"Flair is good for their brains"

What a great article from the New York Times today about a team of school lunch cooks at a middle school in Queens who fight to cook real, fresh food from scratch. (clickable link in the post title.) This was such a wonderful article to read. Cooking whole food, and fresh food, gets discouraging on the scale of one household, or at least it does for me. And when you apply the same challenges to the logistical and budget restrictions of an entire school--what this middle school is doing seems heroic. And funny, and inspiring. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

"Many advocates for better, healthier school food have begun to believe that the only way to improve what students eat is to stop reheating processed food and start cooking real, fresh food.

"(Kitchen Manager Sharon) Barlatier is a rarity in a system that feeds almost a million children a day: she can cook, and she has the kitchen equipment to do it. "

"When Mrs. Barlatier arrived in 2007 and started to improve the food, it didn’t take long for (Principal Mastrogiovanni) to see that the children not only ate more of it but seemed happier at lunch.

“They needed a little flair in their food,” (Principal) Mrs. Mastrogiovanni said. “It’s good for their brains.” "

"(Barlatier) will not tolerate cooks who say students will eat only hamburgers or pizza or who complain that there is not enough equipment to cook the more complex recipes the district is trying to encourage.

“It’s not the limit of the equipment,” she tells them. “You can have only a steamer and make a sauce. You can have one burner and make a sauce. There is nothing stopping you.”

“The kids love this curry,” Mrs. Barlatier said. “It makes them feel comforted and cared for, which is what we want to do.” "

"No matter how delicious her food is, (Barlatier) battles daily with the mercurial palate of the middle school student.

“You could have steak here and they are going for that deli,” she said, exasperated.

It was time for action. She shut the deli bar, enduring shouts of protest and the kind of incredulous eye rolls that only a seventh-grade girl can deliver.

A sixth grader, asked why people were so crazy for what looked like a fairly unremarkable sandwich, explained.

“It’s like Subway,” he said, “but you don’t have to pay.” "

I just like to see a group of people in a non-elite setting say with confidence that a hand-carved tomato rose is good for a child's brain. (Alice Waters is admirable, but that wispy voice and the withering condescension, whether it's intentional or not . . . I can hardly watch interviews with her any more.)

It does seem likely that the made from scratch curry makes the kids at this middle school feel comforted and cared for. How they are pulling this off on the scale they are, I don't know. Kids still gravitate towards whatever looks most like Subway. The pressure to give in to that on the scale of one family is daunting--what about cooking for an entire middle school? I love how the kitchen manager is like "oh, hell no" when the deli line is keeping kids from eating lunch before the bell rings, and she shuts it down and routes them back to the curry.