email this pageTurns out, kids are eating their veggies (and fruits)—at least when they’re fresh-picked from the local farm. More than 950 farm-to-school lunch programs in 29 states have children elbowing and jostling each other for locally grown cucumbers, eggs, broccoli and tomatoes.
At the Central Grade School in Traverse City, Mich.—where Farmer Doherty’s Royal Galas are such a hit—kids began eating four times the apples and twice the potatoes after farm-fresh foods appeared on lunch menus.
There’s more to the program than the meals served at the schools. At Missoula, Montana’s Meadow Hill Middle School, four garden plots are used to raise strawberries, lettuce, carrots and other foods. The children list the crops they want to plant and plan the garden, then help gardener Audrey Roderick water, weed and harvest.
Ariel Bleth, the Missoula Farm to School Program coordinator, visited the Missoula Cold Springs Elementary School second-grade classroom, bringing along Montana grown wheat. The children helped grind the wheat and turn it into biscuits, which they promptly devoured.
Everyone wins with a farm-to-school program. The children learn about healthy eating and where their food comes from. Their diet is healthier, with produce that packs more nutrition and tastes better than supermarket foods. Local farmers have a market for their crops, and the cost of shipping food, both in terms of money and carbon dioxide emissions, is greatly reduced.
Lemon-Glazed Carrots
Ingredients
1 pound carrots
(about 6 medium)
1½ tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
½ teaspoon salt
Coarsely ground black pepper
2 tablespoons finely chopped
flat-leaf parsley (optional)
2. Melt butter in a 10-inch skillet over medium heat. Stir in sugar, lemon juice and thyme; bring to a boil. Add carrots, salt and pepper. Stir well and cook, stirring occasionally, until carrots are tender and the sauce is almost completely absorbed, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle with parsley, if desired. Serves 4.
Recipe by Greg Patent, Relish Cooking with Kids, "Farmers Make the Grade," October 2007.
Whole-Wheat Buttermilk Biscuits
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Ingredients
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces
¾ cup, plus 2 tablespoons, buttermilk, plus more if needed
2. Add buttermilk; stir well with a fork until the dough gathers into one large lump. Drizzle in additional droplets of buttermilk if necessary.
3. Scrape dough onto a flat surface sprinkled with remaining 1⁄4 cup flour. Roll dough to coat with flour, then pat out into a rough rectangle about 1⁄2-inch-thick and fold it in thirds. Repeat the patting and folding. Pat dough into a thickness of 1 inch. Dip a 2-inch round cutter into flour and stamp out biscuits, coating the cutter with flour before each stamping. Place biscuits, top sides up, on a heavy ungreased baking sheet about 1 inch apart.
4. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, until biscuits are golden brown. Makes 12 biscuits.
Note: To make honey butter, put approximately equal amounts of honey and soft butter into a small bowl and whip with a fork until smooth.
Recipe by Greag Patent, Relish Cooking with Kids, "Farmers Make the Grade," October 2007.
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