On Tuesday, Jan. 9, students across the West Linn-Wilsonville school district had the opportunity to try something new for lunch. The newest menu item, mango chicken with rice and dal, was part of a new nutrition services initiative: “A Taste of India.”
Five months in the making, the new cultural lunch entree represented the continued effort of the district’s Nutrition Services department to diversify and expand the food offerings for students.
“A conversation that has been present over the years has been bringing in cultural foods — that’s also been an interest of mine,” said Nutrition Services Manager Lindsey Flores. “How can we bring in cultural foods that can, long-term, partner with the curriculum? How can we be intentional about bringing in cultural foods from all different cultures?”
There are a handful of different ways that new food offerings can be introduced in the school district. For “A Taste of India,” the district was approached by Happy Curry Foods in Salem about working together on bringing traditional Indian cuisine to the school district.
“One of the biggest (challenges) is converting recipes into USDA requirements. Our goal has been less to say, ‘How can we make this exactly like if somebody made this at home?’ And more of, ‘How can we create the essence?’ Or, what we kinda call K-12 fusion. We’re taking the requirements of K-12 schools and mixing it with this culture, so people at least get the essence,” said Flores.
Flores added that one of the most important components in navigating those requirements is building strong relationships with individuals who have a background in the traditional cuisine and come from a place of intentionality.
“Part of the intentionality was to take a recipe and learn from somebody who was making it and then highlight that staff member,” said Flores.
For the Indian cuisine, Flores said that Anju Nathan in the district office specifically helped provide insight into the development of the new entrees.
However, translating recipes to USDA school requirements isn’t the only challenge facing new food options. The ingredients for a particular recipe have to be acquired at a massive scale, the food has to be procured consistently and quickly and the meals have to be served safely to students.
Partners like Happy Curry Foods make this process easier, but the logistics for each new food item are complicated.
“If you take spaghetti and meat sauce, right? Already well-established in schools. So you can find the base recipe that is already converted and you might just tweak yours a little bit,” said Flores. “But nobody else is doing this. So you don't have that baseline and you want to make sure that if a family who asked to look at the allergens and the nutritionals are getting that space that they need.”
“A Taste of India” isn’t the first new entree that Nutrition Services has introduced. In the past, they’ve rolled out Vietnamese pho soup, which should become part of the permanent menu later this year, as well as jerk chicken, Chinese dumplings and Ethiopian chicken.
Later this month, students can celebrate Lunar New Year with orange chicken for the very first time.
“We have foods that we would like to bring out, but we know maybe next year or the following year because we can only do so many new entrees at a time,” said Flores.
Down the road, the department would like to see new cuisines from different cultures as “just the norm.”
“Coming out of COVID-19, we're building that momentum again,” added Flores. “We have more stable distribution lines, we have more staff and we can really pick up this vision of … ‘Well, this is just what we do.’
To meet these goals, Flores said the department has to “slow down to move fast.” They recently updated their computer systems, so adding new recipes and processes will take some time, but honing the process with new food items can make partnerships and initiatives move faster.
Nutrition Services provides lunches for between 2,500 and 3,000 students every day. With fun new food items, like shark-shaped chicken nuggets, and new, traditional cuisines, it’s about providing a learning opportunity even in the cafeteria.
But what about the pickiest of student eaters who would prefer shark-shaped chicken nuggets every day?
“You know, ‘I don’t like mushrooms these ten ways, but I love this eleventh way.’ If you hadn’t tried that eleventh way, you’d never know you love it,” said Flores. “Being bold and able to say: ‘Let's continue to be intentional about what we present and know that there are some students who love it.’ Those are the students who may say, ‘I'm bringing food from home five days a week, but when I see that entree, I'm begging my parents to let me eat at school.’”
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