There’s a reason I am a Recess Mom and not a Cafeteria Mom. My daughter’s small Catholic elementary school relies heavily on parent volunteers, and while I happily oblige administrators’ requests to wrangle kids on the playground and shelve books in the library, I draw the line at serving hot lunch.
I helped out in the cafeteria a few times early in the school year, but now, no more.
For starters, lunch duty is a two-hour job, which requires set-up, food distribution, and clean-up. Given that I struggle to find enough time in the day to scrape the ketchup off the dishes my own family dirties, I feel a twinge of guilt making time to wipe tables, mop floors and clean appliances that are used by 200 perfect strangers.
The other reason I pass when it comes to school lunch duty is that I’m not a huge proponent of the menu. Granted, I am not eating the hot lunch items (though, lunch servers are allowed one free lunch per volunteer shift), but it seems a bit hypocritical for me to be cajoling kids into taking Little Smokies to go with their cheese omelet when neither my daughter nor I would consider touching the mini hot dogs with a 10-foot pole.
I’m not the only parent who feels that the school’s hot lunch menu needs a major overhaul. One dad suggested that we elicit help from British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. He wasn’t kidding. The dad actually went online to beg the Food Network star to bring his reality TV series “Food Revolution” to Wisconsin.
For those of you who are not familiar with the ABC series, “Food Revolution” focuses on one of Oliver’s favorite causes — making school lunches healthier and tastier. Oliver gets into school kitchens and teaches workers how to make dishes using fresh ingredients. He’s already successfully revamped public school lunches in Huntington, West Virginia, during this first season of the show. This year Oliver tried to overhaul public school cafeterias in Los Angeles, but was eventually booted out after district officials thought the TV star cast their schools in a bad light.
California’s loss could be Wisconsin’s gain.
How does your child’s school lunch program stack up?
Related Articles: