NCCA Chef & Child Foundation Committee
ACFEF Chef & Child Foundation
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Chefs Move to Schools Initiative
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Winning Combination
August 18, 2010: Notes from Denise Baxter:
I'm writing to provide you information on how the "Chefs Move to Schools" initiative is being supported by the ACF from the meetings I attended at ACF National and informa- tion I gathered from the ACF web site.
First, our NCCA Chapter Committee Chair for the Chef and Child Foundation is Susie Seykoski, CEPC. As many of you may know, she's been a member of our chapter for many years and is also a past president of the chapter. Susie and I had a conference call to discuss how the NCCA chapter can become involved in the Chefs Move to Schools initiative and what exactly is the ACF providing it's members to support this initiative.
I shared with Susie my experience of being part of the Focus Group with Deputy Under Secretary Janey Thornton at ACF National Conference. Dr. Thornton encouraged ACF chefs to join the "Lets Move" www.letsmove.gov/chefs-1.php initative to focus on three areas: 1. working with children providing healthy cooking instruction;
2. working with PTAs to educate parents and teachers on healthy cooking; and
3. if a school currently has older kitchen equipment in their cafeteria, see if you may be able to provide support in using the equipment to prepare food using a different, healthier, cooking technique.
Many of you longtime ACF members are knowledgeable of the ACF Education Foundation Chef & Child Program. For those of you that are not, let me share with you what I learned from the ACF web site:
The ACF Chef & Child section of the ACF web site (www.acfchefs.org click on "Partnerships" on the top tool bar, then on the right click on "ACFEF Chef & Child - You'll see "Chefs Move to Schools" on this menu. As I navigated around this area I saw that the ACF is not only encouraging members to get involved in the “Chefs Move to Schools” initiative by signing up on the Let’s Move web site but is supporting chefs after they have signed up through the Chef & Child Foundation which offers resources for chefs to use in developing a Chefs Move to Schools program with a school in their area. I downloaded to my hard drive the .pdf files for the “Ingredient of the Month” for months going back to March 2010 – these are great documents that describe the ingredient and provide recipes using the ingredient. They include ingredients such as flaxseed, quinoa, edamame, acai & goji berries, barley and salmon. I encourage all of you to download these documents - they contain a wealth of valuable information include recipes!
I found that there are also “activities” such as “Hit a Homerun for Nutrition” – instructions for the game and a scorecard which I have attached to this email for your convenience and an article on “Healthy Living for Children”.
There is a 74 page document entitled “That’s Fresh” Kids Cooking Teams (the .pdf is below). In this document there is a description of the “Kids Cooking Teams” Mission Statement as well as 10 lesson plans for teaching healthy cooking to kids. Our chefs do not need to reinvent the wheel!
