Santa Cruz schools are committed to changing your children’s attitudes about vegetables.
For the first time, five school districts participated together in a culinary training program aimed at giving new impetus to the usual school meals by using fresh products.
Farm to Table became a reality last week when cafeteria staff from the Pajaro, Live Oak, San Lorenzo Valley, Soquel and Santa Cruz school districts met at Del Mar Elementary School where they participated in five days of intensive culinary training boot camp at the Live Oak District Central Kitchen under the guidance of a CIA-trained chef.
Yes, the school cafeteria has evolved since the days when ketchup was considered a vegetable. Today’s school meals are balanced according to government nutritional guidelines, and in Santa Cruz, most of the produce is organic. Healthy meals are prepared and served by the child nutrition experts formerly known as the Lunch Ladies.
In schools bound by a tightly regulated system based on uniformity, federal nutrition regulations and scalability, to name a few, great-tasting food can seem like an afterthought. But Santa Cruz County schools are being flexible within the system by improving how they handle the food that comes into their kitchens. And, more importantly, the people who prepare it.
Principals who attended the first multi-district training were enthusiastic about the benefits they had already seen among participants. The combination of skill building and the opportunity to network with colleagues from other districts brought a new level of commitment to the work that is not always recognized.
By training kitchen staff to prepare new recipes for large quantities, schools can offer fresher food from a network of local farming partners. The produce is high quality, the meat is grass-fed and free from hormones and antibiotics. But the big benefit for children and parents is that school staff are fully dedicated to pampering developing taste buds.
The brains behind this grant-funded training is Cathy Powers, MS, RD, LD, founding partner of Culinary Nutrition Associates and CIA-trained chef turned trainer, who developed this program for the state of Indiana eight years ago.
She explains: “We did it twice in Santa Cruz last year and they invited us back because they enjoyed it so much. The best thing is to see how the nutritionists change. Their confidence grows.”
The training begins with the basics of cooking. “Yesterday they learned how to use a kitchen knife and practiced different techniques,” says Powers. “Today it’s cooking with vegetables. The staff form teams, each assigned a different vegetable, and they prepare it in three different ways: steamed, fried and cold. They learn that there is so much you can do with vegetables, because the key to a healthier generation is teaching our students to love vegetables.”
Powers continues, “Today is about creating vegetable lovers, because that’s exactly what we’re lacking. Kids don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. Although this program is not vegetarian, it focuses heavily on making vegetables palatable. I like to tell the class, ‘If a student’s first experience with the vegetable is negative, you may have created a vegetable hater.’
Because if they tried the broccoli and it wasn’t seasoned, they might never try it again. But if you prepare delicious vegetables, you could win over vegetable lovers. And tomorrow we’ll do the same thing with grains. We have sorghum, we have quinoa and couscous, we have brown rice, and each team will work with a different grain.”
Because cooking large quantities is so different from cooking individual meals, even chefs with extensive culinary experience need special training to prepare these large-scale recipes. After this week, the nutrition experts will decide which recipes to put on the cafeteria menu.
They may only take on one or two at first, but as Powers says, “We don’t teach them recipes, we teach them techniques. Whether it’s roasted broccoli, roasted cauliflower or roasted Brussels sprouts, the technique is the same. They learn how to use spices. Whether it’s cumin-roasted broccoli or ranch-style roasted carrots, they learn the techniques to implement according to their students’ tastes.”
And how do the nutrition experts know whether the children like the food? New recipes are announced with cards that are placed on the lunch tables in some schools and contain a QR code. The children can scan the code to access a form where they can give their opinion.
Amy Hedrick-Farr says, “The combination of nutrition education and community outreach allows us to bring the food we grow in the Life Lab into the classroom and cafeteria. Thanks to our grants, we can combine all three very successfully.”
