tests after having a negative Celiac test. Well, Enterolab’s test results indicate that I have gluten sensitivity. I feel like I have known this on some level for a long time. I’m going to need more help me to interpret the results I got back (some think the company is great, other people think it isn’t). I’ll post more in-depth about my health once I get some additional information.

So I avoided the slices of bread. Of course there was gluten in the gravy and stuffing, but somehow I just can’t get myself to eat the obvious wheat in the bread!

Food for Thought!

Feeling grateful.
Grateful for home.
Grateful for my family.
Grateful for our son.
Grateful for friends.
Grateful for life.
Grateful for your readership.
Grateful for the journey.
Grateful for food.
Off to soak it all up.

I’m not going to post for the rest of holiday on through weekend…(never say never, but probably not). I wish you guys the very best holiday with your family, friends, and loved ones! See you on the flip side!

Day 147: hot dog

School Lunches, , , , ,

Today’s menu: hot dog, whole wheat buns, orange, fresh carrots

The glare on the hot dog package makes the hot dog look like it’s got some kind of magical powers. I assure you it did not. I ate it though and I ate the carrots too. There just isn’t enough time to peel an orange. I’ve said it from the start: the oranges need to be sliced. But points for effort: two days in a row with fresh fruit and veggies both days!

When it comes to temporary trays, I think that the paper might be here to stay and that makes me happy. It’s better than styrofoam!

My trash and also a KIND bar
Today I ate a KIND bar with my lunch. Yes, I added a little something to my lunch because I needed a boost today. I love KIND bars. In fact, they are my favorite bar at the moment.
I could fall asleep standing right now. I’m going to sign off early tonight. (Menu hint: tomorrow’s lunch is going to be turkey!)
***
Do me a favor and head over to my friend Ed Bruske’s website and read his amazing series on the school food transformation in Boulder, Colorado at the hands of another friend Chef Ann Cooper. I’ve been riveted each post and have learned a lot:

Remaking School Meals in Boulder: First in a Series-

Taking the Stigma Out of School Lunch-
A Chance Encounter Plus Tacos Ignites Boulder’s Cafeteria Makeover-
The Many Faces of Ann Cooper-
Not Your Momma’s Lunch Ladies-
Why I Want to be a Professional School Cook-

Not Quite Cooked from Scratch…Yet-

Boulder’s New Deep-Dish Vegetarian Enchilada: The Recipe-
Dragging School Food into the Computer Age-
How to Build a Salad Bar-
Salad Bars: Bringing Fresh Produce to Boulder’s Cafeterias-
White House Backs National Salad Bar Initiative-
Breakfast in the Classroom-
A Community Rallies Around School Food-
Lessons from Boulder-

The School Food Revolution in Boulder: Epilogue-

Make some hot cocoa and popcorn, pull up a chair, and read the whole thing. You won’t be disappointed: Ed is a great writer and it’s one helluva good story! Many stories that deal with food politics are boring and depressing — not so this series. After I read it I felt empowered. And when you are finished, can you give him a little comment love? Thanks!

Day 146: pasta and salad bars

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Today’s menu: pasta with meat sauce, salad, orange, bread (tampon) stick

Here, here for pasta! It was the first meal I ate way back at the start of this here wacky experiment and here I am still eating some of it. I’m liking this strikeout feature all of a sudden….

I remain a committed fan of hot food and the pasta did not disappoint. Some days you just need a hot meal at lunch time. I could never do a PB&J every day because on days with terrible weather, it’s just too darn comforting to have soup or another hot meal to make your insides feel toasty warm. Orange and a salad? Thanks for the fresh food! Not to mention a logical pairing — pasta and salad go together well. The salad looks paltry in the photo — they have offered salad before, in styrofoam containers. I think they are going for a slightly more eco-friendly approach here. It’s not aesthetically pleasing though is it?

My commute was a breeze today so I’m assuming most of you are off for the holidays. I will keep lunch posts this week brief so that we all can enjoy the best part of the holidays: family and friends.

***

This month’s Titanium Spork Award will be combined with last month’s for an October/November (O/N) Double Titanium Spork Award. Time got away from me. Since so few people seem to be online this week, I’m going to go ahead and take your previous nominations and put them into a poll, which is now live! Please vote! The winner will get two sporks, one for each month!

Today Chef Ann Cooper was in Florida with First Lady Michelle Obama to announce work towards getting salad bars in 6,000 schools. Great news and a big congrats to Ann Cooper for starting the salad bar movement. She hit one out of the park today! (hint, hint –she’s up for a Titanium Spork Award!)

Open thread: School lunch haiku homework

Open threads, ,

Your weekend homework challenge: write some school lunch/child nutrition act/nutrition haiku poetry. I’m a big fan of haiku (5-7-5) and I want to see what you “cook up” so have at it. Here are a couple of mine:

Ate school lunch today (5)
Swallowed and took a picture (7)
Better blog it now! (5)

Kids nutrition act (5)
It’s before Congress right now (7)
Let’s pass it ok? (5)

Lunchtime is so fun (5)
Then the food is on the tray (7)
Stomach says “oh dear!” (5)

Winter is coming (5)
My son likes tomato soup (7)
Perfect for the cold (5)

Lunch with Mrs. Q — Head on over there to share more haiku and ideas for reform. We had a nice chat with a small group of people last Sunday. With the holidays upon us, these two weekends in a row I will be unavailable, but we’ll set up a chat in December!