Month: May 2024

You have to be quick on your feet if you want to grab a muffin at the Del Mar Elementary School cafeteria in Santa Cruz, California, because they go fast. The popular whole grain muffins are the special recipe of Prep Cook Nancy Gonzalez.

“I bake them at home, and my daughters would always tell me ‘You should make these at school, so all our friends can try them,’” Nancy said.

Nancy’s daughters were right—the muffins were a hit among students. Now they are one of the many delicious recipes served weekly to students in Live Oak School District.

 

Starting from Scratch

In Live Oak’s central kitchen at Del Mar Elementary, School Food Professionals are creating a new vision of what a school food program can be — one where fresh, locally grown ingredients, scratch-cooked meals and hands-on culinary education for students are the norm.

Live Oak’s innovative school food program features healthy scratch-cooked meals, packed with flavors kids love and provided to more than a thousand students every school day. Led by Kelsey Perusse, a registered dietitian and the Director of Child Nutrition Services, the district’s team of School Food Professionals are redefining what school food can be, bringing in good and good-for-you recipes, diverse perspectives and new approaches to preparing and cooking student meals.

“We’re trying to do incredible, innovative things,” Kelsey said. “Part of the way to do that is to have a strong, innovative team of School Food Professionals who are passionate about that work.”

 

Hands-on Experience and Opportunities for Learning

For students to build lifelong healthy eating habits, it’s important for them to understand where their food comes from and how to make their own delicious and nutritious meals.

At Live Oak, students get the chance to follow their food from seed to tray. In partnership with local nonprofit Life Lab, Live Oak runs an agriculture education program that gets students involved in the farming process — planting, growing and harvesting crops, and bringing them to the district’s central kitchen. Back in the central kitchen, Live Oak’s Food Lab program gives students hands-on experience, helping to transform that produce into fresh and tasty meals for their classmates.

One recipe that came from the garden-to-cafeteria partnership was a kale pesto. In March 2024, Live Oak had an abundance of kale in the gardens. So, students got creative and turned that harvest of kale into a flavorful pesto sauce that was then used to make two delicious lunch entrées: kale pesto pasta and freshly baked kale pizza.

“We encourage kids to find out about nutrition and develop their culinary skills at a young age,” said Yumery Salazar Rivas, who works in Live Oak’s Child Nutrition Services department. “They get to learn scratch cooking in a real kitchen, and they produce enough food for all our school sites.”

Enabling kids to learn how to cook and design new meals has been a great educational experience. And it has helped the district more successfully align their menu offerings with the tastes, preferences and cultural backgrounds of their students. After all, kids know their taste buds best! And by using local produce and minimally-processed ingredients as the foundation of school menus, School Food Professionals are helping students create healthy eating habits for life.

Seeing students take part in making meals that reflect who they are is one of the things that Yumery loves most about the program. “Kids are helping our School Food Professionals make scratch-cooked enchiladas and other great meals for their fellow students,” she said. “That’s something I definitely didn’t see on the menu when I was a kid.”

 

Fresh, Healthy and Local

Through committing to healthier meals, Live Oak’s team is also building a healthier community. By buying from local farms and producers, they’re able to get the freshest possible ingredients while supporting local Santa Cruz businesses.

Live Oak’s team prioritizes getting to know their farmers. Many of the farmers they buy from are supported by the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association, a local nonprofit that helps people create and run their own organic farms, and the district supports a wide range of other local producers.

“We get squash, kale and peppers from Brisa Ranch in Pescadero and apples from Billy Bob Orchard in Watsonville,” said Kelsey. “And our beef comes from Richard’s Regenerative Ranch up in Lafayette.”

 

Cooking Up Something Special

The kitchens at Live Oak School District are making more than just great meals. Their team of School Food Professionals is creating a model for a new kind of school food program while cultivating healthier futures for kids and communities. And it’s a team they’re proud to be a part of.

Nancy has been offered other positions in the school, but she always turns them down. Being in the school kitchen, cooking delicious meals for students, is where she wants to be. The students agree.

“They’re always calling for me, ‘Nancy! Nancy!,’” she said. “They always say ‘I know you cooked this, because it’s so delicious.’”

To learn more about how Live Oak School District is cooking up healthy meals and futures for their students, follow them on Instagram @LiveOakSDNutrition.

The switch flipped for me when I was in college, studying to become a registered dietitian. Part of our program included visiting large-scale food operations, and so I got to learn about the world of school food by going to Long Beach Unified School District and seeing the amazing work that they were doing. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a School Food Professional. I wanted to change school food by cooking great food for kids.

Since then, I’ve been able to live my dream as a School Food Professional at Western Placer Unified School District in Lincoln. My team and I are responsible for preparing, cooking and serving about 1,200 breakfasts and 4,200 lunches to students every school day. 

Our goal is to prepare scratch-cooked meals that are made with high-quality, locally sourced ingredients that our students absolutely love. A lot goes into making that happen, and it can take months to bring a recipe from an idea to the cafeteria tray. 

We start by surveying kids and parents, finding out what they like, what’s working and what could be better. Next, we need to source enough fresh, quality ingredients to make thousands of meals — and we prioritize working with local farms in California that can provide us with fruits, vegetables and other items.

Once we’ve got a recipe we like, we taste-test it with students to make sure they like it. Flavor is everything. Yes, it needs to be healthy. Yes, it needs to meet our various program requirements. But our job is to make food that does all that while tasting great. One of our latest student-approved, taste-tested recipes is cornbread, which we made from scratch with local flour and cornmeal. When  offered this recipe at a recent school-wide event, a site administrator shared that it converted them from a lifetime of disliking cornbread into its newest fan!  

After receiving student feedback, our team moves to the next step: recipe standardization. Not all of our cafeteria kitchens have the same equipment or facilities, so recipes have to be adapted to meet the needs of all our school sites. This means our chef develops recipes with various preparation methods to achieve the same results consistently throughout the district. It’s an intensive process, but the result is a win-win for everyone. 

Most importantly, none of this could happen without our incredible team. They have embraced our scratch-cooking journey, challenging themselves to grow while cooking amazing meals for our kids. They work hard together, even completing supplemental trainings through organizations like the Culinary Institute of America Copia Campus, Brigaid and the Institute of Child Nutrition to develop and expand their culinary skill sets, all because they’re excited to cook better food for students. They’re also participating in other professional development opportunities like Chef Ann Foundation’s Healthy School Food Pathway Pre-Apprentice and Apprentice program. 

I get really excited when I think about what is happening in school food now and the potential of school food. In addition to supporting the health of students by cooking great meals that help them thrive in and out of school, School Food Professionals are a vehicle for changing local food systems and supporting their communities. We’re supporting our community by making fresh, delicious meals that our kids really enjoy. 

So many districts across California — Vacaville Unified, Madera Unified, Mount Diablo Unified, and Marysville Joint Unified, just to name a few — are making fantastic, flavorful, locally sourced meals, like fresh-made sushi or local halibut for fish tacos. Madera Unified is even roasting turkeys — not only for Thanksgiving, but also their daily sub sandwiches! 

My dream for school food is for it to be truly student driven and culinary focused. That means menus that are student approved, filled with menu items that taste great that students want to eat. I want to make sure we use high-quality ingredients from local producers. I want that to be the norm for students. And it can’t happen without School Food Professionals and the skill, creativity and care they put into these menus. 

I love being a School Food Professional. This is the most exciting time to be in school food. More and more districts across California are sourcing local produce, hiring chefs, developing delicious recipes, and cooking high-quality meals for their students. I can’t wait to see where school food is going to go.