Alice Waters

My long-awaited (long-awaited by me, the author) LA Magazine story on our school's experience with the Edible Schoolyard is on the news stands now. I LOVE those glossy pages.

As soon as there is a link, I will post it here. In the meantime, parents and teachers are reading it in dribs and drabs. And, as always, everyone reads it through a different filter.

The wonderful and thoughtful hot lunch coordinator found it inspirational. Our principal looked shocked after reading it (I love her, so that was not a good feeling.) Others thought it was an accurate portrayal. Still others lust to have the problem at their school and thought the story showed heart. As always, I sort of want to hide until the flurry passes, but I am taking it on.

Writers write the truth (or try) and then you just have to stand with your head held high and let the readers give it to you on the chin. You will hurt people you never meant to, and make people love you who never would have given you a second glance. These intense emotions lasered at you from all around are the nature of the beast, but still a feeling I never quite get used to. (After big stories ran in the paper I would often just not answer the phone for the first part of the day, and instead cower as the phone ring. Later, when I had regained my composure, or knew the blast of vitriol, or the shower of praise that would greet me, I would return the call. Ready.)

In that spirit I took my story down to Alice Waters, who just happened to be in Los Angeles this weekend, perhaps for the LA Bookfair, But even more incredible she was signing copies of her latest cookbook right down the street at my favorite boutique, Lost and Found.

I decided to take a copy by for her perusal. The woman meets a hundred million fans a week. She is a rock star in the food world, and I passed through her life with a notebook for only the briefest of moments. She sat in a store at the end of a long wooden table, with two helpers shelling mountains of fresh fava beans and tossing them into a beautiful hand-carved bowl. Alice herself sat radiant and green, like a shimmering garden vegetable or a magic elf. I approached her. Again. She said she remembered me. And she looked like maybe she might. I gave her the magazine. She said someone had already given her a copy.

I said I wouldn't sign it, but I wanted her to have it--from me. It was a personal essay about our school's experience with the Edible School Yard and I was grateful to have been a part of it. Dutifully she took it and put it behind the curtain. And then she got it. "You are the author!" she said.
(Yes, why else would I be there?)

Then she said she loved the picture, said we were doing the work on the ground, and she couldn't wait to read it.

Oh, boy.

I hope stories of life on the ground are refreshing, not frightening.

But then, that is my job. To tell the truth. Even to Alice Waters.

Edible Schoolyard

This September our school launched the Edible Schoolyard project. We are the fourth site in the country to be handpicked by Alice Waters to try to revolutionize the way children think about food. With a gardening and a school lunch component, Waters, the culinary visionary who founded Chez Panisse, believes that through food children can awaken their senses and learn to eat well, live fully, care for the environment, and create community.

That is a lot of lofty goals wrapped up in a seemingly simple program.

My husband was skeptical. I believed, but also felt that many of these lessons are already taught by the kind of parents who choose to send their children to Charter School--because it ends up being a pretty self-selecting group.

Last Thursday I went to school to help out with hot lunch. No two schools interpret the Edible Schoolyard program the same way. It is up to the teachers on the ground to find systems and a curriculum that work in their particular urban environment, with their students. At our school every student is required to buy school lunch, at a cost of $5 a day. No exceptions. The food is prepared by the Farmer's Market, a new restaurant non-profit that aims to support sustainable, locally grown produce and micro-businesses. It is delicious.

The students sit at long tables and cannot eat until everyone sits down. An adult sits at every table. Places are set before they arrive by parents. Milk or water is served from pitchers. Often there are fresh flowers. Before they eat they all sing a song of thanks. They do not get up until everyone is done.

It seems simple. But I was surprised by how moved I was. The song was beautiful. The food, delicious. And the children were eating together, like family.

And I realized how many lessons were packed into this tiny ritual. These children were learning about nutrition, civility, community. They were learning about culture. And the school is training their tastebuds and their bodies to crave and desire healthy foods. Here in this simple ritual lay the foundations of a lifetime of learning.

I have also been surprised at the reaction.

Many children do not touch their food. One little girl across from me looked down at her chicken enchilada, herbed beans, and home-made applesauce, and declared, "I am allergic to food." (She isn't. The allergic children have special meals served). I asked if she were allergic to chicken, beans or applesauce. "All food," she said. "That is why I have this blue band-aid on my chest." She pulled back her shirt to show me and grinned. The boy next to her mashed his applesauce with his fork but wouldn't touch the rest of it. He refused. Another girl dove in. "This is good," she said. "This is really good."

A third little girl called me over. "What is this?" she demanded. She pointed to the enchilada. I said, it is an enchilada. Then she peeked in. "What is that?" she said, poking at the chicken. "Chicken," I said. A minute later she called me back to ask me about the cheese and the green onion. The applesauce. But in the end she ate it all.

I know there are days the children do not even know what they are eating. One day they were served a juicy, sweet yellow fruit. They all ate it, and loved it, but no one knew what it was. Finally, at afternoon recess, one girl figured it out. "Yellow watermelon," she declared. The word spread like gossip across the campus. They were delighted. Who knew watermelon could be yellow? Who knew it could be so delicious?

Those who are there every day say slowly the kids are eating more, trying more, getting braver. A lick becomes a bite becomes a serving. Slowly.

But the most surprising thing is the parents. They signed on for this school knowing what was coming. And yet still, what resistance. One parent asked on the school web site if the school could serve more pizza, mac n'cheese and pasta. Another said she is terrified her child will not eat, so she gives a big huge snack before lunch, and meets him with a reward in the car after school. (Is it sweet? Is it salty? Is it fatty?)

I am soooo sympathetic. I have one natural healthy food lover and one junk food lover. These are their natural settings. Still, I know it is my job to set them so that they at least know they need real food to live. As I watched the resistance unfold on the school web site, and listened to parents complain, I realized how truly revolutionary Alice Waters is. I realized many children live on mac n' cheese, pizza and pasta. (and believe me, my kids have their share and they love it!) I realized how few families have the time to eat together. I realized that even though parents want their children to eat well, want it more than anything, they instinctively fight to keep their kids eating what they already do, because it is easy, and fast. Even if it might not be that good. Or even actively bad.

People may pull their kids from the school over the school lunch program. Our school has taken a more drastic approach than the original Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, where the program flourishes and is a national pilgrimage spot for foodies and educators. Friends whose daughters attend said even there not every child is required to buy the school lunch.

But I pray Alice Waters succeeds. A day at school has shown me how desperately we need to overhaul school lunch programs--and not leave our children's nutritional futures to the USDA and its agricultural surplus programs, to corporations who care only about developing the cheapest food and getting our kids addicted to fat, sugar and salt. I am outing myself! I am a convert!

Kale for dinner!!!!!

Eco-Literacy

When we were invited to help start my son's charter school, THE main founding parents, Marya Francis and Jay Owens, kept going on and on about eco-literacy. The term was so bourgeois, upper-middle-class, urban angsty that I just ignored it in the moment. That was not why I was interested in the school.

But with time I have become deeply moved and committed to the idea. Marya, a quiet, powerful visionary, slaved to make her dream come true. She did not care if anyone else was interested. Through her work and initiative this fall Alice Waters and the Chez Panisse Foundation came down to meet the Larchmont Charter Schools. The schools put together a fabulous lunch, prepared by organic chef mama Margarite Mees, and served Alice and her friends a fresh, delicious lunch out on the schoolyard with the children.

Those there had been warned that Alice would be tired, exhausted from a busy trip, and they had about a 15 minute window to get her attention or not. They did it! They broke through and Alice fell in love with the school. The Larchmont Schools have been accepted to be An Edible Schoolyard. The program is designed to teach children to grow food, to prepare food, and to eat better. It is to teach a connection to the land, the earth, local farmers, our community and the food we eat.

Today, Waters has a wonderful piece in the NYT about why schools need to feed kids good food. She argues, with powerful facts and figures, that school lunch should not be a cheap dumping ground for leftover corporate agricultural products and a gigantic junk food distribution system. She argues that we need to dump our current school lunch program and start again from scratch. I agree.

Today I go to the school garden with my boys. A group of devoted mothers have transformed an asphalt patch behind the school into a magical place. There are greens, herbs, flowers, a tiny fountain with stools and scarecrows made of recycled items. It is a tiny zen place in the middle of this urban jungle. It is a lesson in how you can create beauty and green out of nothing. The kids love it.

They water the plants and sniff the leaves. Last time we made salads out of every kind of green we could find. Today we will harvest some herbs and make herb butter. My son has started eating salad--in large part due to this garden. Nature is my place (though gardening is not my strength) and I am deeply moved to see the children watering, harvesting and eating what they have grown. Far more than I would have expected.

I have become an Eco-Literacy convert. I read Waters' biography and watched the old French movies that gave her famous restaurant its name. I surf the web at night trying to learn more, and I have become a fan of Andrew Goldsworthy, the fabulous British artist who creates ephemeral works in nature. I am ready to subscribe to an Eco-Literacy newsletter for kids, and to really get into it.

This is my favorite part. Real Eco-Literacy teachers emphasize that you do not want to teach children about all the harm that has come to the earth. You do not want to teach them about polluted oceans, falling Amazon forests, or other horrible things they cannot do anything about. You simply want to take them out into the woods, the forests, the deserts, the oceans and teach them to love this world. When they see how beautiful it is, when they sense its magic, they will spend their lives trying to protect it.