Last week, our school nutrition team received word that their program had been selected for a 2018 “Golden Radish Award”, an award given annually by the Georgia Department of Education, Georgia Department of Agriculture, Georgia Department of Public Health, the UGA Cooperative Extension, and Georgia Organics for “extraordinary work in farm to school”. The ANCS nutrition team certainly does extraordinary work. They strive to provide locally-sourced food on our menus, with an emphasis on farms and vendors that are small and/or minority-owned. They teach hands-on classes to students in the kitchen and in our gardens to help students better understand how to make healthy and tasty meals. And they plan menus based on feedback from students and with dishes integrated with the curriculum that expose students to foods from different regions and cultures, like Mexico, West Africa, and Southeast Asia.
As a tie in to this news (and because I didn’t write a new blog post over the Labor Day weekend :)), I encourage you to take a few minutes to read this post from last year on Georgia Public Broadcasting’s “Education Matters” blog by ANCS Chef and Nutrition Director David Bradley about the thought that goes into our farm-to-school program. There’s even a video of our students in action in the ANCS kitchen!