Fresh Picks Bringing Fresh Food to Schools

Many of Food Connects’ sponsors are local businesses looking to support Farm to School that may not directly do so with their work. Food Connects has the unique privilege, however, of working closely with one daily—Fresh Picks Café.

Based out of Manchester, NH, Fresh Picks Café is a food service contracting company that works with public schools and school districts to provide meals for their students. These meals, often sourcing local foods and always following state and federal guidelines, are quite delicious! Our Farm to School team works with its team members at schools across Windham County, and their values align well with our work.

“The motivating philosophy at Fresh Picks Café is that wellness and good food go hand in hand—especially in education. Our comprehensive, coordinated, pro-active wellness programs promote this belief with an emphasis on fresh and whole wheat foods that are locally grown and produced.”

— Fresh Picks Café

And so, a symbiotic relationship was established. Fresh Picks Café supports our Farm to School program and helps us grow and thrive. At the same time, our Farm to School team helps their school teams apply for kitchen equipment grants, provides professional development opportunities, and partners with them on multiple projects (like the Where in the World Are We Eating series).

This long-lasting partnership has helped feed children throughout Windham County for years and will continue to bring the most nutritious food possible to help kids in our neighborhoods thrive.

Welcoming our New Afghan Neighbors with Culturally Relevant Foods

By Farm to School Coach, Sheila Humphreys

My grandmother taught me that a thoughtful way to welcome new neighbors into the community is to bake them a pie and deliver it to their front door with a warm smile. Here in Brattleboro, our schools and community are in the process of welcoming approximately 100 new neighbors from Afghanistan. That’s a lot of pies!

In Windham Southeast Supervisory Union (WSESU) schools, Food Service Director Ali West and her staff welcomed Afghan students through her Where in the World are We Eating program. These special meals often take more work for the food service team, so our Marketing & Outreach Manager, Laura, joined the team to help peel potatoes and prepare the meal for the following day.

On a windy, cold Thursday in February, several Food Connects staff joined Ali and Brattleboro Union High School (BUHS) students for lunch to enjoy these delicious new flavors together. On the menu that day for the “Welcome Home Afghan Allies” meal was Borani Banjan (fried eggplant with tomatoes, mint, and garlic yogurt), Bolani (Flatbread stuffed with potato, onion, and peppers), Beef Kafta Kebab, and Lavash. The mix of flavors and spices was outstanding! Here’s what a couple of the students had to say about the meal:

“I like it. I like the naan and the meat has good flavor and seasoning. And the yogurt is good in flavor and texture.”

— Cyrus Smith, 10th grade

“Oftentimes the cultural food is a lot better than the other food.”

— Nash Miller, 10th grade

WSESD’s Nutrition program is not the only way the Brattleboro community is welcoming our new neighbors with nourishing food. The Brattleboro Multicultural Community Center-Ethiopian Community Development Council (MCC) is leading the effort to welcome our Afghan neighbors in many ways, including multiple opportunities each week for community members to provide a fresh main dish for lunch daily through a Meal Train site. Volunteers are encouraged to use a collection of Afghan recipes linked on the site, and feedback from our neighbors so far has been that our locally made versions of their traditional recipes are “somewhat bland.” Therefore cooks are encouraged to “be generous with spices, herbs, salt, and oil in the recipes.” Our neighbors say, “We especially want spicy food when we feel sad.” My coworker Beth and I made a meal a few weeks ago, and my kitchen smelled deliciously spicy afterward, those spices perhaps offering a tiny bit of healing to our new neighbors who have been through so much.

In addition, school garden coordinators at WSESD schools, in collaboration with Food Connects and Wild Carrot Farm, are planning to grow two culturally relevant crops in school gardens this season, gandana and nigella, and Kathy Cassin, the Garden Coordinator at Academy School, is featuring some Afghan dishes in her cooking projects with students. The Brattleboro Community and Food Connects family are so happy to play a small part in helping our new neighbors feel welcome, and we look forward to continuing to support and learn from them as they integrate into our area.

Where in the World are We Eating? A Celebration of Diversity by the WSESD School Lunch Program

School lunch never tasted as good to me as it did on Tuesday, September 28, when I sampled a delicious Thai meal in the BUHS cafeteria. Thanks to “Where in the World are We Eating,” a new program by Brattleboro Regional Food Service Director Ali West of Fresh Picks Cafe, all Windham Southeast School District (WSESD) students had the opportunity to visit Thailand with their taste buds last month. Rather than the standard lunch fare of mac and cheese, pizza, and sandwiches, students could sample chicken satay, tofu Pad Thai, vegetarian Tom Kha soup (my favorite!), and mango sticky rice.

Ali was inspired to create this program to bring the entire school community together to celebrate the diversity of our school district through the shared experience of food. She collaborated with the district’s ESOL teachers to compile a list of the 22 countries students in WSESD are from. Twenty-two countries is a lot to fit into one school year, so she selected nine countries (one per month) to focus on this year, and she plans to continue the program and visit more countries in the future. Thailand is just the beginning! Here is the complete list of countries that students will get to explore with their taste buds this year:

• September - Thailand

• October - Jordan

• November - Haiti

• December - Germany

• January - Kenya

• February - Syria

• March - The Philippines

• April - Jamaica

• May - Bolivia

Ali is encouraging the entire school community at all nine schools in the district to get involved, with invitations to music, art teachers, and librarians to feature music, art, and literature highlighting these countries with their students throughout the year. Invitations have also gone out to 6th-12th grade social studies teachers to take turns doing an in-depth study with their students on the featured country. As a culmination of this research, students will create slideshows to share with students of all ages throughout the district to teach about each country’s flora, fauna, clothing, and scenery. For Thailand, Sarah Kaltenbaugh’s 6th graders at Academy School created an engaging slideshow that highlighted beautiful statues, floating markets, and clouded leopards. This slideshow was shared with students from pre-K through high school seniors during the special meal. Early grades can decorate their school cafeterias with coloring pages incorporating images from each featured country.

“I want all of our students, no matter where they are from, to feel welcomed and celebrated in our schools,” says Ali West. As a chef and food service director, the best way that she has found to do this is through a celebration of diversity in the school meal program, which is accessible to all students again this year thanks to the USDA extension of universal meals. Ali even met the added challenge of including local produce in the meal by purchasing bean sprouts from the Chang Farm in Whately, MA, through the Food Connects Food Hub.