Month: August 2024

August California Voices

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Welcome to the third edition of California Voices! Chefs, teachers, parents and others are taking to social media to share how School Food Professionals are transforming school food for the better and supporting student success across California. Here’s what they’ve been saying.

Teacher Diego Napoles

Diego Napoles, a fourth grade teacher, knows how hard it is for students to learn when they’re hungry. He’s excited to see how School Food Professionals are cooking up fresher, healthier school food to help students be ready to learn.

School Food Professional Burg

Burg loves being a School Food Professional. She’s proud to be able to plan delicious menus and prepare scratch-cooked, nourishing meals using fresh ingredients for her students. 

@_burg

Join us as we set the table for a fresher, healthier school meals that empower kids in the classroom and beyond. Learn more at SchoolFoodPros.org In paid partnership with @schoolfoodpros @Powered By School Food Pros #CASchooIFoodPros #PoweredBySchooIFoodPros

♬ original sound – Lunch lady Burg❤️

Chef Brandon Skier

Brandon Skier, a professional chef, knows that cooking for large groups of people is one of the best ways to grow your cooking skills like time management and organization. He’s excited to see School Food Professionals using their skills to improve school food with delicious menu options like pupusas, a newer addition now available to students. Plus, get his recipe for scratch-cooked pupusas with fresh curtido. 

University Dean and Author Stacey Freeman, Ph.D.

While Stacey loves cooking for her kids when she has the time, as a working mom, it’s also important for her to be able to rely on School Food Professionals to cook healthy breakfast and lunch options for her kids. With School Food Professionals cooking up fresher, healthier meals, Stacey gets to have peace of mind and save time. 

Cook H Woo Lee

H Woo Lee used to be insecure about bringing the Japanese food that his mom cooked for him to school. Now, he’s excited to hear that School Food Professionals are cooking up culturally diverse meals to help students feel included and proud of their backgrounds. Plus, get his recipe for Japanese curry rice.

Chef Markell Titov

Markell Titov, a professional chef, knows the skill and dedication it takes to provide high-quality meals for hundreds of people. Markell notes that just like professional chefs in the restaurant industry, School Food Professionals must meticulously plan, carefully select ingredients and focus intensely on the preparation of each meal. 

Nurse and Mother Desiree Moore

As a mom of school-aged children and with a grandmother who worked as a School Food Professional, Desiree Moore understands both the commitment that School Food Professionals have when it comes to improving school food and the impact that it has on kids like her own.

See for yourself what all the buzz is about and join the conversation with #CASchoolFoodPros and #PoweredBySchoolFoodPros on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Pozole

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“We want students to feel like they’re at home when they’re eating. Our team creates great recipes incorporating the foods and flavors we serve our own families, and the kids love them.” – Michelle Pruitt Roybal, Nutrition Services Supervisor, Azusa Unified School District

The School Food Professionals at Azusa Unified School District are always looking for new ways to give their students home-style meals. To come up with the perfect recipe for pozole, a delicious and hearty Mexican soup, they held a contest. Staff gathered, cooked and voted on their favorite pozole recipes, and they served the tastiest one in their schools. 

The secret to a delicious pozole recipe is great ingredients – flavorful hominy, high-quality chicken or pork, fresh chilis and a rich broth – that provide a hearty meal that fills students up with flavor, warmth and joy. “We want them to have a big smile on their face,” Michelle says. “We want them to be really happy that they’re coming to school to eat.”

Want to make a healthy dish like this for the kids in your life? Check out this simple and delicious pozole recipe from the Lunch Box!

Radish Slaw

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“Students think they don’t like vegetables, then they try ones that come in fresh from the garden. They love the idea of harvesting, bringing something in and serving it right up.” – Elizabeth Mungia, Cafeteria Manager, Oxnard Union High School District

Nothing tastes better than fresh. When fruits and vegetables come right from the farm or garden and go straight to the tray, they bring a flavor that can’t be beat. In Oxnard Union High School District, fresh is always on the menu through their Harvest of the Month program, which spotlights locally grown,  seasonal produce. The program gets kids to taste new fruits and veggies that they might not otherwise try. “The most recent harvest of the month was radishes,” Elizabeth says. “You can tell the kids liked them because there was barely anything left over.”

Harvest of the Month programs teach students where food comes from while also supporting local farmers in their communities. Best of all, they help kids discover new healthy favorites like radish slaw, a tasty, tangy pairing with entrees like tacos. “It’s all fresh from the ground, and that’s what makes it so good,” Elizabeth says.

Want to make a healthy dish like this for the kids in your life? Check out this simple and delicious radish slaw recipe from the Lunch Box!

Chicken Quesadilla

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“I can provide all the students with home-style meals and get them to taste all different kinds of foods and flavors.” – Esther Huizar, Cafeteria Manager, Oak Valley Union Elementary School District

One of the home-style meals that Oak Valley Union Elementary’s team of School Food Professionals cooks from scratch is a chicken quesadilla. Cafeteria Manager Esther Huizar and her team prepare the chicken with fresh ingredients like tomato, onions and garlic, and low-fat cheese. The key to making sure these quesadillas are nice and soft for students is warming the whole wheat tortillas before adding cheese and chicken for a final five minutes in the oven. 

The best part about these chicken quesadillas? The students at Oak Valley Union Elementary love them. As Esther says, cooking fresh, healthy meals “makes a big difference.”

Want to make a healthy dish like this for the kids in your life? Check out this simple and delicious chicken quesadilla recipe from the Lunch Box!

Farm to School: How California is Revolutionizing School Lunches

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If you’re eating lunch at an Azusa Unified School District cafeteria, and you think your orange tastes extra sweet, you’re not wrong. That’s a benefit of buying local oranges grown on trees that are more than a century old. “The older the tree, the sweeter the orange,” says Anna Nakamura-Knight, whose family has farmed citrus trees in Redlands, CA for five generations.

Anna’s farm does more than provide delicious fresh fruit to school districts like Azusa Unified. As a part of Old Grove Orange, they offer education and enrichment for students about food, agriculture, and the environment through a farm to school program. 

The result is a program that benefits everyone, creating healthier and stronger futures for kids, schools, farmers and communities. 

  1. Helping Kids: School Food Professionals that operate farm to school programs can get their students to eat delicious, just-harvested produce while learning about where their food comes from. Research shows that kids who engage with farm to school programs  eat more fruits and vegetables, are more willing to try healthy foods, get more physical activity, and even do better in class. “Doing this gives us a unique opportunity to cultivate the palate of a child,” Anna says. “We get to create this healthy, wonderful, rich relationship with food where they know where an orange comes from, how it grows and what it really tastes like.”
  2. Helping Schools: Schools that participate in farm to school see greater meal participation, healthier meal options, greater support from parents, and reduced food waste. Best of all, School Food Professionals get access to fresh, healthy ingredients which can form the basis of nutritious, scratch-cooked meals. “We work with all sorts of school programs, from  once-a-month, harvest-of-the-month features to weekly deliveries,” Anna says. “Our farmers even go into schools to teach students about healthy food choices and how produce is grown.” 
  3. Helping Farmers: Farm to school purchases directly support farmers, keeping them in business and allowing them to keep producing fresh, local fruits and vegetables in their communities. The impact is huge, making up a sizable percentage of incomes for farmers participating in farm-to-school programs and pouring more than a billion dollars every year into these vital local businesses. “It makes such an economic difference for farmers. School purchases from our farm enabled my parents to pay for my and my brother’s college educations,” Anna says. “The food dollars schools spend support whole farming families, and those farms are in your community.” 
  4. Helping Communities: When schools purchase food from local farmers, it keeps those dollars local, where they can stimulate the economy, create local jobs, strengthen families and generate more prosperity for everyone. “What’s magical is that, not only are you giving kids the most nutritious, delicious produce that they can get, but you’re supporting local families and building up the economy of your whole community.”

Anna is excited to see how farm to school has grown throughout California. Schools across the state have made a greater commitment to working with small farmers in their communities, supported by state programs like the California Farm to School Incubator Grant Program, Local Food for Schools, and School Food Best Practices Funds. 

She sees the movement as the intersection of past and future, upholding the long tradition of local farms while making a tangible difference in the lives of kids. “I want children to benefit from fresh, healthy food and small farmers to be able to keep farming forever,” Anna said.

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