I was reading the children’s website Ohdeedoh this morning and stumbled onto this report that ran on the CBS Sunday Morning show about school lunches in France (side note: CBS Sunday Morning Show is so good…why do I never watch it?). The report is truly fascinating, especially if you witnessed the behind-the-scenes situation (angry lunch ladies, sausage pizza for breakfast) at the West Virginia cafeteria Jamie Oliver visited on his show Food Revolution. In the French public school there is not a frozen chicken finger, greasy pizza square, or rehydrated potato spud to be seen, but there is beef stew and broccoli puffs served on real china. The kitchens are also completely spotless (they have to be because the cooks are handling real chicken and meat, not taking cardboard boxes out of the walk-in freezer and dumping its contents into a microwave), chefs who are passionate about what they do, and kids who say the multi-course meals are actually better then what they get at home. One cafeteria cook makes his own fish stock in the morning, and serves mussels and escargot! At a public high school! They are not only being fed, and being fed well, they are learning to appreciate good food.
Friday, October 1st, 2010
Cafeteria Chic
Could this ever happen here? Forget about the fact that the French cafeteria cooks go to vegetable and fruit markets every morning to source local ingredients for that day’s menu–I’d settle for the fact that the food is actually fresh, not frozen. No preservatives needed. There is nothing being doled out that you’d be concerned to serve a prison inmate, let alone your 3rd grader.
When I look at Belle’s school menu for the month (she brings her lunch but gets pizza on Friday) most of the food items are fried and in some sort of unnatural shape, preferably nuggets or sticks.
I was thinking how great it would be if they served apple sauce, made in the morning or as a class, using the bounty of apples from local orchards. Maybe that’s a start?
