Annette Fuentes

Bo Kwont, left, confers with Georgeanne Brennan

Georgeanne Brennan stood before the group of 16 women, all cooks in Oakland public schools, with an asparagus spear in hand, demonstrating how to snap off the tough, fibrous base.

“We’re going to make an asparagus and mushroom pizza—no tomato sauce. You’ll sprinkle extra virgin olive oil over it and then sprinkle some cheese on top,” she said, describing the recipe. “Where are the vegetables? They’re hidden under the cheese!”

Working in the kitchen of Castlemont High School in East Oakland, the cooks would also make an orzo-sun dried tomato salad—“it will be really pretty, colorful and healthy,” a vegetable tajine from North Africa, a curry chicken salad, and the piece de resistance, a Mediterranean shepherd’s pie with chopped beef, mashed potatoes and parsnips.

“We tested it and found elementary school kids like it,” Brennan said. “You know your kids. You know what they like. And if you give them a pile of vegetables, they won’t eat them.”

Brennan, a professional chef and cookbook author, was teaching the cooks how to cook in ways they’ve never done before. Using more local, seasonally available produce, her recipes integrate vegetables into dishes designed to appeal to young, picky eaters.

These cooks are in a huddle over the Mexican pizza recipe

The Center for Eco Literacy sponsored the class, a pilot project that is part of its much bigger effort to reform Oakland's school lunch program. A similar project in Davis public schools launched three years ago and is now in 13 schools, Brennan said.

The rationale is simple: before kids can eat healthier, the people who feed them must also learn how to cook healthier.

Jennifer Le Barre, Oakland Unified's nutrition director, supports the project.  She thanked the cooks for coming in during spring break. “We want to improve our meal program in several ways,” she said. “We want to get more local foods on the table. We have asparagus right here in the valley.”

Cooking with locally sourced foods is one of the Center’s mantras for school nutrition. “We’re doing a survey of California food products to learn how to minimize the distance between food and the cafeteria,” said Zenobia Barlow, co-founder and executive director of the Center. “We looked at walnuts and found that 90 percent of all walnuts served in the country come from a few counties in California. We’re asking, ‘how can we get those into school lunch menus?’”

Most of the cooks are women who have worked for in Oakland Unified's cafeterias for years. After Brennan’s introduction to the recipes, they broke up into smaller groups in the enormous kitchen to get down to business.

Clutching copies of the recipes in one hand, they rummaged through a rack of produce and boxes of spices to find their ingredients. Each group worked on a different dish as Brennan walked around, offering advice and taste-testing the meals in progress. For the first 20 minutes, controlled chaos prevailed as the women figured out the recipes and how to work together.

“They get to learn from their peers,” Brennan said gleefully, surveying the scene. “They’re all excited!”

Bo Kwont was making the orzo salad. She’s been a cook at Brett Harte middle school for 12 years and came to learn new ways to cook for her students, half of whom are black and half Latino—with just a few Asians. She has strategies for getting her kids to eat healthier.

“I always put the vegetables in the chow mein, and they’ll eat it because they can’t pick it out,” she said. “When I try something new, I say, ‘try it, try it.’”

Annette Fuentes

Olga De Lara plucks fresh rosemary for the shepherd's pie

Michelle Chastang cooks for Garfield Elementary and Fremont High, serving a total of 800 students. She was peeling potatoes for the shepherds pie and predicted that the older students would like it. “The high schoolers will try it,” she said. “They like ground beef, and they like mashed potatoes.”

Chastang was working with Olga De Lara, a nutrition services manager in charge of 42 elementary schools. De Lara would be cooking shepherd’s pie for 3,000 students on Earth Day. She wasn’t sure how the pie would be received because “the kids are finicky,” she said. “It’s hard to steer then to healthy eating.”