The tradition started 29 years ago, when Garden Grove teacher Ellen McLeod had her special-education students whip up a modest Thanksgiving meal. But the festivities at Bell Intermediate School  have grown every year, and on Friday, her 28 students outdid themselves.
Under McLeod's supervision, they roasted 15 turkeys and 80 pounds of yams, mashed 100 pounds of red potatoes, cooked 60 pounds of green beans and prepared all the other traditional sides. They decorated the multi-purpose room, sent out invitations and served as hosts and hostesses for the special meal.
The nearly 300 students, teachers and family members lucky enough to snag invites to the feast were very thankful.
-- Seema Mehta
Photo Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
U.S. Rep. George Miller of California, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, issued a statement on Wednesday in honor of National School Lunch Week.
The Child Nutrition and National School Lunch Acts are up for reauthorization next year.
Miller said, in part:
"Unfortunately, the current economic crisis has placed tremendous pressure on both families and schools. Parents are finding it harder to put meals on their tables and are relying more heavily on school meal programs to help feed their kids. At the same time, schools are being forced to cut costs while still striving to offer healthy meals that kids will choose to eat.
“... School meal programs are on the frontlines of our nation’s childhood obesity battle -– and have an enormous influence as children are developing life-long eating habits. Especially in light of the growing fiscal challenges we face, we must do everything we can to help schools find creative ways to continue providing low-cost, healthy meals for children. Providing children with access to nutritious foods while at childcare, school, or summer camp is vital to our efforts to help all children learn, succeed and thrive –- and for improving the health of all Americans.”
-- Mary MacVean
You might wonder why we have a week to celebrate some of the most criticized food around -- school lunches. But even the president has issued a proclamation to mark National School Lunch Week. Which is this week, through Saturday.
The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program that since 1946 has served more than 187 billion lunches. Anyone want to hazard a guess about how much mystery meat that might include? These days there are plenty of regulations about fat, salt and other contents of school meals.
In my own childhood, there were "lunch ladies" who made tuna salad or meatloaf or sloppy Joes. Never did we get anything like "Petunia Pita Pocket" thwapped onto our plastic trays.
But the School Nutrition Assn. is holding an election with her as well as Pete Pizza, Biff Burger, Gloria Grilled Cheese and Larry Lasagna in the running. Pete -- he of the wholegrain crust and lowfat cheese -- is ahead; the winner is to be announced Oct. 24.
The idea is to promote healthy habits. And some school districts and legislatures are stepping in to try to make school food healthier. But that effort often collides with budget restrictions. There are other problems, too, writes Jacqueline Domac, who has been a teacher and school food activist.
-- Mary MacVean
Photo by Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times
Parents who are curious about where their kids' lunch money is going have a new resource, The Times' Alana Semuels writes.
A Washington, D.C., organization is calling on school districts to get hot dogs, pepperoni and other processed meats out of school cafeterias. Physicians for Responsible Medicine and its affiliate the Cancer Project ran broadcast ads last week in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities to make its point.
Among the districts that the group says get an F for serving too much processed meat is Los Angeles Unified. Of the LAUSD menus it studied, it said, 60% of elementary school breakfasts and 80% of middle and high school breakfasts contained processed meats.
Last year, the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund offered 10 recommendations for cancer prevention that included avoiding processed meats.
Read more Too many hot dogs on school menus? »
Nutrition is part of the school curriculum, and California is funding some programs to make good eating part of students' lives, too.
State Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell today announced grants today for schools to get kids to eat more fruits and vegetables. Twenty-five grantees, four of them in Los Angeles County, will share $184,100 in Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program grants.
"Under this exciting new program, the grantees will work to find innovative ways to challenge students to eat more fruits and vegetables, like offering the free food through kiosks, vending machines, or bowls of pineapple and strawberries in the classroom."
Read more California schools get fruit and vegetable grants »
There really is such a thing as a free lunch, at least free to schoolchildren. And state officials want to make sure that more children take advantage of it during the summer months.
Basically, any child who qualifies for a subsidized meal at school during the school year can also get one during the summer. But only 30% of the 3 million eligible California students take advantage of the federally funded program. Participation could hardly be easier: Children who show up, get food -- no questions asked.
But many families don't know of the state-managed program, which distributes the food at more than 3,200 sites through an array of providers. The number of providers has grown, in fact, by more than 10% in part because the paperwork has been simplified, state officials said.
To help families find locations, the California Department of Education has created an interactive map of counties, which can be accessed through the department here, a website of the California Assn. of Food Banks.
At this point, the interactive map is cumbersome because it provides only an alphabetical list of food sites by county. It doesn't, for example, allow users to search by ZIP code.
State education officials also have produced information materials about the free food in many languages. But they must be accessed through the department's English website. So these materials are more for schools to use to get the word out. And in most places, school is out for the summer.
Read on to see the release from the California Department of Education:
Read more A real free lunch for the summer »
L.A. Unified, as we've said here before, has its first executive chef. Mark Baida calls the 500,000 or so students the district feeds every day his "customers" and hopes to win them over.
But even for Baida, who was previously USC's chef, the challenges are big. He notes, for instance, that few others face this every day: Feed 3,000 or so "customers" a complete meal in under 30 minutes, for around $1 apiece.
More to come on Baida and his efforts, including a new open-face chicken sandwich that got the thumbs up Thursday from a group of cafeteria training managers and will debut in May in some high schools.
-- Mary MacVean
Oliver Brown, a student in the humanities magnet at Hamilton High School in Los Angeles, writes:
In past years, students have watched in horror as their favorite fatty and sugary vices have slowly disappeared from school cafeterias and vending machines. The product of a school board decision imposed in 2004, LAUSD has proceeded to ban soft drinks, trans fat chips, and candy from lunchrooms, attempting to replace them with healthier, smarter options.
At left, students go through the lunch line at Hollywood High School.
This sudden absence of the essential, and by far most prevalent, adolescent drugs did not, however, deter teenagers; instead, it elicited an onslaught of rogue sugar dealers, myself included. Selling from dingy stairwells and dark, deserted hallways, I, alongside my fellow comrades in arms, pushed candy and confectionaries to the students of Hamilton High School: a dollar a doughnut, 50 cents for every crumpled, timeworn bag of hot Cheetos. As our tribe of underground dealers made hundreds in faded, one-dollar bills, school officials remained flummoxed at this new surge of scattered pink boxes and candy wrappers. A cold and calculated war began between these two opposing fronts.
While I watched soldiers falling to fines and two-day suspensions, our seemingly innocuous venture began to reveal itself as a far more insidious crime. Selling the very items I avoided in my own diet, I came to realize that I was peddling obesity to students who were often already overweight or unhealthy. After all, I had proselytized the teachings of “Supersize Me” to everyone I met, and sold Kit Kat bars while wearing my thrift-store “Go Veg” T-shirt.
However, my inner conflict was resolved when my own demise came in the form of a grand sting operation. Stealthily followed by security guards, a vice principal, and the dean of discipline, I was cornered, my product taken, and my parents promptly called.
It is from the hypocrisy of this arrest that I find myself angered and betrayed by the school system. While LAUSD flaunts its new “Cafeteria Improvement Motion,” an attempt to bring nutrition into public schools, we have truly achieved very little. Although the Domino's pizza has disappeared, it has been replaced by an equally unhealthy, and most definitely greasy, alternative. Researching for a school paper, I found that a startling 90% of all materials used in Hamilton lunches are either canned or frozen. Sufficient nutrition and health classes are lacking. As of now, LAUSD food is despairingly unhealthy, sadly under-portioned and, frankly, disgusting.
Until the administration sees fit to change this riddled and unsatisfactory system, Hamilton cannot deem that we, the individuals, with our backpacks stuffed with 99-cent Lays and gym bags filled with doughnuts, are the problem. When my school district truly turns towards healthy, organic and hormone-free alternatives, I will be perfectly happy to relinquish my well-crafted ruse.
Photo: Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times
If you don't tell, we won't.
Make a dip with peas instead of guacamole, and it's low in calories and delicious. And here's another surprise: The recipe comes from L.A. Unified, thanks to its new executive chef, Mark Baida.
Sweet Pea Guacamole
6 cups frozen sweet peas
2 bunches fresh cilantro (no lower stems)
2 fresh green jalapeños (or to taste)
2 cloves fresh garlic
1 cup fresh lime juice
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
4 teaspoons ground cumin
Briefly cook peas in boiling, salted water (1 gallon of water, with 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt)
Wash and roughly chop the cilantro. Roughly chop the jalapeño and peeled garlic.
Put the peas, cilantro, jalapeño and garlic in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add the remaining ingredients, and pulse until blended but not a smooth cream. Serve in a bowl, with pita or tortilla chips.
The recipe may be cut in half.
-- Mary MacVean
Photo by Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times
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have grown every year, and on Friday, her 28 students outdid themselves.
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