PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend School District reconfigured its school lunch menus this month to offer fewer but healthier choices while providing the same meals to all three district schools.
“We are slimming down,” said Brad Taylor, the district’s director of support services.
“We are going from several options to offering one healthy choice per day, and are doing more cooking from scratch than offering prepackaged and pre-made food.”
Gone are the chicken nuggets and daily pizzas, replaced by items intended to expand the student’s food preferences and vocabulary such as tabouli, polenta and Pasta Bolognese.
“Pasta Bolognese is like spaghetti but has differences which the kids will pick up,” said Hope Borsato, newly hired as the district’s part-time kitchen director.
“We can teach kids about food by offering them different things.”
Since the Blue Heron Middle School is the best equipped in the district, it has become what Borsato calls “the commissary kitchen,” preparing about 600 meals — both breakfast and lunch — a day.
The meals are taken to Grant Street Elementary and Port Townsend High School.
Prior to the new menu, each school offered slightly different meal options.
Breakfast costs $1.50 while lunch is $2.75 for students and $3.50 for adults.
About half the district’s students qualifying for free or reduced meals, according to Taylor.
The new menu contains no preservatives or additives and decreased levels of sugar and salt, Borsato said.
Taylor said that the new menu has received good reviews from the elementary school and the high school while Blue Heron students are more reticent.
“We are getting a mixed review from the kids,” cook Denise Larson said.
“A lot of them are bringing sack lunches and until we change what the kids know about food our counts are going to go down.”
Borsato said that the students will come around.
“There is always a negative reaction to any kind of change,” Borsato said.
“People need to try something at least eight times before they decide they like it.”
Taylor said that Port Townsend’s healthy food orientation will provide a positive influence.
He added that the new program has some significant community support.
The district has received free and reduced-rate food from Pane D’Amore and the Mount Townsend Creamery. Jefferson Healthcare food services director Arren Stark also provides advice.
Local farms are also a source of food, something that Taylor would like to increase by placing food orders prior to the growing season.
Borsato said the Blue Heron kitchen has adequate freezer and oven space but is not well suited for open-flame cooking or food preparation from scratch.
“There are some limitations with the equipment we have. Our soup kettles don’t tilt,” Borsato said.
“We’d like to upgrade our equipment so we can make our own soup stock and salad dressing in the future.”
Since the budget is limited, Borsato hopes to receive public donations of equipment or money for equipment.
Taylor has not determined the relative cost of the new menu compared to the old but expects that it will be about the same since it will cost less to provide fewer choices.
“If it ends up costing us more, we’ll need to figure something out,” he said.
Another new option that is expected not to cost the district more money is to replace paper plates with dishes.
Taylor said the Students for Sustainability, a high school club, prepared a report that said the cost of washing dishes was about equal to always purchasing paper plates — and that it had a more favorable environmental impact.
“We would like to make the school lunch experience more hospitable and comfortable,” Taylor said.
To view February’s school lunch menu go to http://tinyurl.com/PDN-Menu.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
