Overwhelmed by the thought of a whole year’s worth of school lunches ahead of you? Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’ve got a lunch bag full of tips to make school lunch-making easier on you. Check out our new post on Moms LA for all the details.
Posts Tagged ‘school lunch’
Easier School Lunches
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011Food News Wrap: Aug. 19
Thursday, August 18th, 2011
Please, summer, don’t end yet. Pretty please? We’re happy to see all sorts of farm-fresh stories in the news this week, which makes us sort of feel like summer is still in full bloom. Top of the news this week: Fifty young people have become the first class of FoodCorps, a national service organization dedicated to addressing childhood obesity and diet-related disease by building school gardens and developing Farm to School programs. FoodCorps service members will work with local food service directors to source more school meal ingredients from local farmers. They will also provide nutrition education to students.
The service members are spending this week training for their year-long placements; then they will report to sites in 10 states around the U.S. Best of luck to them on this worthy project!
Speaking of farms, the L.A. Times has a great look at efforts around California to connect WIC participants with local farm-fresh produce. One example of how this is a win-win on many levels: Farmers in Ojai had been discarding or donating the tiniest of their Pixie tangerines — those too small for markets. But once the produce vouchers, coupons that can be used only for fruits and vegetables, came into use, the farmers started selling Pixies for what it cost to pick them to WIC-only stores — about 40,000 pounds last season. Worth noting: There are 7 million WIC recipients in California, according to the L.A. Times.
Also in the news this week:
Picnic Dinners: Someone else who doesn’t want summer to end is Ceri from Sweet Potato Chronicles. She has a list of 5 Perfect Picnic Dinner Recipes that will make you want to extend summer well into October.
Cooking from Scratch: The New York Times looks at the “back-to-scratch” movement in school cafeterias, particularly those in lower-income districts that have had a harder time keeping up with the trend away from chicken nuggets and greasy pizza. The story profiles the Greeley, Colorado, school district and its work with Cook for America to learn healthier ways to cook school lunch.
$5 Challenge: Slow Food USA has launched a $5 Challenge as part of its campaign to “take back the value meal.” On Sept. 17, the campaign will launch with a Day of Action where people can attend any one of the hundreds of slow food gatherings nationwide. To participate in The $5 Challenge, all you have to do is pledge to cook a slow food meal for five dollars or less, or attend a local event.
The “Nag Factor”: Why is childhood obesity continuing to be a problem? Could it be that kids “nag” their parents in the store to buy products that appeal to them? A new study published in the Journal of Children and Media found that a bombardment of packaging, characters, and commercials has caused kids to nag their parents unrelentingly to request advertised items. Of course, parents must resist the nag. But this would also be a good time to continue cracking down on marketing junk food to kids.
Bug Repelling-Foods: Last but not least, if you’re still eating your summer meals outside, this might be a good time to learn about what to eat to repel bugs. You’ve probably thought of garlic already, but what about grapefruit. Or…Marmite?
Happy (summer) weekend to all!
Food News Wrap: June 17
Thursday, June 16th, 2011
After a brief hiatus from the news business (moving will do that to you) we are back with a doozy of a week in kids’ food news. Did you hear that L.A. schools have voted to eliminate flavored milk as of July 1? They are the biggest school district in the country to do so thus far. And that’s not all: LAUSD has plans in the works to phase out corn dogs and chicken nuggets and other breaded items. Maybe we’ve just been hearing about chocolate milk for too long, but this second part is what sounds most radical to us. What will kids eat? No, really, what will they eat?
At LAUSD, their future plans include sushi, spinach tortellini in butternut squash sauce, and other ethnic food items. By happy coincidence, this week is also the week that Let’s Move announced their Recipes for Healthy Kids school lunch winners. So coming to a school near you could be…Central Valley Harvest Bake, Porcupine Sliders (a turkey/rice/cranberry burger), or Tuscan Smoked Turkey and Bean Soup. The recipes sure sound good. Let’s hope a majority of kids agree.
Also in the news this week is the ongoing reaction to the new My Plate food recommendations from the USDA. (Quick refresher: This icon simplifies dietary recommendations and breaks new ground by calling for more than half of the “plate” to be filled with fruits and vegetables.) Here’s a frightening follow-up from Melanie Warner of Food Fight: Processed food manufacturers don’t find fruits and vegetables very easy to work with, but they could incorporate more fruits and vegetables into the food they produce by…powdering them. Yes, powdering them, through freeze drying and spray drying. So producers might get people (especially kids) to eat more fruits and veggies by using them in powdered form as fillers in everything from powdered beverages to chips. One of the manufacturer’s points we can all agree on, “[I]t’s better to have our powders with all of their nutrients in a packaged food than fillers or corn starch.” Oh, OK, if you put it that way…We’ll go eat a piece of fruit now.
In “Celebrity Corner” (hey, we’re in L.A., it’s a requirement), Jennifer Garner has teamed up with Frigidaire to promote its new Kids’ Cooking Academy Summer Session, which encourages parents and kids to cook and eat healthy with fresh-picked ingredients. If you check-in on the mobile app Gowalla while visiting your local farmers’ market, Frigidaire will contribute $1 to Save the Children.
Recipes! We’ll leave you with a treat – some of our favorite recipes we’ve stumbled across this week. From Rabbit Food Rocks we have a slam-dunk of a recipe in her Loaded Protein Baked Potato (it all ties in with a basketball theme from the NBA finals). Lemons and Anchovies gives us a recipe for Purple Sweet Potato Gnocchi (and you know we have a soft spot for purple). Cooking on the Weekends serves up a really cool Vegetable Mint Stir Fry with Tofu “Noodles” (the noodles are made from thinly shaved tofu). And Earth Eats shows us how to make tacos with walnuts, tilapia, and even liver and onions. Whoa.
Oh – and don’t forget the special dad in your life this weekend. From Saveur magazine, here are 13 food-themed gifts for dads.
Happy Friday to all, especially the dads, who deserve a nice indulgent weekend in their honor.
