Remember school lunch? I do. Mostly I remember white bread-and-lots-of-butter sandwiches, kids finding dead flies hiding under their tator tots (no joke — I witnessed it), and not having anywhere to hide the food I didn’t want to eat since I don’t like drinking milk and therefore didn’t have an empty milk carton (at one point at my grade school, we were required to clean our plates before we could go outside for recess). Long story short, the food wasn’t great.
That’s why I was encouraged to hear that a number of excellent organizations are working together to plan a “Farm-to-Cafeteria” workshop for Northeastern Minnesota. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, check out Lee Zukor’s “Open Letter to Our Children: We’re Sorry About School Lunch” at his blog, Simple Good and Tasty. I really appreciate the comment by the “School Lunch Landy” (sic) — it’s not necessarily the staff’s fault that the food is sub-par!
On a related note, one of the attendees at the Lake Superior Farming Conference suggested that schools open up their kitchens to farmers during off-hours (usually school lunch rooms close around 2 pm during the school year and are empty all summer) so farmers can make value-added products without the expense of building their own commercial kitchens. Sounds brilliant to me.
Stone's Throw Farm 
As a parent, nothing incensed me like the school’s edict of students cleaning their plates before being allowed to go to recess. When I challenged the school administration and teachers about it, they assured me there was no such “rule,” but I knew better because my own child explained how the unwritten rule actually worked. Food should not be used as a reward, nor should it be used as a punishment. Food should nourish our bodies. Good food also nourishes the soul.
Thanks so much for the link – school lunch is such an important issue, and there’s so much work to do. I agree with your note about the lunch lady who commented – straight to the heart of the matter, practical, and caring.