|
School
Lunch, Revisited
By Tim McNellie
Over
the course of two weeks, 100 road miles, and four lunches, we
discovered that school lunch isn’t what it used to be.
School lunch is the
worst meal of the day, right?
That’s the popular
conception. It’s probably what many of us remember from our own
school days, when lunch was defined by a tray full of something
that qualified as “food” only in the broadest sense of the
word. Doled out by bitter old women, these Soviet-style
one-size-fits-all meals were best eaten quickly, for the same
reason one doesn't hesitate when ripping off a Band-Aid.
With that
indigestible memory for comparison, South Fayette Source decided
it would be fun to send a correspondent to try out some lunches at
local school districts and write about the experience. We thought
it would be good for laughs – sort of like debating whether the
Big Mac or Whopper is better for the arteries.
After eating his way
through four lunches at four different school districts, our
writer discovered just how much that punch line of a meal has
changed.
 South
Fayette Middle School
Stepping into a school lunchroom for the first time in more than a
decade, my first feeling is awe. That’s followed quickly by
jealousy. South Fayette’s Middle School cafeteria is the first
stop on my four-school journey into the world of modern school
lunches, the place is cleaner, more inviting, and just plain nicer
than any cafeteria I’ve ever been in up to that point. And that
includes several colleges I attended. Along with a VIP seating
area and wall-mounted hand sanitizer dispensers, the cafeteria
sports several Greek-style pillars throughout the room. Pillars!
It’s like eating tater tots at the feet of Socrates.
Another sign that
things have changed since my own school days is the cashier’s
station. There’s no cash. Rather, the students are paying for
their lunches by swiping school-issued ID cards, which eliminates
the problem of stolen lunch money. The computerized system also
tracks which meals the kids have eaten, allowing parents to check
up on their children’s dietary habits online. It also notifies
lunchroom employees of any food allergies.
Walking around the
lunchroom in a slight daze, I feel like Rip Van Winkle, stunned at
how much the world has changed.
The plain cheese
pizza is flat-out delicious. With just the right mix of herbs,
sauce and oil, it actually tastes healthy. Even better is that the
pizza, along with pineapple slices, four ounces of orange juice,
and a half-pint of strawberry milk costs only $1.80. Admittedly,
four ounces is not much orange juice, but considering that O.J. is
more expensive than liquor in some restaurants, $1.80 isn’t a
bad deal. Other meal options include soup and crackers for $1.25;
deli meal for $1.80; and a bagel meal for $1. Snacks are also
available, but students can’t line up to buy snacks until the
lunchroom monitor, using a microphone and public address system to
control noise, gives the go-ahead near the end of the lunch
period. Similarly, there’s a teachers-only lunch cooler with
sugar and caffeine-laden snacks that are off-limits to the
students.
Chartiers
Valley Middle School
When I was in seventh grade, one of the highlights of the school lunch menu was
something called the “Morgan Meat.”
Often served on Fridays as a pre-weekend treat,
this somewhat indefinable animal by-product was
named after a section of my hometown. Much
like putting cartoon characters on boxes
of bad cereal, the name made the product a
little more palatable. Besides, on Morgan
Meat days, either you ate the cafeteria lunch,
brought your own, or went without.
Such a lack of
options is never an issue at Chartiers Valley’s
Middle School cafeteria, which I visited for
the second leg of my school food journey.
At CV Middle School, each day brings a new
variety of choices for students. Along with
staples like pizza and healthy grilled
options, the food-court style eatery includes a “hot
bar” that brings a regularly changing
selection of foods such as Polish, Mexican,
pasta, breakfast, and Asian, which might include
sweet and sour chicken, noodles and cabbage,
and CV’s own version of kung pao chicken.
Like every other
district profiled in this article, CV has a
state-mandated wellness policy to encourage healthy eating among
its students. Starting last year, CV prohibited snacks that list
sugar as the first ingredient, and eliminated sodas and
cappuccinos, replacing them with more nutritious juices and water.
All deep frying is done in trans-fat free soybean oil.
While the emphasis is
on eating healthy food, CV’s lunchroom philosophy at the middle
and high school levels is not to serve food so much as offer it,
says food service director Laurel Whipkey. It’s up to students
to choose a healthy
combination of foods. To qualify for discounted lunch pricing of
$1.90, students must choose 3 of the 5 healthy components
identified in the government’s new food pyramid – fruits,
vegetables, grains, dairy, and meat/beans. For example, pizza and
a cup of cantaloupe would qualify because it contains dairy,
bread, and fruit. So would milk and a hot dog, which includes
dairy, bread, and meat. If a student wants something else, like
say, Pizza and a PowerAde, that will cost full price – $2.50.
Students buy lunch
with accounts pre-funded by their parents. At checkout, they
simply provide the cashier with their student ID number, which
follows them from kindergarten to graduation.
The half-pint milk
container that came with my meal includes a Sudoku-style number
puzzle. The answer is supposed to tell me how many times I should
brush my teeth per day, but to my embarrassment, I can’t crack
the number code. A cartoon cow stares stupidly at me from the
carton while I try and fail to solve the puzzle.
Compounding my
embarrassment is the fact that I can’t blame my failure on
outside factors like lunchroom noise. For while there’s some
chatter among the 200 or so kids eating during this period, it’s
not all that loud, and bizarrely absent from their departure is
any of the cacophony one would have expected. Instead, in a
masterpiece of crowd control, each table is given a teacher signal
to dismiss and the students quickly and quietly walk out of the
room. It’s startling in its efficiency, as though it were a
military field exercise conducted by a field marshal rather than
an English teacher.
Someone has trained
these kids well.
 Canon-McMillan
High School
It doesn’t take much skill as a writer to describe Canon-McMillan’s high
school cafeteria.
Have you see the food
court at South Hills Village? Well,
maybe that’s a slight exaggeration –
Canon-Mac’s version, with its signature blue and
gold decor doesn’t have Asian ladies standing
around offering free samples or guys in
bowties sweeping up the floor – but it’s
not that far from the truth.
More than any other
cafeteria I visited, Canon-Mac’s was the
closest to a college student dining hall.
Student art (inspired by Warhol) decorates the
walls.
Students can choose
among a vast selection of
home-style food from several stations. Some
favorite dishes include turkey and gravy over a
homemade biscuit; rotini with homemade meat
sauce and garlic; Cuban-inspired pork;
a pub-style burger; and homemade pepperoni
rolls. The latter is a hugely popular
selection. Each day about 1,400 students eat at
Canon-Mac’s cafeteria. The last time
pepperoni rolls were available, more than 1,000
portions were sold.
“The middle school
kids have some choice, but when they
come here as freshmen, they’re just blown
away,” says Marella Kazos, assistant high school
principal. The lunch staff, overseen by
Vickie Capone, isn’t afraid to experiment. The
popularity of Panini bread has led to a weekly
Panini Day featuring turkey and ham
variations, and few weeks ago the school introduced
a popcorn chicken bowl (it proved more
popular with younger kids than high schoolers).
While most cafeterias
are tucked away in the backs or bottoms
of buildings and require some navigation to
find, Canon-Mac’s is only a few feet from the
school’s main entrance. It’s a unique
feature that bathes the cafeteria in light from the
surrounding windows and adds to the pleasant
ambience.
McMurray
Elementary School, Peters Township School District
Scooping up a serving of green beans onto my tray, the woman behind the
counter smiles and says, “Finally,
someone takes some.”
Today is popcorn
chicken day at McMurray Elementary
and between that and the other tasty
offerings, the students aren’t taking much interest
in beans.
 Elementary school
food is often dismissed as the most
pedestrian in the school district hierarchy.
Ten-year-olds, the thought goes, need to be told what
to eat, so there’s not much use in offering
them a wide variety of choices. But here at
McMurray Elementary, the kids themselves
choose what they’ll have for lunch, and it’s
hard for a diner of any age to complain about the
quality of the food. Most everything is
made on-site and it shows. The plain cheese
stuffed-crust pizza here can rival any school I
visited, and actually topped that of one district
with much fancier dining facilities. Combined
with the green beans, peach slices, and the
requisite half-pint of milk it was a
surprisingly good meal.
The menu, designed by
food service coordinator Becky
Rush-Phillips, is on a seven-week cycle,
with a few special days thrown in. On
Pennsylvania Day, students are treated to Stroehmann’s
Bread, Hershey’s Kisses, and other
Keystone State creations.
The “cafeteria”
is actually one half of a gymnasium/multi-purpose room that’s
walled off for lunches. In this sense, it might be the most
prototypical lunch room I visited, but I preferred to think of it
as school version of an ESPN Zone restaurant. With its dual
basketball hoops, boundary lines painted on the floor, and
cage-covered wall clock, the cafeteria was a fun place to be, and
the kids seemed to agree.
The school recently
held a “Tailgate Day” that added to the atmosphere. In
anticipation of that weekend’s Steelers game, every student who
bought lunch got the chance to win stuff like Slinkys, Steelers
bracelets, mugs and pencils.
The students were
remarkably well-behaved for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. To
maintain order in the 150-180 seat cafeteria, each table is
assigned a “captain” who
oversees clean-up. When his area is clean, the captain stands up,
gives a hand signal, and that table is dismissed to the playground
outside. This system rivals Chartiers Valley’s for military
efficiency, and adds a little extra class to a thoroughly
enjoyable dining experience.
|
'Tis
the Season
