What's for Lunch: Tilapia!

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Look! Clean fish fillets being served in D.C. Schools!

This tilapia with a bit of Cajun seasoning makes a beautiful tray, no? Next to it is something else I that seems very new" "crunchy spinach," which means frozen spinach mixed with corn, bits of green pepper and sunflower seeds.

Who do you suppose cooked up that recipe?

Here's a what the kids saw when they came through the food line.

And here's what the "crunchy spinach" looked like in its hotel pan.

Okay, now for the bad news: As great as this meal looked, most of the kids in the lunchroom with my 11-year-old daughter didn't eat it.

To be more precise, I'd say about half of them at least tried the tilapia, and some of those were wolfing it down. "The ones who are eating it say it's the best thing ever," said one of the teachers who was monitoring things.

They also ate the canned pears and poked at the rice. But forget about those green beans and the "crunchy spinach." They wouldn't touch it. I tried the spinach. As much as I liked the concept, it was too cold. Almost frozen. Kids don't like spinach in general, and they seem to be really put off by exceptionally cold vegetables.

The tilapia fillets arrive frozen and are heated fairly easily. I wonder how the cost compares to other entrees the schools serve, especially the processed ones like those phony "grilled" chicken patties.

What's for Lunch: Taco Salad

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Kids pretty much love Mexican food these days so it didn't take much to convince them to eat this "taco salad." But you probably noticed that the chips in this case are not the "baked whole grain tortilla shells" Chartwells advertised on its website, but rather toasted whole wheat pita chips.

In fact, I liked the pita chips and the kids for the most part seemed to like them as well.

This was the preferred method of eating this meal: using the spork to spoon the ground turkey meat onto the chip. (That's me, as captured by my daughter. The kids did not eat the lettuce.)

According to the Chartwells website, there was supposed to be a choice of turkey meat or "southwest beans," but I didn't see any beans. Instead, kids were given this "Tex Mex corn," which was frozen corn mixed with canned salsa.

As my daughter observed, the corn was a bit on the cold side. But I'm not sure any of the kids in the lunchroom noticed, because I did not see them eating the corn at all. Mostly it went into the trash can untouched, as you see here.

Really, it can't be repeated often enough: if you're going to introduce new foods to kids, you really need to work with them to get them to eat it. Otherwise, it just gets trashed.

D.C. Public Schools serve some 36,000 lunches every day. Imagine all the corn that got thrown away.

Vegetarian Alternate: Taco Chips

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

This is the standing "cold" alternate lunch for Fridays in D.C. elementary schools, according to the menu posted on Chartwells website. Chartwells calls this, "western corn and black bean salad with whole grain tortilla shells and homemade BBQ ranch dressing."

To me, this looks like frozen corn tossed with canned black beans next to some corn tortilla scoops you usually see in the chips aisle at the grocery store. I don't see the "homemade BBQ ranch dressing." What would you put it on? The pear had been served with the main lunch the day before, and of course milk--either low-fat or non-fat--is always available for the kids to choose from.

How would you rate this meal? Is this a meal?

Is There Enough Corn on this Tray?

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Chartwells listed "taco salad" with ground turkey meat and "baked whole grain tortilla shells" as the entree for this meal. So what was the thinking behind including still more corn in the form of corn on the cob as the vegetable?

The menus at Chartwells' website also called for a "locally grown nectarine" with this meal. But as you can see, the fruit is a banana. The nectarine would earn school food services an extra nickel from the D.C. treasury for being local. So if this is simply a matter of a delivery slip-up--or maybe a few schools getting bananas instead of local nectarines--how will the food services department account for that when it comes time to ask the city for its locally-inspired check?

Now that school is back in session, a number of wrinkles are starting to become apparent in the "Healthy Schools" law passed this year by the D.C. Council, such as a possible accounting nightmare where the local food component is concerned.

Meanwhile, my daughter was so taken with the idea of tacos for lunch that she decided not to bring a lunch from home. Tragically, she was one of the last kids in line and by then the kitchen had run out of tacos. The alternate was salad. She doesn't like salad. So this is what she got for her $1.25:

Under the "offers versus served" rule that prevails in the federally subsidized school food program, this qualifies as a meal. Children are offered an entree, milk and three other items. They must choose three. Even kids who pay full fare are underwritten by the feds to the tune of 25 cents. This year for the first time, kids who only qualify for "reduced price" meals don't have to pay anything at all. The city is picking up the tab, care of the "Healthy Schools Act" passed earlier this year and a sales tax imposed on soft drinks.

Fortunately, daughter really likes black beans, bananas and corn on the cob. Not so fortunately, this corn on the cob was obviously the frozen variety and cooked to death. It was mealy and dull. Most of the kids declined to eat it. They also shied away from the black beans, which Chartwells advertised as "Southwest beans." They looked straight out of the can to me.

Kids are terribly inventive around lunch. Look how they dealt with the corn on the cob: speared on the end of their spork to make for easier eating.

This was how the alternate looked. In fact, it was a delicious looking salad, complete with croutons.

What's for Lunch: Hot Dog & Starch

The only thing in this meal not loaded with starch or actual sugar is the hot dog. Potatoes actually count as a vegetable. The corn has almost as much starch. Then there's the bun.

The 8-ounce serving of chocolate milk contains 26 grams of sugar--half of which occurs naturally as lactose--the same as Classic Coke. And there's more sugar in the ketchup.

But then any kind of potato and corn are among the things kids most like to eat at school.

The hot dog, from a company called West Creek, is all beef and contains 500 milligrams of sodium. That's 21 percent of the total recommended daily allowance of sodium for a diet of 2,000 calories. But children require far fewer calories than that.