A recent, inspiring story on EdibleCommunities.com explains how Telepan, a professional chef who runs a well-regarded, eponymous restaurant in New York City, is working (really, really working) with his daughter's public school kitchen to build a better school lunch.
Cheap, nutrition-poor, industrial school lunches are easy to criticize. And as we all know, food journalists, chefs, and public officials from Michael Pollan to Alice Waters to First Lady Michelle Obama have been urging various ways to "fix" the problems of school lunches for years. Not everybody, however, actually rolls up his sleeves and steps in front of the one-burner stove in his local public school to try to get to the heart of the problem.
The EdibleCommunities story on Bill Telepan's efforts is worth a read: It's full of surprises both good and bad (file under bad: few schools have anything like a kitchen where you could actually cook something, as opposed to simply heating up prepared foods). The Epicurious staff had the pleasure of working with Bill Telepan and his bright, beautiful daughter Leah when they created a special mom-pleasing menu with us, and it's great to read about their latest "joint project."
If you're a parent, or even if you're not, how do you feel about the state of the school lunch nation where you live? Would your local schools be receptive to efforts like Telepan's? Even if not all of us have time to organize, prepare, and cook several hundred fresh meals in an under-equipped, understaffed school kitchen (geez, thanks for the inferiority complex, Bill), what can parents or concerned food-lovers do to help improve school lunches where we live?
by Siobhan Adcock
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