How Timber Creek’s school lunch is prepared
By: Conrad Schelo
“Lunch Club”, quotes the sign in front of the line, “Cheeseburger, Pizza slice, Milk, Choice of Fruit.” During lunch, Timber Creek’s huge cafeteria gets very crowded. Especially the main line goes through the whole hall. Lunch staff are serving thousands of meals to our students. But how would a few people be able to prepare enough food for all those people?
First the menu has to be created. That is a whole process which is happening 2 months before the food is actually being served. This is the case because of procurement, food deliveries and preparation. Also the food is always forecasted on the ocps website. The menu creation is not happening on our campus, in fact there is a nutrition office managed by our district. 3 dietitians are working there, creating menus for almost 300,000 students in our county. One of them is Agnes Alpapara. “I enjoy being part of the Nutrition Team that works on the healthy menus and special diets for our school children,” she says, “[and] having the sense of responsibility to bring [food] to most of these students because they will become our future leaders.” The nutrition team is creating the menus based on USDA Guidelines. The restrictions contain a calories, saturated fats, sodium requirement for each grade. Beside the federal guidelines, there are also nutrition policies by our district: Food has to follow nutrition standards and policies for students with special diets, like vegetarian or lactose intolerant students. But do those restrictions make the menus healthy and do they taste good?
“I wish there were more healthier options,” says Orion Galya, sophomore at Timber Creek. “Even though there’s a lot of options, I feel like the variety of choices is repeated.” Meals are changing only in the main line, the middle line in our cafeteria which is always overcrowded during lunch.” I think [the lines] are pretty crazy, especially if you need to wait 15-20 minutes for your food and end up having such a short time to eat,” Galya says. Our nutrition manager at Timber Creek, Joseph Geonzelels is aware of that problem: “I would like to change the separate lines so we can have everything for every student.” Our cafeteria equipment at Timber Creek doesn’t make this change possible: Not every line can store every food. Salads and fresh food are only available after a long wait. “Right now these newish schools have everything in the lines,” says Geonzeles. The dietitian team is referring to the OCPS budget and priorities.
Big amounts of food are delivered to the back of our cafeteria. A big truck which says “Ocps nutrition,” delivers all kinds of different food. But where is the food coming from and is it fresh? “Vegetables like lettuce produced within the Orange County are made available to school cafeterias,” says Alpapara. Timber Creek gets a delivery of fresh vegetables twice a week, so the Timber Creek manager. “We usually have Harvest of the Month where we feature fresh fruits and vegetables,” says Alpapara. The department of defense is providing fresh, free fruits and vegetables to school cafeterias. Also whole menu items are shipped to our school: Cheeseburgers, salads and other items are sent from central kitchens.
After two months of forecasting, organization and logistics our menu is getting prepared.In our Timber Creek kitchen there are different people organizing the food. The amounts of food for the different options are getting calculated, then it has to be cooked. The preparation time varies depending on the menus. “Today’s a fiesta bowl so many different things are put together. Four people are in line to swap the things,” Geonzelzes explains. “Mostly, the meals are prepared on the day of meal service with the exception of cold meals,” so Alpapara. Breakfast is starting to get cooked the day before and finished in the morning, starting at 5:30 am. Due to a staff shortage not all recipes can be prepared here at Timber Creek. While our daily changing mainline menu is made right here on campus, foods like the cheeseburger and salads are prepared at the central kitchens which are based in other high schools who have the equipment and staff to prepare certain menu items. They also cook for charter, elementary and middle schools. Also frozen food is shipped to our kitchen, the staff has to put it together and warm it up.
“I like the apples, the Uncrustables pb and j,” says Galya. She also explains that she notices those and the pizza often being eaten by other students. Compared to her old high school in New Jersey she likes Timber Creek’s food more. “We have more choices. In Jersey it was just like the meal of the day,” Galya explains. Ms Alpapara explains that the biggest challenge in creating menus for so many young people is considering all the differences between the thousands of students. “We cannot totally please everybody,” Alpapara says.
