"Pine Belt students are seeing more and more prepared from scratch items on their school lunch trays.
School district nutrition directors say from-scratch dishes are more nutritious and appealing and in some cases more cost-effective than pre-prepared items.
At the Sumrall Elementary School cafeteria last week, the smell of freshly-baking handmade rolls greeted visitors who entered the hustle and bustle of a half dozen cooks working on menu items.
"Everything we've got is whole wheat," says cafeteria manager Helen Watts, as she shows off some croutons made from whole-wheat bread. She's got cinnamon croutons too, for the individually plated fresh fruit salads.
There's also a from scratch beef stew that several cooks had worked on for more than a day.
"We don't open boxes and heat," says Julie Hamilton, Lamar County School District's assistant director of child nutrition. "We cook - cook from scratch. (For the beef stew), we start the day before and we chop the beef into little cubes and we cook it until the last minute."
A warm, steaming bowl is handed to the cafeteria visitor. It's got big chunks of carrots and nutty brown rice, and the broth is a rich, golden brown.
"It's a good, warm meal for a cold day," said Lamar County School Director of Child Nutrition, Becke Bounds.
For the student who doesn't want beef stew, there's also a chef salad, with from scratch ranch dressing, made with low-fat mayonnaise.
The menu also included a ready-made item - a dough encrusted cheese stick, which Hamilton admits will probably be the favored item.
But Bounds said she always wants to give students the choice of a made-from-scratch item. There is a from scratch item available on every lunch menu.
Bounds holds a from-scratch training for district cooks every August, where they practice the entree recipes and try out new ones the district adds every year. This year, the district added tamale pie, taco soup, oriental chicken and a breakfast cookie, to name a few.
That breakfast cookie costs only 13 cents to make versus a commercial bar, which would cost the district 28 cents to buy.
Bounds said lower cost, in most cases, is one of the advantages of scratch cooking. In addition, the sodium and sugar can be reduced in scratch items, she said.
At Sumrall High School, senior Rhea Phillips Valentine, skipped the from scratch whole-wheat roll, but did choose the beef stew for lunch.
"I prefer the beef stew (over the cheese stick) because it's a meal," she said.
Valentine didn't know the beef stew was prepared from scratch. "That's awesome," she said. When told there is a scratch item available at every lunch, Valentine said she appreciated the effort the cafeteria cooks put into the food.
"I know they work really hard," she said. "It can't be easy to work for all those kids.
"I usually find something every day that I can eat. I know they try every day to make everything nutritious."
But Bounds said the food has to be more than nutritious.
"The food has to look good and it has to smell good," she said. "We have to meet the kids' needs. We may have a captive audience, but they can pack a bag if they want to."
Lamar County is not the only district that offers students from scratch menu items.
In the Petal School District, Director of Child Nutrition Danny Dillistone estimates that more than 50 percent of the menu items served are from scratch items.
Some of the from scratch items include beef tips over rice, turkey and dressing, red beans and rice with sausage and cheesy chicken over rice.
Dillistone thinks the students like food made from scratch.
"Approximately 80 to 88 of every 100 students present at school on any given day dine in our cafeterias," he said. "I think they appreciate the scratch items in combination with the other items offered to them everyday. We provide healthy meals which meet the mandated nutritional requirements with a high acceptance from our students."
The Hattiesburg Public School District also makes many of its entree items from scratch, according to Director of Child Nutrition Stephanie Hoze.
"We're doing more each year," she said.
Some of the items the cooks make from scratch include chicken tetrazzini, spaghetti, chicken fajitas, and a student favorite - John Wayne Casserole, a spicy beef casserole with fresh onions, fresh tomatoes and fresh green peppers.
Hoze said the students seem to like the from scratch items.
"The food tastes better, it's more acceptable to our students and it's healthier," she said.
In the Forrest County School District, the cooks also prepare many entree items from scratch.
"At this time we prepare about 90 percent of our menu items from scratch," said Director of Child Nutrition Kay Lawler.
Some of the from scratch items include Italian rotini, cheesy chicken over rice, macaroni and cheese with ham, Beef-A-Roni and lemon pepper chicken.
"When cooking from scratch the foods smell better, taste better, and are more appealing to the students," Lawler said.
The Forrest County Agricultural High School District also serves from scratch menu items.
Some of the items include taco salad, red beans and rice with smoked sausage, chicken gumbo and baked chicken.
Director of Child Nutrition Tom Chambliss with the FCAHS believes the students enjoy the from scratch items.
"When I first took over, there were a lot of direct from the freezer items," he said. "(Now), we've gotten a lot more participation from 300 students to a little over 500.
"For the last two years, this is the first time in the history of the school we've actually made a profit, so we must be doing something right."
The only commercially pre-prepared item that comes to mind as being cheaper than scratch is (was) boxed cake mix when it goes (went) on sale for about .50/box. Since the commodity surge, that isn't true any more.
I'm curious to know how much of their business boost is due to more families qualifying for free lunches, or reduced-price school lunches. If they raised prices early on, then went to mostly scratch cooking, then added government-sponsored diners into the mix, surely the profit margins would rise, and the head count as well!
Maybe bigger businesses could take a cue from this little enterprise: raise prices on existing stock, switch to scratch manufacturing (in this country), add some government subsidies of some sort, and like magic the profit margins rise.
When commodity prices finish falling, the profit margins will rise further with the exact same amount of productivity. If the cafeteria were to hire one or two extra people to do solely overnight prep work (when the energy costs are lowest--cutting veggies, cubing/grinding meat, pre-measuring and combining dry bread dough ingredients ahead, etc., creating their own convenience) to make the regular day staff's job a little cheaper, easier, and faster, the sky would be the limit. Combine that prep work with a nutritional overhaul of basic ingredients to shorten the shopping list, as well as a cheaper energy time-of-use schedule, and they would have kitchen convenience without having to pay for it, as well as a recession-proof way to boost nutrients and maintain profits. By going Paleo (probably not feasible in a school cafeteria setting), the shopping list would become even shorter, and less susceptible to commodity price swings while the nutrition (and grades) would certainly see a huge boost.
Energy costs are the reason bakeries bake overnight--the energy costs are cheapest. If most of the cafeteria workers did their jobs overnight, you'd only need a skeleton crew to re-heat, serve, and clean up during the day, using minimal energy to run cafeterias during expensive daytime hours, and possibly enough energy bill savings to offset any overnight employee shift differential costs.
The overnight employees would then enjoy not having to fight traffic or fight for parking, both at work and outside of it.
Remember when we used to do those things industry-wide? I may have just answered the jobs crisis.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment