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MMSD harvest lunch at Glendale School

Tasty eats that are good not

by Jonathan Gramling

The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) had been building up to this moment for some time. Last year, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin's REAP Program, MMSD ran a pilot lunch menu at three elementary schools that utilized local produce growers and food suppliers to offer a nutritious lunch that featured fresh produce at a comparable cost to regular MMSD meals.

Based on the success of the pilot as part of the Wisconsin Home Grown Lunch program, the district was ready to expand the experiment to all of its elementary schools. Iris Tirado, the MMSD food service coordinator, felt a real harvest meal served instead of the traditional district Thanksgiving meal would be a fitting opportunity. On November 24, approximately 7,400 lunch packs - with 80 percent of their contents coming from local vendors - were delivered to the elementary schools. "We used Harmony Valley from Viroqua, which supplied the sweet potatoes, cabbage, and the carrots," Tirado said as she watched students at Glendale Elementary School eat the lunch. "Snug Haven Farm out of Belleville provided the spinach. We have a local yogurt company from Albany that supplied the yogurt and cream cheese sauce that the chicken was marinated in. The tortillas came from El Rey out of Milwaukee. The apples came from Carandale Farm in Fitchburg. Our milk is local from Golden Guernsey. We did a nutrition analysis and it came up with enough calories to balance the menu." Just about the only thing that wasn't local was the processed chicken from USDA.

The meal wasn't easy because it took extra planning and effort to pull it off. First of all, the children and parents had to select the meal. A newsletter was sent out to the parents and the children received some in-class instruction about the meal. "Today, when we had to pack an additional 165 meals, my staff said 'You were right Iris,'" Tirado said. "Some of the schools underestimated the number of meals that would be ordered. Since it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we didn't know if the menu would go or not."

And since some of the growers are not equipped to provide the district with semi-processed produce, the district staff had to put in some extra work. "We have to do all of the cleaning, cutting, and processing of the food," Tirado said. "My staff isn't used to that and they underestimated the time they needed to put into it and the number of staff who needed to work on it. It can be very expensive labor wise. We created sweet potato muffins out of the locally grown sweet potatoes. They are very tasty. You can see the difference using the fresh produce as opposed to using the canned sweet potatoes."

While it appeared that this experiment was successful, the district is a long ways off from regularly providing similar meals utilizing local growers. In many ways, the project is trying to create new markets and increased capacity for local producers and new eating habits for school aged children. Both do not happen overnight. "The biggest challenge here in Wisconsin is to have the sustainability, the deliveries, and the amounts as we need them," Tirado said.

The district will also need the producers to provide the produce in a semi-processed state in order to make the meal cost-competitive with its regular sources of food. "We're trying to concentrate on one delivery or coop that can provide us with the products we need," Tirado emphasized. "Willy Street Coop is interested in developing a processing kitchen for local farmers. That could make it cost effective for us to do it on a regular basis."

Tirado reports that her staff enjoys working on meals like this and she has received positive feedback from the community. And it appeared that the students relatively enjoyed the meal. Sounds like the key ingredients are there for healthy, locally-produced meals that teach children sound dietary habits.