Poughkeepsie High School Students Compete in CIA's School Lunch Challenge

On Saturday, September 24^th, high school students involved in the Poughkeepsie Farm Project’s City Seeds program competed in a School Lunch Challenge at the Culinary Institute of America. Each teen was placed on a team with Culinary Arts students. The teams competed to plan and prepare a tasty school lunch that met the required nutritional guidelines and fit the budget. 

The judges, including high school students, CIA chefs and special guests of the CIA’s sustainability conference, such as Tim Cipriano (director of New Haven school food service program) and Eric Steinman (editor of Edible Hudson Valley) rated the meals on presentation and taste. After receiving their chef’s hats and aprons, the high school students joined their teams and headed into the kitchen to claim their workspaces and begin the four-hour cooking session. Knowing that the CIA’s nutritionist would be evaluating the meals, the teams paid particular attention to the inclusion of brightly colored vegetables and other nutrient-packed foods. The City Seeds students were important members of the teams; they learned new kitchen skills such as how to bake bread for bread bowls in which to serve pumpkin apple soup, and took on mundane tasks like grating lots of cheese for butternut squash macaroni and cheese. Each of the four meals was delicious, from creative twists like the frittata pizza to the simple grilled boneless turkey thighs. At the end of the afternoon, the winners of the competition were announced. Winning both first place and ‘people’s choice was  Jessica Santos’ team which made the apple-cranberry turkey salad, pumpkin apple soup served in a homemade whole grain bread bowl, and an apple cranberry crisp made with the inside of the bread bowl transformed into the crisp topping. The students seemed to thoroughly enjoy the experience; they worked hard, learned new skills, and had fun. In fact, during the van ride home, Shanice Baugh exclaimed, “This was the best day of my life!”  The City Seeds program, in which several interns drawn from Poughkeepsie Middle and High Schools gain new knowledge and leadership skills through gardening, cooking and other after school activities twice each week, began in the fall of 2010 and is now in its second year.