LHNC recently met up with Suzanne Grass, head of GVSD Nutrition Services, to discuss the positive changes and successes that are already in effect in our county’s food programs.
Did you know that several times a month the whole grain on the school menu is brown rice? What wonderful news! Here is one days’s menu from Nevada Union as well as GVSD featuring brown rice:
Orange chicken with whole grain brown rice and steamed veggies, Pork and veggie egg roles with whole grain brown rice.
And
Orange chicken, broccoli, carrots and brown rice
Fresh pears
Sunflower seeds
Sounds pretty good, don’t you think?
One of the most exciting connections recently made was due to the blog post here about Greg’s Organic Tomatoes……Suzanne Grass contacted Greg and ordered over 100 lbs of cherry tomatoes from him for the week’s school lunches! She also connected Greg to the Placerville school district who in turn ordered over 500 lbs of tomatoes!
And finally in an update from Theresa Ruiz, the Cafeteria Manager at Bear River, more good news!
We just started to cook with whole grain flour in our bisuits and breads. We are using whole wheat pasta and buying whole grain tortillas. The pizza we buy is 50% whole grain, all grain items have to by 50% whole grain by October 1st.
We just got a call from Greg Webber who sells local produce in Grass Valley and he is interested in working with the schools. The most popular things with the kids have been the giant chicken Oriental wraps and the giant chipotle chicken wraps with lots of veggies. The kids like pasta and quesadillas, both are inexpensive to make and we can use commodity cheese and chicken.
The hope to find an inexpensive bread bowl for soup, stew and chowder, clam chowder bread bowls were a favorite. Wish we had the time to make all the bread but it is not possible here.
Kids like watermelon, grapes and bananas and only eat oranges if they are cut up. We are set up to buy mandarins from a local Placer county vender when they are in season. The new regulations call for less meat, cheese and bread items and lots more fruit and vegetables.
Thank you to ALL of the staff that work so hard to offer a variety of healthy foods to our students!