fresh food

I just read this article from New York Times's magazine section this week: The School-Lunch Test

It's a great article but I found it a little more pessimistic than other coverage of school-lunch reform programs. I wish I could also post an article I read about the efforts at The Promise Academy in Harlem, but I haven't been able to find it. Basically, the program there proves how schools can provide much healthier meals, serve locally grown produce and be cost effective. Well, I just found it, so you can read it for yourself: Harlem School Introduces Children To Swish Chard

The article notes that The Promise Academy food cost is "about $5.87 per student. The amount, almost twice what some public schools spend, comes from a mix of government reimbursements and a school budget pumped up by grants and other private donations." The Promise Academy is a charter school, which I guess is why they are able to do this and not get food from the commodities program, which is explained in the first article. I've never been too keen on charter schools but if a (semi-)public school can serve healthy food and teach nutrition, then I'm all for it.

It's sobering to read the article in the magazine section though. What is a public school supposed to do when there are actual laws that require them to serve a number of calories (which will then come from fat and sugar) and a deep rooted infrastructure that makes only unhealthy and processed foods dirt cheap? Maybe that pessimistic view is warranted then. A change from the federal level, reforming the commodities program to provide low-cost, healthy items and ingredients (for real cooking!) is really what is needed. I don't think that most public schools will be able to enact real health changes in students without that.

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So my garden is starting to yield some actual fruit. This year has largely been a bust. There was much too much rain early in the season and the weeds have taken over. We got some good peas but we stopped eating them after they made me and emily sick (elsewhere this has been a great pea/bean season.) We had some of the best strawberries ever earlier and I've recently eaten some of the yellow cherry tomatoes. I think these are two fruits most people don't really know what they are supposed to taste like. If you want proof go to a supermarket and get some of each and then go to a farmer's market and get their equivalent. Let me know what you think.

Most of my plants haven't done well. We just picked our first zucchini because all of the zucchini blossoms were falling off the plants. I think all of the pepper plants died. So did many of the tomatoes, beets, eggplant and basil. One of my co-workers says he is getting amazing results from the hot pepper seedlings I gave him. I had a great crop of those last year but I don't see a single plant left standing this year. My tomatillo plants are huge and have lots of green lantern-like tomatillos hanging off of them. I might have a bumper crop yet. Which has gotten me thinking, I wonder if there is a website out there for people to post what garden grown fruits and vegetables they have to trade? I'm going to look into it and see what I find.