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For their first course, diners can choose from Autumn Harvest Corn & Chevre Pudding, Maple Roasted Root Vegetables or Carrot-Ginger Soup. For the main course – make that the Maine course – offerings include Italian-Inspired Pasta with Maine White Beans & Veggies, Chicken Pot Pie with Maine Mashed Potatoes or an organic Barbecue Beef Burger. Sides include Aroostook Wheat Berry Salad, Heirloom Tomato Salsa and Carrot-Raisin Slaw. And for dessert, the mouth-watering lineup includes Pumpkin Snack Cakes, Wild Blueberry Cobbler and Maine Apple Gingerbread.
If you think this sounds like a bistro menu, think again.
This is a school lunch menu – yes, you read that right – school lunch, better known for such classics as rectangular pizzas, salami Italians on hamburger buns and sloppy Joes (or, as Adam Sandler would sing, “slop, sloppy Joes.”
But there was nary a sloppy Joe in sight – no hoagies and grinders, either – as Bangor chef Cheryl Wixson led a class for school food service workers last week at the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association’s Common Ground Education Center in Unity.
Wixson teamed up with MOFGA and Walter Beesley, the state’s education specialist in child nutrition services, to help cafeteria workers prepare for the Maine Harvest Lunch. The event, which started in Gorham in 2001 and went statewide in 2003, will take place Sept. 27.
“This is not something that just food service is going to do,” said Wixson, a champion for organic, sustainable, locally raised food. “The whole initiative involves students and parents so we all recognize that food is a priority. It’s not just ‘lunch ladies.’ We all need to take a role in this to bring healthy, nutritious, local food to our schools.”
In some towns, that’s already happening on a small scale. Boothbay Harbor food service staffers have been working with Northcenter, a wholesale supplier, to source Maine-grown produce. Boothbay’s fall lunch menus always feature local apples and potatoes.
But food service workers need to follow strict caloric guidelines, and finding sources can be a challenge. Betty Stevenson, the food service director at Hall-Dale Elementary School, would like to work more closely with local farmers. Hall-Dale is a short drive from the Dresden farm belt.
“We know where it comes from,” Stevenson said. “We know what it is.”
Affordability is still a challenge – especially when you’re charging $1.75 for a meal that costs $3 to produce with conventional produce, which is the case in Boothbay’s elementary school.
“It’s the unknown,” Darlene French, the food service director in Boothbay, said over coffee before the workshop began. “[My staffers] know how to cook, but this gives a different aspect, using dried fruits, low-sugar and whole grains – this will give them different ideas.”
The idea of wheat berry salad and corn and goat cheese pudding may sound a little too different – especially for young palates – but the “lunch ladies” that gathered at MOFGA said their kids are more adventurous than one might expect.
“We find that taste tests work the best,” said Dawn Sutter of Boothbay. “I tell them to come back if they don’t like it and I’ll give them something else. I’ve only had one or two people do that.”
And Wixson, who on this morning looked like a Food Network celebrity in her toile-trimmed red chef’s jacket and crisp white pants, said moving beyond pizza, chicken nuggets and French fries certainly couldn’t hurt.
“It takes 21 times for a palate to develop a taste for something,” she said. “We do a disservice to our children just giving them what they like.”
Even the pickiest eater would’ve appreciated the scene in MOFGA’s kitchen. Trays stacked with orange and yellow carrots, miniature yellow summer squash and purple and green jalapenos crowded the counters. Colanders overflowed with heirloom tomatoes and scrubbed potatoes. Bouquets of fresh herbs awaited chopping.
The 11 “lunch ladies” from Boothbay Harbor, Yarmouth and Hall-Dale Elementary School in Hallowell quickly got to work, weighing ingredients, peeling vegetables, slicing and dicing. At once, a cacophony of sounds filled the room – a whisk on a stainless-steel bowl, the clang of metal pans, the whir of a food processor shredding carrots. Soon, the aromas of cilantro, sauteed onions and pot-pie gravy mingled in the air.
“It’s starting to smell like food in here, ladies,” Wixson said as she cranked up the radio.
As Nita McFetridge of Boothbay mixed the batter for pumpkin snack cakes, she discussed the difference between what they were doing at MOFGA and the normal school lunch scene.
“This is all fresh stuff – that’s the biggest difference,” McFetridge said. “A lot of our stuff comes already prepped. This is the real McCoy. The vegetables are all fresh and healthy, much healthier.”
Though the workshop’s organizers are quick to point out that this day’s menu is a bit ambitious to reproduce in a cafeteria setting, even small steps – one dish, one ingredient, one school at a time – count. Which is why the Maine Harvest Lunch has been so well-received.
“Doing this as a one-day event is not so huge and unmanageable,” said Amanda Beal, MOFGA’s president.
And the results can resonate for years to come. After forging relationships with local farmers in preparation for the first harvest lunch in Gorham, the school’s food service director, Ron Adams, has continued to purchase local ingredients.
“It can be a starting point,” Beal said.
Equally important is educating the students about where the food comes from and what they’re eating. Beal advocates working the event into the curriculum, as well as encouraging community and family involvement.
“It’s not enough to put local apples on the food line and not explain why it’s a wonderful thing to have them,” Beal said.
For first-timers, she urges food service workers to seek out community partners who can help with the effort – other schools have worked with soil and water conservation groups, local Healthy Maine Partnerships participants and the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
“In all reality, you want it to be something people get really excited about,” Beal said. “The community owns it. The students and the schools own it.”
And in the end, it tastes way better than sloppy Joes, fries and chicken nuggets, too.
Harvest Lunch Resources
Maine Harvest Lunch will take place Sept. 27 in schools throughout the state.
School staffers and community members who are interested in implementing the program in their school should contact Walter Beesley at the state department of education office, 624-6875.
MOFGA offers a free resource CD related to the Maine Harvest Lunch. For information, visit www.mofga.org or call 568-4142.
Cheryl Wixson runs the nonprofit Cheryl Wixson’s Kitchen. For information, call 947-0892 or e-mail starchef99@aol.com.
Distributors of Maine products
Cheryl Wixson and MOFGA prepared this list of vendors for food-service workers.
. Farm Fresh Connection, Martha Putnam, 939-4748 or www.farmfreshconnection.org
. Crown of Maine Organic Co-Op, Jim Cook, 1-800-743-7783, www.crownofmainecoop.com
. Native Maine Produce LLC, Joe Pizzo, 1-877-43-7848, www.nativemaineproduce.com
. Luce’s Meats, Maine Farms Brand, Arnold Luce, 635-2817
. Farm2Chef.com, George Carpenter, 351-5405, www.farm2chef.com
. Nova Foods, Claude or Mark Dupuy, 1-800-794-8224
. The Turkey Farm, Bob Neal, 778-2889, www.theturkeyfarm.com
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