for Ukiah Daily Journal

It seemed apt that the path to last week's conference titled "Feeding our Future: A Celebration of Healthy School Food Services in Mendocino and Lake Counties" wound through the bountiful gardens located on the grounds of Hopland's Campovida Culinary Pavillion.

More than 100 cooks, kitchen managers and public school food service directors from Mendocino, Lake and Del Norte counties gathered for a first-ever training and celebration of the staff who coordinate, cook and serve the food for public school children across the region. Attendees came to the meeting energized and ready for the first day of school, and left with a virtual cornucopia filled with solutions, ideas and inspiration gleaned from local and regional leaders within the culinary community.

 "It brings me so much joy and satisfaction to see all of you having such a good time," Susan Lightfoot told the audience. Lightfoot is the coordinator of NCO's Farm2Fork program that spearheaded the conference.
The conference provided opportunities for learning new techniques and sharing best practices for serving fresh, healthy, locally grown meals to children through the National School Lunch Program. "All of our districts are doing an incredible job of serving healthy food to our kids. Almost all our schools have gardens, which is not the case in many parts of the country," Lightfoot notes.

The free, all-day conference provided food service employees information, culinary training, networking and team building. "This was the first event of its kind to bring together these unsung heroes who feed our communities," says Lightfoot.  Experts from the Center for Ecoliteracy and state leaders from the California Department of Education discussed and presented strategies to help meet new federal meal pattern regulations as a result of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

Karen Brown, creative director of the Center for Ecoliteracy, and Adam Kesselman, founder of the Lunch Trust, presented training on preparing school meals with fresh, seasonal ingredients. Using recipes from the Center's cookbook, "Cooking with California Food in K-12 Schools," participants learned to prepare simple, healthy dishes utilizing California crops, with an emphasis placed upon "flavor profiles" familiar to the area's diverse school populations.  Participants were provided hands-on experience making and sampling recipes as well as exchanging new ways to utilize fresh, local ingredients.

Deborah Beall from the California Department of Education has been training food service employees on changes to the federal meal pattern regulations. She presented a "Salad Tool Kit" to attendees. "Fruits and vegetables are your new best buddies," Beall explained. Vegetables are now divided into subgroups, and schools are required to provide daily minimum servings based upon student age. Dried beans are now an important feature of school lunches. Half of grains served must be whole grains.

New requirements include the serving of 1/2 cup of dark green vegetables, beans or peas and starchy vegetables per week. Red and orange vegetables must be served weekly - 3/4 cup for younger students and 1 1/4 cups weekly for high school students.

Additionally, notes Beall, there is an emphasis on reducing sodium in student meals. "If you're using herbs, citrus and different spices you're probably automatically reducing the amount of salt. If you decrease the amount of processed foods, you're probably decreasing sodium," she noted.

Breakout sessions facilitated by members of Mendo Futures offered food service workers opportunities to share successes and offer solutions to colleagues in similar lines of work. Participants discussed techniques to encourage better eating habits, shared recipes, Internet resources and strategized how best to meet federal guidelines, provide the highest level of nutrition and stay within lean district budgets.

Jamie Smith, senior manager of Food Services and Nutrition at Santa Cruz City Schools, discussed their enlivened food service program. His district retooled its food service and wellness policies to incorporate the utilization of more local foods, reducing environmental impact, increasing scratch cooking and continued elevation of nutritional value.

"We changed our brand, distanced ourselves from the rest of our district and then went about the business of changing our food," Smith noted. He helped to spearhead the increased use of local foods and changed the way his staff utilized USDA commodities in meal preparation. "We buy whole muscle meats. We started cooking rice, pasta and beans and making our own rice bowls from scratch. We make our own sauces using USDA chicken and have incorporated meatless Mondays," he explained.

Smith and Jim Stewart, executive chef at Ukiah Valley Medical Center, prepared a Mexican-themed lunch for conference goers, creatively using fresh vegetables and items regularly found in school lunch programs. A portion of the food for the luncheon was donated by Leonardis Organics, Gowan's Oak Tree and Mendocino Organics.

Pilar Gray has created a "farm to school" relationship with FortBragg's Noyo Food Forest,  which provides fresh produce for the Fort Bragg School District. Over the past nine years, the district has chipped away at unhealthy food practices - ditching deep fryers and working to promote kid-friendly, healthy alternatives like whole grain spaghetti and more fresh vegetables. "The whole nation is looking at school lunch programs. Our country is in a health crisis - and we've found that many of these diseases are directly connected to how we eat. What we feed our kids at school may be the majority of the nutrition they get. Our sixth-graders have never seen chicken nuggets at our schools. Undernourished children don't test well. The foundation of health is what we put in our body," Gray told the audience.

Gray encouraged attendees to embrace change, seek support and make incremental changes to their food programs, focusing on youngest children first. "Every day you're in the kitchen, you have the power to make a choice of what to serve our children. Is your recipe reading like a chemistry experiment or real food? We are forging the way for how school food services are going to look in the future," she concluded.


To conclude, event organizers recognized food service employees who have worked in the industry for 30-plus years. "We are honoring the folks in our community who work tirelessly to improve school meals," said Lightfoot.

Terri Rhoades Culinary Arts Instructor/Food Service Director, Anderson Valley Unified School District
Lorri Hardeman Food Service Specialist, Ukiah Unified School District
Linda Vandervort Elementary Site Lead, Oak Manor Elementary
Les Ridgeway Food Service Director, Ukiah Unified School District
Jan Taylor Food Specialist II, Pomolita Middle School
Jana Boomer Cafeteria Manager, Blosser Lane Elementary
Judy Wangerin Food Service Director, Del Norte Unified School District
Dyane Foruster Cafeteria Manager, Baechtel Groove Middle School