Serving up nutritious food in Rim’s schools

By Mary-Justine Lanyon

For 22 years, Lisa Rhoades has been providing lunches to students in the Rim of the World Unified School District.

She started as a lunch lady. “We had a whole different way of doing things when I started,” Rhoades said. “We used a lot of processed foods. Now our lunches are minimally processed.”

Three years ago, Rhoades became the director of Child Nutrition for the district. She applied for and received a $25,000 Foods for Schools grant through the National School Lunch Program.

In addition to providing Rhoades and her staff with money to create nutritious lunches, through the grant she was finally able to get farmers from down the hill to bring their produce up to Rim. The National School Lunch Program, she noted, “wanted to support socially disadvantaged farmers and producers, help build their economy.”

Rhoades had been trying since she became director to get the farmers to come up but had had no success. The first to come up were the Fruit Guys. “They are wonderful,” Rhoades said, adding they have brought up some exotic fruits. “The kids have been very receptive” to them and also to the vegetables they have provided. Among the fruits and vegetables the students are enjoying are kumquats, daikon radishes, donut peaches, sugar snap peas and Persian cucumbers.

The Fruit Guys were followed by the Riverside Food Hub and then Black Sheep Farms.

Last week, Rhoades said, she got a delivery of spaghetti squash and rainbow carrots.

The lunches are prepared in the kitchen at Rim of the World High School by central cook Barbara Faust. “She is amazing at what she can do,” Rhoades said. 

Faust is making turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy for this month. Once the food is prepared, she divides it up according to school site and freezes it for delivery to the individual campuses.

At lunch there are usually three choices, Rhoades said, including a vegetarian option. The elementary school children love the cheese pizza. The orange chicken is also very popular and tamales are another favorite.

They serve Domino’s pizza at the middle school and the high school but it’s not the pizza a resident would pick up at the local restaurant. The students, Rhoades noted, “don’t realize it has a whole wheat crust, low sodium tomato sauce, low fat mozzarella and turkey pepperoni. It tastes wonderful.”

Most of the recipes Faust follows come from the USDA. “If there’s something new we want to make,” Rhoades said, “we have to put it through the USDA guidelines to make it work.” The lunchroom staff at the various sites often come up with suggestions, as do the students.

Rhoades chuckles as she says, “One year they love something; the next year they don’t. We want to give the kids what they want.

“Our homemade chili is really good,” she added, noting they serve it with a cornbread star.

The “walking taco” is very popular – a bag of Doritos that is topped with meat, cheese and lettuce. At the high school, they offer a salad bar twice a week. “That’s been amazing,” Rhoades said. They always make sure there is protein available – chicken taco meat or ground beef, perhaps hard-boiled eggs.

Under the community eligibility provision, Rim gets reimbursed for meals that include a protein or meat alternative, a fruit and/or vegetable and milk. “When the students come through the line, we have to make sure they have all three or it is not reimbursable,” Rhoades said.

Each lunch time they serve about 1,200 students, as well as staff.

They also have breakfast available for the students. Under the California Universal Meals Program, Rim offers two meals a day. At breakfast the elementary school children must have a half-cup of fruit, while the middle and high school students get three-quarters of a cup.

At the high school they have been offering smoothies at breakfast, which have been a big hit with the students. Rhoades hopes they can offer them at the elementary school sites.

“I wish we had more serving time,” she said. At Charles Hoffman Elementary School, they offer a second-chance breakfast. “If a student missed breakfast when they got to school, they can get it during the first recess,” Rhoades said, noting the numbers have doubled since they started offering this. She is trying to work with the other sites so they can offer it, too.

In discussion about wasted food, Rhoades was pleased to say that, at some sites, they have “share” tables with areas for hot and cold food. The students are welcome to take anything they want from those tables. And they can take an extra fruit or grain to take home with them.

One in seven children in California face food insecurity, Rhoades noted. With that in mind, Rim has an agreement with Operation Provider to donate anything they know they won’t be able to use so it is not wasted.

When Michelle Murphy was superintendent, she suggested Rim get a golf cart to take lunch out onto the field at the high school. During good weather, that’s what they do three days a week. “The kids don’t want to be in the cafeteria,” Rhoades said. “They want to be outside with their friends.”

In addition to the regular lunches, there are ala carte items like frozen yogurt available for purchase at the high school. They have to be “smart snack” compliant.

“We’ve done a lot to up our game to make the kids want the food,” Rhoades said.