June 2012 - Ramallah Friends Schools

New Hot Lunch Program at Park Day School
By Cass, Olivia and Sonia
park Day has a new hot lunch program! Kids can get hot lunch Tuesdays and Thursdays, or 5 days
a week. We get little green cards that say our name and our teacher’s name. If you buy lunch
Tuesdays and Thursdays, your card is light green, and if you get lunch everyday, your card is dark
green.
Some of our favorite meals are teriyaki chicken, Sloppy Joes, Mac ’n Cheese, garlic bread, minestrone
soup, and spaghetti and meatballs. There’s always a long line on Tuesdays and Thursdays
because that’s when a lot of people buy lunch. A common
issue with the lunch line is that it moves pretty slowly. That’s
because there are only two stations for food.
Before the Hot Lunch program started, we had pizza on
Wednesday, pasta on Tuesday, and burritos on Thursday.
The pizza was cheese and wasn’t very good. The beans in
the burritos were starchy, but the pasta was great.
The Park Day lunch program is near the 6th, 7th and
8th grades area. The chefs cook the food. They cook it in
trays and there’s a window that they pass it out to the lunch
ladies, so they can serve it to the kids who are in the program.
When we get to the front of the line the lunch ladies take a plate and ask us what we want. After
they serve us, we can go to the vegetable table and get side dishes, like vegetables and pasta, and
there’s always salad, tomatoes, egg salad and sandwiches and sometimes beats. There also is a soup
table, which not a lot of people get. Then once we have all our food we go out to another table, which
contains fruit, water and 2% milk. Finally we can go and eat
our lunch after that long process.
Park Day does not use paper plates and plastic utensils
because it’s not good for the earth. Instead of using those
things, we use hard plastic plates and regular silverware that
can be washed and reused. We have plastic cups. This is a
big improvement because last year we used paper plates
which created a lot of waste and got blown all over the campus.
This year, when we’re finished eating, we put our plates
and utensils into buckets that the cooks come out and get
when they’re full.
We think that the food is good most of the time. Avi, a vegetarian fifth-grader comments, “I think
that options for vegetarians are limited. Other than that, the food is so-so.” But there are many other
kids that love the food and like to eat it five times a week. Becky, a fifth-grader, said that the garlic
bread is good and Stella, also in fifth grade, loves the pizza.
The chefs are doing a great job. Nutrition-wise they are providing healthy choices. Taste-wise most
people love it. Choice-wise, we recommend adding more vegetarian choices.
Children Without Borders 51