Food Lab: A small school where the kids scratch-cook their own meals

Often times we highlight very large school districts that has a meal program that offers food that is made from scratch whenever possible.  Because those places are large districts with many resources, there might be more opportunities to get local, fresh food into the cafeteria.  But what about a very small, rural school? How can they do the same thing with limited resources?  Join us as we interview Emilia Miguel with "Food Lab," from Pacific Elementary in Davenport, CA. It's a school where the Students are the chefs, and create their own local, nutritious meals for the National School Lunch Program. 

Transcript

Food Lab Emelia Miguel

Transcript

00:00:06 Rick

Welcome to the farm to school podcast where you will hear stories of how youth thrive and farmers prosper when we learn how to grow, cook and eat delicious, nutritious local foods in schools across the country.

00:00:19 Michelle

And the world. Hey everyone, we're your host. I'm Michelle Markesteyn.

00:00:24 Rick

And I'm Rick Sherman.

00:00:25 Michelle

And we have a very special guest with us in the studio today. Please welcome Emelia Miguel, Food Service Director of Pacific Elementary School and Food Lab Coordinator. Hi, Emelia!

00:00:37 Emelia Miguel

Hi there. Thanks for having me.

00:00:38 Rick

And yeah, Emelia. Where is Pacific Elementary school located at?

00:00:44 Emelia Miguel

So we are in Davenport, CA. We're about 12 miles north of Santa Cruz. It's a rural community, pretty small population, about 375 people live in Davenport.

00:00:56 Rick

Ohh, and how many kids go to your school?

00:00:59 Emelia Miguel

We have about 180 students. 75% of our students come from Santa Cruz, so it's a very small Davenport local population. But we survive on those people coming up the coast to be a part of our school and mostly part of our program. They wanna be in Food Lab.. so, a lot of our kids come or a lot of our families come because of our food program. They want to come to food lab.

00:01:26 Michelle

Tell us about food Lab. What are they so excited about?

00:01:27 Rick

And why do they want to go here?

00:01:30 Emelia Miguel

Well, food Lab is a program that started in 1983 by a woman named Stephanie Raugust, and she was a parent at the school. She was very unsatisfied with the food that was being brought up from Santa Cruz and reheated and served in Davenport. And so she said, well, you know, they can do better than this.  And so she started cooking from scratch. She started her first meal as a chicken, and it was about 30 minutes late. And she was cooking for, I think, just maybe 50 people. I'm not even. That might be too high. But there was a very small population then in 1983. But anyway, that's how she started as a parent. And that's the same, same as how I started. I started as a parent in 2007 and I wanted to go to that school because of food lab and food lab is the place where kids cook the school meals. So right now we cook breakfast and lunch and an after school snack and we cook for about 150 people every day because all of our staff come in, we have adults that come in like parents are welcome to come in for lunch.

00:02:45 Rick

So I'm trying to think through my mind how that's going to work now when I'm picturing kids or cooking, what are the grades of the grade range of your school? What ages are those kids that are helping you prepare the meals?

00:03:00 Emelia Miguel

So our 6th graders are the ones that help cook the meals. 5th graders do come in and help on a regular basis, but they come in and help expedite the food. They also help set up the lunch rooms. They get everything prepared for every meal or which is actually not every meal but just our lunches. I guess breakfast too.  Yeah, mostly. The 11 and 12 year olds. The 6th graders come in and we cook for preschool through 6th grade. That's who we up there. So we wanted the holdouts to still have 6th grade at our school.

00:03:34 Michelle

OK. Well, and I know because you're part of the National School lunch and breakfast programs doing this, correct? 

00:03:35 Emelia Miguel

Yes.

00:03:36 Michelle

Yes,  you are. And I know actually so, yeah, and thank you. This is amazing. And there's so many different, strict health and safety instructions. It seems like the youth have to learn so many really important kitchen skills.

00:03:58 Emelia Miguel

They do, and very important life skills. I mean, just washing your hands is the basic life skills that we all need and it keeps us safe. Our health inspector comes twice a year and that's the number one thing that they always ask. OK, so do you have your hand washing signs up? Show me how the kids wash their hands, or they have the kids demonstrate how they wash hands.  And we start off our school year by just teaching those health and safety rules. And you know the most important thing for me is to keep them safe in the kitchen and it you'll be surprised. I mean, we do cook for 150 people, but it's a really small space. And so when we have 6... about six 6th graders in the kitchen at once, plus myself, plus our prep cook.  You know, there's a lot going on and so it's really important that we all use those safety skills like, you know, watching your body and your movements and no elbows in the kitchen and making sure they're using their hot pads when they open the oven. And they're nice. Skills are one of the most important things that we teach..  we teach them how to use chefs knives. They're very sharp. We have a dad that comes in and sharpens them at least every two weeks and so.

00:05:18 Rick

That's so cool.

00:05:18 Emelia Miguel

They always use that with us always supposed to use their claw hand.

00:05:22 Rick

I know what you mean. I'm yeah. I had some culinary training too, for so claws of the shape of your hand. So you don't cut your fingers off. Yeah, on your non knife hand, just your knuckles. So that's so great because you're teaching kids life skills that they can use at their home.

00:05:31 Emelia Miguel

Exactly. And they do. And this year in particular, we had a group of kids that a lot of them came in just for 6th grade because they heard about food lab. They were not satisfied with their elementary school for whatever reason, and they wanted a little bit more. And so they came in just for 6th grade. And we have an amazing 6th grade teacher. So they came in and they were just so excited to learn how to cook. And so a lot of them would go home and cook for their families and on a regular basis, more so this year than I've ever seen before. It was remarkable. And I also had the opportunity to take, I was so excited about this group of 6th graders. I took them to a conference in San Diego to share food lab with. It was the growing garden summit, and it's run by Life Lab. 

00:06:30 Rick

I was there!  I was the guy out in the hall doing the podcast interviewing.

00:06:37 Emelia Miguel

So yeah, well done. We missed you.

00:06:41 Emelia Miguel

Are so yeah, we were the I was with the group of kids, the only group of kids at this conference and we just had a blast. And it they really showed off their skills because we put on a little mini food lab demonstration.

00:06:48 Rick

Sure. Wow.

00:06:57 Emelia Miguel

And so they were able to show their knife skills and their, you know, everything the reading recipes multiplying recipes.

00:07:05 Rick

I actually popped in and saw you guys. I got to catch a little bit of them in action, so that was really neat to really neat to see. So yeah, and so you this is really kind of neat because Michelle and I just interviewed another person who did farm to school on a massive scale in a mega school district. And people listening to that would say, oh, well, he has a base kitchen and I can't do that in my small district. But here's a perfect example of a small school and people can do farm to school and scratch cooking and use their school garden produce. Big giant school districts and little tiny school, so this is a really good lesson. Now I'm assuming I made some assumptions that you do are able to use your school garden produce and do some scratch cooking. Is that correct? Absolutely. So we rely on our school garden immensely, mostly for nutrition education and our life lab instructor is amazing at coordinating with me and they will bring me whatever is available whenever it's available. And so we just incorporate it right then into what we're doing. So usually there's an abundance of kale and our kids love kale salad. So we'll just get the kale from the garden and process it and make it into our kale salad, which is amazing and the preschoolers and kindergarteners well, preschool has their own little garden. But the kindergarteners and the first graders, the younger students, just absolutely love… they love harvesting those vegetables and bringing it to me. I have so many pictures of smiling kids eating me zucchinis and kale, and it's wonderful. So yeah, we try to incorporate as much of that as possible. It's not enough. They're not production beds by any means. It's not enough to, you know, meet our needs for an entire lunch, but we do supplement. We have. I mean, obviously we have amazing farmers in our area and they  attend our school and so 5th Crow Farm, for instance. Whatever is leftover from their market, they bring and donate to us. It's an incredible thing we have going on up there. We also have the opportunity to purchase organic chicken and pork from a local farm.  And a lot of to do with those that money for local food, for schools and school food best practices. That money was so helpful and being able to purchase from that came in those local farmers, and we also were able to purchase grass fed beef from left coast beef, which is up the coast in Pescadero so, we live in a in a very abundant place. Incredible.

00:10:06 Michelle

Sounds delicious. My mouth is like salivating here, which I kind of wanted to revisit your kale salad. That the students make. How do you prepare it so that they're excited about it?

00:10:20 Emelia Miguel

Well, it's salty. That's one thing. It has soy sauce, lemon juice, and olive oil. That's our basic dressing. And then you soak a red onion in that, and then you peel in the kale. So it's pretty small. And then you put the dressing over the kale and you massage the heck out of it. So you break down the kale fibers, so it's not as tough and we insert it on the plate every day. Or not kale salad every day. But we can serve a salad on the plate every day. So students sit down to a plate of food they don't come through a lunch line. And so they sit down to a plate of food and then the fruit is offered. The milk is offered, so we do a combo of plated and offer versus serve. So we give them the minimum required amounts and then if they want and you know a little bit more we offer them a little bit more.

00:11:20 Michelle

You said they sit down to a meal. They don't go through a cafeteria line, can you bring that to life for us? I'm having a hard time picturing it.?

00:11:25 Rick

Like family style.

00:11:25 Michelle

Thank you.

00:11:30 Emelia Miguel

OK, so we have, I guess what you'd call an expediter and he or she, it's going to be a key this year. He would take the plates out to the lunch rooms and then the class will come in. So we have two separate dining rooms. We have three different lunch services. So we are serving from basically  11:30 until 1:00, just nonstop. And we have we have two outdoor seating areas and then two indoor seating area. So you know the classes come in, they sit down and there's a plate of food waiting for them, and then we'll have bowls of fruit that are passed around and pictures of milk that are passed around so they can pour their own milk, or we'll have someone pour for them. Yeah. That's how we do it.  This is every day.  Now the breakfast we serve from a cart. It's like on the play yard. We just fill it up, push it out onto the play yard, and then the students come and get what they want from the breakfast cart. So that's a little different, but..

00:12:40 Michelle

Wow, that is a different type of seating. And we heard Bertrand Weber say this phrase of difference between school lunch and “lunch at school” and it seems like how you're really bringing that to Life.

00:12:53 Emelia Miguel

We really try to honor the food that we serve them because it's incredibly beautiful food and we want them to appreciate it. So they sit down with a napkin and a fork and a knife if they need it as soon if they need it and I do think they enjoy their food.

00:13:10 Rick

Yeah.

00:13:10 Michelle

I think it helps with school, too.

00:13:11 Rick

And for those of you who would like to see Emelia in action, I do have a little food lab video to share with you. I'll put in the show notes as well as the Life Lab Garden program there at the schools, but I'll put that in there too.

00:13:30 Emelia Miguel

OK, great. Thank you. Yeah, it's a lot to understand and but coming and seeing it, everyone is invited to come and see it. If you'd like to. We have a lot of groups that do come, and then they view through love. They watch from the windows and then they sit down to a meal that John Fisher brings in.  A lot of people that, I mean, they come through our school and it's wonderful. They get to see us in action cuz it's seeing is believing cuz it's a lot. You hear that these 11 year olds cooking for 150 people, they do it and they do a really amazing job at it and they take such pride in it and then they're so proud to serve their preschoolers and their first graders. And by the time those preschoolers and 1st graders, second graders are in 6th grade, they're so excited to be in through that. Finally, they made it, and they're the ones who get to cook it. It's all about buying, you know, you hear a lot about school gardens if you grow it, kids are more likely to eat it. Well, if they make it, they're more likely to eat it.

00:14:22 Rick

Yeah.

00:14:34 Emelia Miguel

I've had so many kids who will not eat like the food on their plate in preschool, and that's part of their preschool program. They can bring their parents, can pack them a lunch if they want, but they are served a plate of food from us. And so they sit with that. They look at it every day and there are some kids who just look at it. That's it. You know, but it's part of their day and part of what they do.  And they rent, you know, some of them will rarely touch it. And by 6th grade, they eat the entire plate.

00:15:05 Rick

Well, you are speaking our language. I mean, that's what we preach all the time. So thank you for articulating that. And then I also wanted to tell our listeners, you mentioned your school garden coordinator, John Fisher, we did an episode. We actually interviewed him a few months back. So you can check that out too. Just look for John Fisher in the in the in our previous episodes and you can listen to that one too.

00:15:31 Michelle

Emelia, this is extraordinary. Just listening to your story, I'm think saying is this even possible in other districts? I mean, you have a lot of people come through, but what do you say to that is this even replicable? 

00:15:44 Emelia Miguel

Absolutely. I think that so many other schools can do exactly what we're doing, that they can alter it. You know, maybe they make breakfast for the next day or they change it up a little bit. But these kids really learn such incredible skills, like those soft skills, like leadership and teamwork.  And empowerment in the kitchen. And obviously they learn their kitchen skills. But I think that it really is a well-rounded education that we give them and they they're working on their math skills, their English language, arts skills. It all comes together in that kitchen in such a real way.  And I really think it's so valuable that more schools really need to do this. And Kelsey and Livak and Santa Cruz, she's doing it and it's so impressive that she's taking this much larger district than ours and doing it so. So I'm happy to see that it's out there.

00:16:40 Rick

Hmm.  OK, so Emelia, what do you think? Where? Where do you see food lab going in the future from now out? Yeah. Where? Where are you headed?

00:16:57 Emelia Miguel

Well, I'm headed. I'm up to Davenport tomorrow, actually, to start my school year. So I'm there. But I would love to take these kids on the road, like taking them to San Diego was incredible. And I would love to take them to more conferences and teach other people how to do what we do. Like I said, other schools can do this, and it it's doable, so I'd like to get them my kids out there to show other people how to do it.

00:17:24 Michelle

Great. And that's again reinforcing the youth development and building self efficacy and confidence and all those soft skills you were mentioning as well. Absolutely. Emelia. I just want to say thank you for all your incredible work that you're doing. You make it sound easy, and yet I know it's a huge lift. It's a huge lift. So thank you for joining us today on the podcast.

00:17:48 Emelia Miguel

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you very much for having me.

00:17:50 Rick

Yeah, we'd like to thank everybody for listening today so much.

00:17:54 Michelle

Farm to school was written and directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markesteyn, with production support from Leanne Locker of Oregon State Universe.

00:18:02 Michelle

This podcast was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:18:07 Rick

The content and ideas for farm to school podcast does not necessarily reflect the opinions of OHSU Oregon Department of Education, or the USDA. The USDA ODER equal opportunity providers and employers.

00:18:22 Michelle

Hey, do you want to learn more about Farm to school? Check out our other episodes, show notes, and contact information by Googling Farm to school podcast, OSU.

00:18:31 Rick

We would love to hear from you. Stop by the website Michelle just mentioned to say hello or give us an idea for a future podcast.

00:18:38 Michelle

Yeah. Bye, everyone. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you again, Emelia.

00:18:41 Rick

Thank you, Emelia.

00:18:43 Emelia Miguel

Thank you for having me.