The Greening of America's Schools: Food from the Earth

Part 2 in a series



One of my most visceral memories from High School is lunch. Sitting in a large rowdy open cafeteria with only a few minutes to scarf down some food and talk with my friends you wouldn't expect to remember the food, but I do. Mac and cheese was the best lunch of the week by far. Sticky yellow Velveeta covered pasta and crispy Tator tots made for a pleasant hot meal in 8 minutes or less. I also remember the kitchen and servery. Stainless steel speed lines with hair netted lunch ladies serving sauces from cans and proteins from microwaves. I can feel the acne coming back to my face already.



Today's school lunches in much of the country are far to similar to my 1990s memory. Lunches often come from commissaries where they are prepackaged from bulk food, often frozen, occasionally fresh. As we look at various schools around the country some basic trends stay the same. Provide low cost nutrient rich food that can be consumed in the fastest way possible to get everyone back to class.



There are certainly exceptions to this rule of cheap and speedy. There are also plenty of talented cooks and chefs who make this food tasty and accessible to their students, but is there anyplace where the lunch line is sustainable??



St. Philip's Academy is one of a few places in this country where you can find an Alice Waters type love of the food brought into a commercial kitchen in a school. The food you find at St. Philip's is organic, local and delicious. They have found a way to infuse relationships with local farms into a kitchen that feeds a few hundred elementary students every day.



Now I am sure you are all envisioning a lovely rural boarding school nestled in the bread basket of this neck of the woods. This couldn't be further from the truth. St. Philip's is an urban school in Newark NJ surrounded by asphalt and concrete. It is difficult to find a park, let alone a farm within walking distance of the school. Its students are from the neighborhood and many of them have never set foot in a field.



Ironically these children are gaining an intimate knowledge of the earth through a simple program. This school is unique in that it not only feeds the children sustainably, but it teaches them the cycles of food on campus. At St. Philip's they have a roof garden where the kids plant each year. They have wonderful gardens centered around what they eat. When I was last there they had a salsa garden where they were growing all of the parts of a beautiful salsa. The food they grow is harvested, by the students and given to the cooks to infuse in their daily meals. Some of the food scraps that remain from each meal are brought back to the garden for use in their compost piles to rejuvenate the soil each season.



In their daily lunches they also learn about what fruits and vegetables are fresh from the farm that season. The cooks make tasty accessible meals that the students rave about. When I was last there for lunch they served a fresh chicken soup, homemade falafel, roasted apples, pita bread and hummas. The ingredients were all locally grown and the students had grown some of the herbs for the soup and the falafel. As expected they were very proud.



These simple programs are teaching very young children strong lessons about themselves and the world. They are learning where their food comes from and where their waste goes. They are learning about nutrition and local produce. They are learning about some of the impact their actions have on the world around them. Most of all they are learning a new found love for food from the earth. Now that is a lesson we could all use.