STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Forty-six men and women dipped their spoons into a Tuscan Bean Soup made of white beans from a farm in Buhl, garlic from Christine Barrie’s farm in Bellevue, kale provided by a Middleton farm and onions from King Crown Organics.
They helped themselves to a salad that included sweet, flavorful beets provided by a Fairfield farm, butter crunch lettuce from Hagerman where geothermal allows farmers to produce salad greens and tomatoes year round, a mandarin orange olive oil created by a Caldwell grower and goat cheese from Picabo Farms in Richfield.
Then they dug into Chef Jim Roberts’ elk steaks served up with raspberry sauce and Wild Alaskan sockeye with a tequila lime cream sauce, which they augmented with Idaho’s Cinder Wines served in mason jars.
As they savored the food, Ali Long--co-founder of the Local Food Alliance--provided a reality check about school lunches.
“We’re not recreating a separate menu for the kids. We use the same salad dressings you find on the shelves here at the Wood River Sustainability Center,” she said. “That’s the caliber of what we’re doing with our school lunch program at Syringa Mountain School.”
The Power of School Food Farm-to-Table Dinner that took place last week at the Wood River Sustainability Center in Hailey offered diners a concrete example of how the tater tots and greasy pizza commonly found in school lunches can shoved aside for fresh, locally grown nutritious meals.
It’s good brain food, Long said.
“How many of you came in part because you knew the food would be good? We are confident that at the worst we will shame the school district into changing its school lunch program,” she added.
The Alliance worked with the Sustainability Center to introduce a pilot lunch program to Syringa Mountain School last year. It expanded the twice-weekly offerings to five days a week this year, and added a take-out menu for Sage School students.
Healthy leafy greens are served at every meal, along with such items as chicken pot pie.
Each lunch costs $3.50—a barely-breaking-even price, said Long who started the Alliance following a career in philanthropy promotion. And the Alliance is working to provide scholarships for students who can’t afford that.
Syringa students have taken it one step further, growing and harvesting much of the kale, chard, potatoes and garlic they eat. They send it to McCord, who sends it back as lunch.
“It’s so amazing for the children to see it go from the ground into their mouths,” said Long. “Some students who have never tried kale before are now eating it, as a result.”
“We’re opening kids’ minds to change. We’re opening their minds to something new and exciting. We’re opening their minds to something nourishing,” added McCord.
Laurie Sammis, whose daughter attends Syringa, said her daughter’s enthusiasm for the food has spilled over to home.
“The program is amazing because it’s really affordable and really, really good,” she said.
Long told diners that the ultimate goal is to get the power of food into the curriculum in a bid to reverse an epidemic of diabetes, obesity and autism.
The Alliance is connecting to the national Farm to School Network. It’s drawing on the expertise of John Turene, who created a highly acclaimed local food menu at St. Luke’s Wood River Hospital a few years ago. And it’s working with the Sun Valley Resilience Institute to provide food year round via solar-powered greenhouses.
“(Fresh food advocate) Alice Waters made a bold statement that I agree with,” Long told diners. “She said: ‘The fate of our nation rests on school lunches.’ We need to teach our kids to be healthy, environmentally conscious.”
Diners applauded what they heard during the evening.
“Ali is so on target with what kids need to keep their brains and bodies healthy,” said Sandra Willingham.
Kathleen Bean, who said she is expecting a few thousands new lambs to be born at her ranch in January and February, agreed: “At some point we have to feed our kids as healthy as we can.”