Thank goodness there were no speed traps on the highway when I was on my way to pick up our daughter from camp at Full Belly Farm.  I missed her and couldn’t wait to hug her and hear about her adventures.

Collecting eggs from a mobile chicken tractor

Of course, it came as no surprise when she wanted to show me all of her favorite animals, including a calf, some goats, and the chickens.  We climbed over the fencing that surrounded the mobile chicken tractors and looked inside to see if the eggs had been collected yet.  We found nearly 100 eggs and she saw one chicken right in the act of laying one!

Just before leaving for camp, she attended the last 4-H meeting of the year, and decided to join a new project: Photography.  She was ready to get started and before I knew it, I had handed off my camera and we had an impromptu photography session in the increasingly hot chicken tractor. (“Mom, this is way harder than I thought it would be.”).

My daughter's attempts at chicken photography - getting better with practice!

Given that farm was drowning in eggs, I thought I’d share an egg recipe from my book, The Whole Family Cookbook.

Unless you live in a cave, you know that school food has a bad reputation.  I am excited to report that in our district, at least, it’s getting better.

Our food service director surprised me with an invitation to visit Alvarado Street Bakery in Petaluma, where she plans to source the bread for our school district next year.  My food service advisory committee colleague, Susannah, and I went to learn more about their sprouted wheat breads and got to see the inside workings of the bakery.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to film inside the bakery, but I did capture a brief discussion of the nutritional benefits of sprouted wheat bread and why it will be good for our students.

A Review of Bread Vocabulary

(Thanks to an article from the LA Times for this description…)

• Whole-wheat bread is made by grinding wheat kernels — comprised of a vitamin-rich germ, a protein- and carbohydrate-dense endosperm and an outer shell called the bran — into whole-wheat flour.
• White bread is made by removing the wheat kernel’s germ and bran, grinding up only the endosperm into flour.
• Sprouted-grain breads are made from wheat kernels (often called wheat berries) that are allowed to sprout and then ground up and baked into bread. Because the kernels are not ground into flour, such breads are often referred to as “flourless.” (Sprouted-grain breads do, however, contain gluten — so they are no easier to metabolize for people who are unable to digest this wheat protein.)

What’s the bread situation in your school district?

Okay.  Let’s deal with it.  Let’s see if we can make do with what we have.  Chef Bruno visited our central kitchen recently, to show us how to cook Barilla Plus pasta with the resources we already have.

Take a peek at what is possible…

I’m pretty excited – I just got invited to a lunchtime workshop with students at our school about Waste Free Lunches.  We’ll play with our food, pack some sample lunches, and come up with some menu ideas for parents.  Many thanks to Amy Allen, our amazing Green Team Leader, for coordinating the work that our students have been doing at lunchtime to reduce, reuse and recycle.  Here’s a little primer to get you started…

What’s a “Waste Free Lunch” and why should we care?

A single student produces 45 to 90 pounds of garbage every year in disposable lunches.
This garbage doesn’t just go away – it takes up space in our limited landfills. The more garbage we produce, the farther we have to truck it for dumping, and the more greenhouse gases we emit. Even items that we try to dispose responsibly (such as light-weight plastic bags) may blow out of bins, trucks, and landfill sites, landing in our
streams and Bay.

Going Waste Free is one of the most significant things we can do to protect the environment and our children’s health. And it’s easier than you think!

How should you pack a Waste Free School Lunch:

• A lunch box or reusable bag
• Reusable containers for your food
• Thermos or reusable drink containers
• Reusable tableware
• Washable cloth napkins (or cut up old t-shirts)
• Real forks and spoons that can be taken home and washed
• Some of my favorite waste free lunch items can be found in my Amazon Store

What NOT to use for your Waste Free School Lunch:

• Juice boxes, disposable plastic or foil drink containers
• Individual disposable packets of yogurt, applesauce, chips or pudding
• Plastic bottles (at all!)
• Styrofoam containers and cups
• Plastic baggies
• Aluminum foil (unless you can take it home to wash and reuse or recycle)

Ideas for packing your lunchbox:

• Set out at least 4 small reusable containers for each child.
• Talk to your kids about their preferences and make a list of foods that they enjoy in each of these categories:  Protein, Whole Grains, Fruit, Veggies and Snacks
• And then pack each container filled with one food from each category.  (In the packed lunch above, you’ll find a sandwich and walnuts, both of which fit in the Protein category; there are grapes and cucumbers, both in the fruit/veggie category; pea snacks, which are a healthy snack; gummy vitamins, and olives in the small lidded container)
• I have written about this topic before – This school lunch post has more resources and some other links to awesome articles on other blogs.

Please join our Facebook Community and upload a photo of your child’s waste free lunch! Believe me, we can use the support and will benefit from seeing what you pack

It has been a good year for What’s Cooking!  I have met amazing people and have accomplished things that I never thought possible.

Chefs Move to Schools

Here are a few highlights of 2010 – a good place to start if you are just getting to know me and my mission:

• Readers started sharing their amazing stories about their experiences in the kitchen with family in our new series, What’s Cooking with YOUR Kids. Here’s how you can participate, too.
• A group of parents in our school district began the tedious journey of trying to improve the food that children are being fed in our local schools.  We have seen some huge improvements (salad bars and bulk condiments) and have had some setbacks, of course (personality clashes, unmet expectations).  All of our School Lunch Reform posts can be found here.
• I attended the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) conference in Portland and facilitated an amazing hands on cooking workshop with chefs and local children where we cooked for the homeless.
• I was offered a book deal, and after many months of pinching myself, The Whole Family Cookbook will be in stores this April!
• I was invited to the White House to attend the launch of Michelle Obama’s Chefs Move to Schools program.  Here’s the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly…
• We continued to support the community by doing cooking classes with children to help the less fortunate.  Beneficiaries were Share our Strength, Homeward Bound of Marin, and the Marin Humane Society.
• And of course, I have cooked with kids. A lot.  If you need any suggestions, try making these potato gnocchi, wonton cups, or layered cake with lemon curd.

I can’t help but wonder what’s in store in 2011.  My book will come out and I’ll be exploring the idea of turning part of What’s Cooking into a nonprofit organization.  Stay tuned – I am thrilled to have you as part of the journey.

Is there anything you’d like to see here in the coming months?

Wishing you and your family a happy and safe new year,
Michelle

Waste-Free Lunch

So, for the New Year, how about you make a resolution you can actually keep?

Pack a waste free lunch for school.

Do you have any other resolutions worth keeping?

You may have noticed that I haven’t offered an update on our school lunch reform efforts in awhile.  Some of our team have been stewing.  Others have been steaming.  And one just boiled over.

Perhaps I should explain the back story.

We have done assemblies in 4 ½ of our schools to teach the students how to use the salad bars safely without contaminating their peers with germs.  And there have been more than a few challenges in keeping our new salad bars running smoothly.

True, the children are no longer climbing inside the salad bars to reach the inner sanctum.  But the food service staff hasn’t received consistent messaging on how to set up the plethora of containers within. Some schools seem to have a system that works well for them, but others have gaping holes with produce that is hard to reach.  Fortunately our food service director has appointed Lisa, our central kitchen manager, as the “girl-Friday” of the salad bar realm.  She has developed an effective system for organizing the salad bar and will soon be conducting a staff training, so that each site’s salad bar will resemble all of the others.

There have been members of our team who are concerned that the salad bar is being used as a smoke screen for the rest of our food program, which is still less than stellar.  It’s hard not to be frustrated when our students are still being served overly processed foods and little packets of brightly colored empty calories.

Ever since our team started meeting last year, we have been striving for a “no-list” of foods and ingredients that will be banished forever.  But we haven’t made as much progress on this list as we had hoped.  We may have bitten off more than we anticipated when we launched our salad bars this year, so our “no-list” hasn’t gotten as much attention as it should.

We have made progress though. Don’t get me wrong.  Our elementary schools no longer serve chocolate milk and we are getting rid of the dreaded condiment packets, instead opting to purchase condiments in bulk and serving them in squirt bottles.  Ideally, the majority of our lunch program will be served from our salad bars, with a wholesome entrée on the side.  And we can serve up the whole kit and caboodle right in these new biodegradable trays!

New biodegradable trays for school lunch

However, despite our pleas, we keep seeing little packages of gummy bears, sugar-laden fruit leathers, brightly colored crackers and cookies.  It’s true that our district is bound by a “food-based menu planning” system and occasionally has to increase the number of calories that our children are getting at each meal.  (But isn’t that a good problem to have – we can come up with healthy foods instead of supplementing with high-calorie filler?)

The lack of attention being paid to our “no-list” came to a head at our most recent meeting.  Our most passionate team member couldn’t contain her frustration and blew her lid.  Here’s where the title of this post comes in.  While school lunch reform IS possible via collaboration and teamwork, it is NOT going to maintain its momentum when the environment becomes toxic.  Or when someone starts to bully someone else.  As parents, we teach our children to respect others.  Schools are supposed to have a no-bullying policy.  And there we were, at our supposedly civilized meeting, agenda in hand, and the room was filled with the fumes of anger.  I was so uncomfortable that I wanted a shower after it was over.

I don’t like conflict.  But rather than hide under a rock, which was my inclination, I sent an email to the above-mentioned perpetrator.  I told her that I was disappointed.  I didn’t think that being adversarial would help further our cause.  And I was pretty sure that name-calling and accusing our food service director of being ineffective was the wrong strategy.  I have to admit, my knees started to quake after I pressed the send button.  What did I unleash?  But instead of being berated for being too passive, I was thanked.  I was respected for having the courage for speaking up.  And for that, I am grateful.

That’s what these school lunch reform blog posts are all about.  They are about speaking out.  They are about sharing our struggle to make institutional change.  It’s hard.  But if we can do it, so can you.  Of that, I am sure.

What is the condition of your food service program? Do you have a central kitchen that makes food for your students? Or do you contract with an external food service provider?  Are the parents and students happy with the food being served?

It came as no surprise that our son wanted to dress up as the devil for Halloween.  We have been having some challenges with his behavior for the past few years, and have privately referred to him as the devil on more than a few occasions…

We have seen several specialists and have appointments for a few more. But desperate times called for what felt like desperate measures.  I heard that dairy allergies could manifest themselves as behavior problems in children, so we thought we would see if his attitude would improve if we removed dairy from his diet.

I was worried.
Because I love cheese.

But it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be to eliminate dairy from dinner, the main meal that we share as a family, or even from his breakfasts and lunches.  It just took a little bit of extra planning so that I wasn’t relying on standards that come naturally.

In case you ever need to try a dairy elimination diet for your family, I thought you might find it helpful to see what Ari ate for the first week of the experiment.   I didn’t mention desserts here – but I stocked up on some special treats from Trader Joe’s for dessert: gum drops (with natural coloring), Joe-Joe’s, and Tofutti Cuties.

Day 1:

• Breakfast: vegan blintzes from Trader Joes, cornflakes with rice milk
• Lunch: dry mango, grapes, dehydrated pea snacks, orange, almonds, olives and a pickle (he dropped the pb/j sandwich on the ground at school)
• Dinner: fried tofu triangles, coconut brown rice (and chard, that he didn’t eat…)

Day 2:

• Breakfast: vegan blintzes, homemade pumpkin muffin (with rice milk instead of milk)
• Lunch: grapes, dried mango, peanut butter filled pretzels and leftover tofu from dinner
• Snack: fruit leather, graham cracker
• Dinner: soy cheese quesadilla and a chicken tamale (with no cheese, of course)

Day 3:

• Breakfast: homemade pumpkin muffin with Earth Balance spread, steel cut oatmeal
• Lunch: banana, dried mango, pretzels, peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• Snack: Boo chips, fruit, olives
• Dinner: pork tenderloin with figs, coconut rice, roasted cauliflower and carrots

Day 4:

• Breakfast: homemade pumpkin muffin, vegan blintzes
• Lunch: tortilla chips, applesauce and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• Snack: fruit leather, graham crackers
• Dinner (at my parent’s house): carrots with edamame hummus, salmon, roasted potatoes, salad with Asian pearss/avocado, artichoke with mayonnaise and fruit sorbet

Day 5:

• Breakfast: vegan blintzes, Cliff bar
• Lunch: ham/soy cheese quesadilla, grapes, lollipop
• Dinner: turkey burgers, salad, sweet potato fries

Day 6:

• Breakfast: cereal with rice milk
• Lunch: Peanut butter/jelly sandwich, pretzels
• Dinner: roasted chicken legs with Asian sticky sauce, rice and acorn squash

We had to start over after Day 6 because I found out that he ate a muffin from a friend at school.  It was so hard for him to remember that he couldn’t eat anything from other people (unless it was simply fruit and veggies).  It also didn’t help that we were doing this around Halloween, when he was surrounded by treats at school.  There are lots of hidden sources of dairy in packaged foods – like our sandwich bread and crackers.  I even found dry milk powder in our sliced salame!

We made it about three weeks after the do-over before deciding to stop. I talked to several parents and medical professionals, all of whom said that if dairy were contributing to our behavior issues, we would have noticed a change by then.  It was worth a try – and was much easier than I had anticipated.

One thing that kept me going was the thought that simple changes in our diet would be the EASIEST fix for our issues – and much less expensive than therapy or medicine!  Have you had any challenges with your diet? Do you have any words of wisdom for the rest of us?

Okay, it’s time for me to tell it like it is.  It’s not like I was lying to you before.  But I realize that I may have suggested that our school lunch reform efforts were all flowers and butterflies.  It’s time for a reality check.  For you.  So you don’t think that this is easy.  I’ll be honest  – there have been many days when I have wanted to stick a spork in my eye.  But I haven’t told you about those days because I didn’t want to be a complainer.  And I didn’t want to make anyone look bad.

The truth is, I love my school lunch advisory team.  They are candid and passionate parents and teachers.  And they have high standards for the types of foods that should be served in our schools.  For many children, this may be the only meal of the day – so we owe it to them to do the BEST we can.  And I also adore Elena, our food service director.  She has a tough  job and is constantly being bombarded with demands and complaints. It’s a wonder she gets up the gumption to come to work every day.  It’s because of my respect for all of these people that I haven’t been as candid as I wanted to be in my school lunch articles so far.  I was afraid that they would be offended if I suggested that things weren’t ideal.  But it would be dishonest if I told you that I was perfectly satisfied with our progress.

I’ll say it here, and I’ll say it now – I am very proud of our work on school lunch reform so far and can’t wait to see where it is headed.  This post (and the ones to come hereafter) are NOT attacks on anyone – they are just honest stories about our challenges and hurdles.  We may not have stretched enough before the big race – and we have stumbled a few times.  And it’s time you knew.

We have had some setbacks since we started this effort almost 8 months ago.  One of the first issues we tackled last year was the sugary cereal that was being served as a part of the breakfast program.  Elena agreed to serve high fiber, low sugar cereals – and we even got rid of the muffins-as-big-as-your-head.  But a few weeks ago, we were frustrated to discover that several of our schools were serving Froot Loops again.  How could that have happened?  “The package says they are low in sugar,” we were told, when we asked.  Oh Lordy.  And what about the mixed messages that it sends to kids – that we actually endorse that stuff?  Families can serve their kids whatever they want at home, but it is our job to be educators at school.  We have to set a good example.  It turns out that someone used an old ordering sheet over the summer while our district’s central kitchen was being renovated.  While that excuse may be valid once, it won’t be again.  We encouraged Elena to remove the old ordering pages and create new ones that ONLY included items that are healthy and meet the standards set by our advisory team. We haven’t seen that list yet, but our fingers (and toes) are crossed that we’ll be allowed to help revise the ordering materials.

Buying good food on a budget is difficult, and commodity foods can alleviate the burden.  But my skin crawls when the kids are served up a batch of canned fruit in syrup.  It’s not the canned part that bothers me. It’s the sticky syrup – the extra sugar.  Why is it being served?  Because it’s free.  And our district has over a year’s supply in their stock piles.  As a temporary solution, we are urging our lunch service workers to drain the cans and rinse the fruit before adding it to the salad bar.  It’s not being served every day but some of us cringe when it is served at all.  I wonder if our plethora of cans could be used as door stops or paper weights instead, so they aren’t wasted.  I hope that our staff can learn to say NO to items like these next year. Even if they are free.

I’d love to hear from you.  What’s the reputation of the lunches served in your community? Have you or any other parents tried to make changes in the food service program? We would all love to hear about the experience – what worked and what didn’t.  Did the tone of this article work for you?  I want to be sure that you can learn from our trials and tribulations, and candor seems to be the best strategy.  I desperately hope that this will be the start of a candid discussion about feeding our kids, and why it pays to try to do it well.

xoxo
Michelle

P.S.  And since I am being extra honest here, I thought you might want to know that my daughter isn’t the biggest fan of vegetables.  I didn’t want you to think that just because I teach kids how to cook that my kids will always eat what I make.  But that’s another post – more transparency for another day.

With all of the talk on Twitter about cool and crisp weather, it seemed like a good time for me to put our food storage containers to the test.  When I talked to representatives of Kids Konserve and Klean Kanteen at the Natural Products Expo last year, both told me that their insulated jars would keep food hot.  I have heard that song and dance before, so I decided that I’d put them head to head with the Thermos jar that I already had at home.

Here is where you will see my checkered history as a high school biology teacher coming out:

• I tried to be consistent and use the same method on every container
• and even though I wanted to test the temperature by just sticking my finger in each jar, I refrained.
• I actually used a thermometer…you know, to get real measurements

My method:

1. I prepared all three jars just like I would if I were getting them ready for my kids’ lunches.
2. I filled each jar with 1 1/2 cup of hot water from the instant hot dispenser on the edge of my sink. The water measured 140 degrees.
3. I closed the lid and allowed the containers to heat up for 15 minutes with the water inside.
4. Meanwhile, I brought some chicken soup to a boil.
5. I poured out the hot water from each container, one at a time (into my dish tub, so that I didn’t waste it) and immediately replaced the liquid with 3/4 cup of hot broth.  I measured the temperature of the broth to be 128 degrees, and then put the lid on nice and tight.
6. I put the containers on the kitchen counter and went about my business for a few hours.
7. At noon (the approximate time that my kids would have lunch at school), I took the temperature of the broth in each container.
   

   The Winner!

8. (Then, I heated some udon noodles in the broth, added some leftover chimichurri,  and had it for lunch…)

The Results:  The broth inside each food container measured…

• Kids Konserve:  84 degrees
• Thermos: 92 degrees
• Klean Kanteen: 102 degrees

Disclaimer:  I already owned the Thermos brand container.  I purchased the Klean Kanteen container at the expo and was given the one from Kids Konserve to try.  Their generosity has not affected my results – I am merely reporting my findings.  Just like a scientist.  But without a lab coat.  And in fuzzy slippers.