School Lunch: One Meal, One Dollar, Part 2

By guest blogger Ed Bruske from The Slow Cook.
For Part 1, read here.

Earlier this summer, I spent a week outside Denver, Colorado, sitting in on a "culinary boot camp" designed to take kitchen workers who normally deal in frozen chicken nuggets and Tater Tots and turn them into chefs able to cook meals from raw ingredients. The State of Colorado had competed for and won $400,000 in federal stimulus money distributed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fight the obesity epidemic. The state, in turn, channeled the money to the Colorado Health Foundation to conduct a series of school kitchen training sessions.

Leading these "culinary boot camps" was Kate Adamick, a former lawyer-turned-chef and school food consultant, and her partner, Andrea Martin, also a professional chef from New York. Both had worked with Ann Cooper to revolutionize the food in Berkeley, California, schools, as I reported in an earlier post.[ http://www.mariasfarmcountrykitchen.com/a-national-look-at-school-lunches-part-2] They also spend considerable time working with schools in Santa Barbara County, California.

For the rest of Ed Bruske's thoughts, go to www.mariasfarmcountrykitchen.com.

Related Links:
School Lunch: One Meal, One Dollar, Part 1 - Maria's Farm Country Kitchen
First Lady Calls For Better School Food - Rodale.com
Better DC School Food - Ed Bruske