Lasagna: It Really Was Homemade!

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Recently I inferred that the spinach lasagna in this photo, taken on the second day of school at my daughter's elementary school here in the District of Columbia, was frozen and not "homemade," as Chartwells had indicated on its published menu.

I was wrong. When I walked into the cafeteria yesterday to photograph the food, the kitchen manager gently corrected me. "I made that lasagna," she said proudly.

Well blow me down.

She couldn't tell me whether each and every D.C. school that Chartwells now serves (I believe that would be 108) made its own lasagna that day. But more importantly, the lasagna was not some processed import, frozen and re-heated like most meals from Chartwells in the past. It was made by layering lasagna noodles with tomato sauce, frozen spinach and grated cheese.

As I've been gathering the last two weeks, there's been a real revolution underway in D.C. Public Schools food service. According to Food Services Director Jeffrey Mills, who spent a good part of his summer testing hundreds of alternate menu items, the Chartwells menu has been completely changed. The kitchen crews got extra training over the summer, and now we're seeing lots more freshly prepared foods on kids' cafeteria trays.

In fact, we've been making a big deal about D.C. Central Kitchen's involvement in a pilot program this year, cooking meals from scratch for seven D.C. schools. But here we have the DCPS kitchen staff showing that they can cook from scratch, too.

Congratulations, D.C. kitchen ladies! What's next on the agenda? Homemade soup maybe?

D.C. Schools Attempt to Manage Food News

Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

School resumes here in the District of Columbia on Monday, Aug. 23, and I was hoping to give readers a first-hand glimpse of how D.C. Central Kitchen was cooking food from scratch for seven of the District's schools as part of a new pilot program. The world wants to know how the Central Kitchen, a non-profit agency that makes food for 4,500 of the city's homeless, manages to work fresh, local produce into kids' meals, and whether the kids actually eat it.

I had already talked to the Central Kitchen about it and gotten a green light. But after waiting nearly a week for clearance from the D.C. Public Schools' general counsel's office, the clock ran out on my proposal to be embedded in the kitchen at Kelly Miller Middle School, where the Central Kitchen staff will be preparing those meals. After many urgent messages to the schools' press secretary, Jennifer Calloway, I received an e-mail last night from someone named Katie Test, the communications coordinator for the Office of Family and Public Engagement.

Here's the text of Test's e-mail:

"I’ll be handling some of our media requests, and have been working on your proposal. We love the idea of you observing the DC Central Kitchen from-scratch lunch programs, and are pulling together a waiver for you to sign. We’d like to invite you and other interested reporters to observe the lunch period at one of our schools, and will also be able to set you up with interviews with key DCPS and DCCK personnel."

She continued:

"I’m sure you understand that back-to-school time, especially in the middle of an exciting new pilot program like this one, is extremely busy. We want to grant your request for access while being respectful of the work that needs to be done in the kitchen and the people who need to do it.

"So stay tuned! We’re getting the paperwork set up and I’ll be back in touch with a few potential dates that fit everyone’s schedules."

Of course I wasn't looking for dates that fit everyone's schedules. I just wanted to get into the Kelly Miller kitchen with my camera and notepad. Test seemed to have skated completely around my original request. So I asked her why I couldn't just play fly on the wall at Kelly Miller, the same way I have done at the central kitchen in Berkeley, Calif., in the "culinary boot camps" in Denver, in the kitchen at Washington Jesuit Academy.

This is how Test responded:

"Given your extensive background in the subject, I’m sure you completely understand the hectic nature of our kitchens during the start of school, especially while we’re piloting a brand new program. While we’re happy to revisit your request to embed for a longer period of time later in the year, we’d still like to have you come in to see how the meals are assembled and served during a lunch period in the next few weeks. I know from your conversations with Jennifer that you’re eager to get a peek, so this is the best solution to balance everyone’s needs."

She concluded:

"We’ll continue to get the paperwork in line, and if you are interested in lunch period access, I’ll identify some potential dates for access for a lunch period."

I translate all of this as meaning that the D.C. Public Schools, after getting so much bad press over the food Chartwells has been serving, is incredibly nervous about the launch of new pilot programs and feels they have to manage every little step the media take around it. But maybe after the dust settles they'll realize that what this is about, after all, is simply people cooking food and trying to make meals from the measly $1 worth of ingredients the federal meals program provides.

We get that. The next step is simply letting the tax-paying public know exactly how it's done. As far as good news for the schools goes, it's an almost guaranteed home run.

The Trouble with Local Produce

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

I wonder if anyone else attending the "food services roundtable" this week at D.C. Public Schools headquarters was struck by food services director Jeffrey Mills' comment that he and his crew have recently taste-tested some 300 different "food products" for the upcoming school year.

Mills said he personally had tasted "30 different chicken products," in the effort to improve school meals.

"Food products"? "Chicken products"?

The emphasis seems to be on "products" rather than fresh food. And that's one of the problems schools face when their idea of serving children revolves around hiring a giant food services contractor--in this case Chartwells--whose method of producing meals involves reheating industrially processed convenience foods. Or should we say "products"?

D.C. schools under Chancellor Michelle Rhee have determined that cooking is not a "core competency" of schools and so have farmed out the job to Chartwells. This year they are introducing two pilot programs--14 schools to be served meals either from Revolution Foods or D.C. Central Kitchen--to create a little competition and light a fire under Chartwells.

Still, the problem remains: how do you get fresh produce into the meals if no one in the kitchen is trained to handle it, or doesn't have the equipment?

As well as being pressed by healthy food and farm to school advocates, Mills has a financial incentive to put some sort of locally grown food on every cafeteria tray. The "Healthy Schools Act"passed earlier this year by the D.C. Council offers a five-cent bonus for each school meal that contains a locally grown component.

That wouldn't be hard at all if D.C. schools had salad bars. But D.C. schools don't have salad bars. They could put it in the soup. But D.C. schools don't make or serve soup. They could put local vegetables in the the pasta sauce. But D.C. schools don't make their own pasta sauce. It comes out of a can. Does that mean replacing cooked-to-death broccoli from Mexico or California with local cooked-to-death broccoli?

Mills remarked that "there's a ton of local produce around us" here in the District of Columbia. He said one local distributor, Keany Produce, has assured him it can deliver all the local produce D.C. schools might require. But as far as actually using that produce in school kitchens: "Hopefully as years go on, we can improve the skills of our kitchen workers and upgrade our kitchens."

Years? Is there a plan we don't know about?

Anthony Tata, chief operating officer for the schools, seems perfectly content to rely on vendors. When asked whether D.C. schools might ever emulate other schools districts who "self operate" their food service and cook with raw products, he said it's all about "good contract management." "I can't predict the future," Tata said, "but we will make decisions to bring the most nutritious food to our kids. We think we've found the sweet spot of what we're driving toward. We'll be ruthless in holding [vendors] accountable."

Meanwhile, other school districts around the country are doing everything they can to train their own cooks and upgrade their kitchens in order to prepare meals more economically from scratch using fresh produce and other raw ingredients. Here's a report that aired last night on PBS Newshour, describing how schools in Colorado are using federal stimulus funds to conduct "culinary boot camps" to train their own cooks.

A Charter School Does it Right

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

In response to an article about the woeful state of D.C school food I wrote for the Washington Post's "Outlook" section recently, the chef and director of Elsie Whitelow Stokes Community Freedom Charter School in Northeast D.C. published a long letter in the Post last week detailing how they serve fresh food to their kids on a daily basis.

Lisa Dobbs, the chef, and Linda Moore, the school's founder and director, explain how the school moved into a building with an old kitchen and obtained funds for an upgrade from a small non-profit. They used federal stimulus money to purchase more equipment and hire three additional staffers. Now a kitchen contingent of five is making meals for 400 students and staff from scratch using locally-sourced ingredients. They also have a salad bar they say the students pick clean every day.

Serving fresh food attractively isn't necessarily easy, Dobbs and Moore write. It takes lots of hard work. What motivates them is knowing that kids "will not eat -- nor will most adults -- vegetables that have been frozen or processed until they become nasty mush."

You can read the full letter here.

Daughter Makes Peanut Butter Pancakes

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

With refined flour, sugar and grape jelly, these pancakes wouldn't appear at the top of my list of healthful foods I would wish for my daughter. But she made them herself, so I count this as a win. Anything that disabuses kids of processed factory foods is a good thing, in my book. Plus, this recipe does include protein-rich peanut butter. And making these pancakes from scratch means you know they're not like the processed food currently being served in D.C. schools, with all the chemical additives and preservatives.

You could even make them a little healthier by replacing some of the refined flour with whole wheat.

These pancakes come from a book called Gadgetology, by Pam Abrams, that bills itself as "kitchen fun with your kids, using 35 cooking gadgets for simple recipes,crafts, games and experiments." The gadget for this particular recipe is the old mechanical rotary beater. We had one when I was growing up. It's the same mechanism as an electric mixer, except you crank it by hand. When you're not using it to beat eggs, it's a fun thing to chase your sisters with. (Try to avoid getting the beaters caught in their hair.)

Around our house, we whisk things by hand. But as my daughter learned, when making pancakes with peanut butter in the batter it's best to use a big, loose whisk rather than a smaller, tighter one. With a tight whisk, the peanut butter tends to get caught in the wires and turn into a clump. In fact, I would advise starting your mixing with a spatula before applying the whisk (or rotary beater).

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine 1 cup all-purpose flour, 2 tablespoons light brown sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder. In a separate bowl, beat together 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter and 2 large eggs. (You might want to start this process with a spatula to incorporate the peanut butter.) When the mixture is smooth, add 1 1/4 cups milk and 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted. Beat until well blended. Using a rubber spatula, fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.

Pour the batter onto a moderately hot griddle to make pancakes the size you desire. They are ready to flip when bubbles form on the top and then break. This recipe will make 6 to 8 regular-size pancakes, or more than a dozen smaller ones.

To serve, lay one pancake flat on a plate, spread your favorite fruit jelly over it, then top with a second pancake, forming a sandwich. Dig in.