Wednesday, October 20, 2010

What's for Breakfast: French Toast

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Chartwells calls the Stonyfield vanilla yogurt in this photo a "dipping sauce" to go with the French toast. As you can see, there are also some blueberries in that yogurt, but I didn't see any of the kids dipping their French toast into it.

This, however, is a big change from last year when the accompaniment to the French toast would have been a tub of high-fructose corn syrup mascarading as "pancake syrup." There's still sugar in the vanilla yogurt for sure, but not nearly the jolt delivered by that HFCS.

As best I can determine, the French toast is made from scratch using "whole wheat" bread and liquid eggs. It's a bit dry, but still palatable. Kids love almost anything having to do with bread. The pre-sliced oranges are also a helpful innovation. Not only are whole oranges difficult for the kids to peel, but so often they only eat a small portion before throwing it in the trash, just as they do with those huge Red Delicious apples schools love so much to serve.

We've been seeing smaller, more kid-size apples on the cafeteria trays lately. Very smart. When I spent a week in the central kitchen in Berkeley, CA, I learned that the schools there had contracted with a local orchardist to receive his less-marketable small apples. They may not sell so well at the farmers market, but they are just the right size for a kid's lunch.

1 comment:

  1. I don't know... I'm kind of partial to the slathering of sugary goodness that goes along with French Toast. Truth be told, I'd have loved to have this breakfast this morning, though. For some reason, I've neglected bread in my diet in a big way for the past 5 years or so... there's so much that can be done with it.

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