written by Jenny Breen, Nutrition Educator
Chicken Thursday!
Our hot lunch program has been going smoothly as more and more students are enjoying the delicious, beautiful and fresh foods Chef Leah and team are preparing. As the school year winds down, we'll be planning and dreaming up next year’s expanded hot lunch menu. Please let us know what you love about the food, and if your student has not tasted hot lunch yet, please try it! The only way to make this program sustainable-both in terms of continuing to have hot lunches at GRS, and to utilize responsibly and sustainably produced ingredients, is to have community participation!
Chef Leah Korger (left), Sous Chef Mel Coombs (center), and Production Assistant Rita Siraj (right) share a joke while prepping vegetables for Friday’s homemade chili.
Taste Tests
We had a successful last week of taste-testing hot lunches with adolescent students. Students enjoyed the samples and gave the wellness team feedback on flavor, ingredients, and presentation. This feedback is incredibly helpful in gauging what students think about the lunches, and opportunities for improvement. We take this seriously, and incorporate it into our planning and preparation!
Adolescent students in Laura Machacek’s Sculpture elective created hanging food decorations to help beautify our kitchen environment.
School Garden Planning
Many of you know about the beautiful school garden we’ve had at the school for years. What you may not know is that it has been expanded tremendously this year, and there is a giant new garden that will be designed and planted specifically to provide the lunch program with food for school lunches! We are excited to be able to utilize hyper locally grown foods in our school lunches next fall, and will keep people posted about volunteer opportunities throughout the summer for maintaining, harvesting and possibly even preserving garden produce! Watch for summer camps and potentially a family event or two over the summer.
Adolescent students eat outside the cafe on 5/2/19. Once sound abatement issues are resolved, levels will eat together in the gym.
Summer Camps
We have four summer cooking camps planned this summer! Mel, our kitchen Sous Chef, and Jenny, our Nutrition Educator, will be teaching the camps, and are looking forward to some good times in the GRS kitchen! See the summer camp brochure for details, but here are the dates. They will all be morning classes, and will include a freshly prepared lunch (obviously).
"Who Kneads the Dough" June 17-20, (7-12 yrs)
Learn to bake bread and other yummy items made from dough in this fun culinary camp led by GRS chefs.
"Vegetables Every Which Way" July 8-11, (7-12 yrs)
Do you want your camper to eat more veggies? Well, let our professional chef teach them how to create delicious vegetable dishes from farm to table.
"Family Food Traditions" July 22-25, (12-16 yrs)
Explore a variety of foods that are important to so many people’s way of life in this culinary camp. Campers will learn how to cook a variety of dishes from around the world.
"Fabulously Fantastic Foods" August 5-8, (12-16 yrs)
Come and create some new lunch items for the up and coming school year. Your camper will work with our chef in our commercial kitchen to see what it takes to make the menu at Great River School.
Lower Adolescent Interventionist K’rin Jacobsen orders a warm beverage from Cafe Coordinator Donna Goodlaxson. The Heron’s Nest Cafe is open to community members and students alike.
To contact the Nutrition team, please email us at lunch@greatriverschool.org. Happy eating!