A School Farm Visit
Etto was invited to attend a school food jamboree of sorts this week on Monday at Del Mar Elementary school, part of the Live Oak school district. The event was held on the school farm and involved a farm tour, a cooking demonstration and a discussion about the best way to effectively distribute and manage food to California schools and districts. The school farm was on an unused old baseball diamond that now grows a variety of carrots, broccoli and other vegetables that the kids help plant and harvest. A network of local volunteers also helps, making this a very low taxpayer project that adds education and great nutrition. It turns out pasta is a perfect complement to items they grow on the school farm.
California has close to 11,000 public schools in over one thousand districts serving nearly 6 million kids. This is a fairly staggering number of mouths to feed and a lot of cooking, cleaning and shipping of food items.
Etto has participated in this world by delivering our pasta to over twenty districts and new ones all the time. What we’ve discovered is that much of the pasta served in public schools over the last several years has been of such questionable quality that the kids would not eat it. When that happens pasta gets removed from menus entirely which is exactly what’s been happening. Hopefully you know by now that kids love our pasta and it can serve as a cornerstone diet item for active kids. It’s naturally low glycemic (low sugar) and is a good source of protein and a complex carbohydrate which makes it break down slowly in our bodies - thus no sugar crash after lunch.
We spoke to several school food administrators from Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and Monterrey counties about our pasta during the event. Luckily we have strong advocates in people who serve Etto pasta on a regular basis with great success.
Our biggest success story came from the staff at Santa Clara Unified Schools. Unbeknownst to me, they feature a pasta bar at a few of their schools every day, where kids can customize their own plate of pasta. It includes rotating sauces (marinara, alfredo, pesto etc.) and various proteins to add like beef or roast chicken. The administrator told me that when this concept was launched there was a bit of pushback, but now it is the most popular thing in the school cafeteria.
Santa Clara exceeded my wildest dreams of what public schools could achieve with our pasta. Other schools took note; perhaps we will see a proliferation of school pasta bars across the state of California.
I wanted to highlight all this because I am constantly amazed and encouraged by the effort schools are putting into their lunch programs. It is so far beyond stuff like the microwave pizza I had wrapped in plastic every day at my public high school in Cincinnati.
With this preview to summer the patio is lovely right now. Bring your crew and make it a date.
