its national school lunch week! what does that mean? well when i asked my fellow lunch ladies they had no idea. we all fantasized about having the week off or perhaps even getting our lunch catered. however when i looked up national school lunch week, i discovered that the school nutrition association sets a week aside to celebrate new programs, recipes, accomplishments and what makes your school lunch unique.
i have decided to celebrate national school lunch week by eating lunch at work everyday. yes this lunch lady won’t be bringing her lunch this week she’s eating off the hot lunch line. school lunch programs have a bad rap. most the time everyone is horribly applaud by what we serve our kids and i’ll admit i’m sometimes applaud too but it’s also not the school lunch programs fault. when the government doesn’t invest in better quality ingredients there is only so much you can do to create 600 lunches with a budget of $3.00 per lunch.
each day this week i’m going to try and create a yummy lunch with all items that are available to students and staff who get the hot lunch. all items you see on my plate can be recreated by the average student.
so what was for lunch today?……………..cheese pizza with a side salad
Hearty Eaters 
I agree that there are problems with the way we approach school lunches, but I don’t know that cost is the main issue. The French feed their children a four course meal for around $3 a meal (and give kids a real half hour to eat). You might want to check out Karen Le Billon’s blog. She has an entire section devoted to French school lunches.
very true cost is just a small element of the issue. but we too give our children 30 minutes to eat and have extreme government regulations that mandate how that $3 per meal is spent. regarding food we should look more to the french that is for sure but something i always remind myself about with countries like france is, france can fit inside of texas. we are a giant nation with giant issues. look up colorado’s school nutrition programs they have made some amazing changes at the state level.