Many readers have written in asking for a repeat of my ‘French Kids’ School Lunch Project’. I’m happy to oblige!
Last year, I blogged every week about the menus served in French school lunches. For full details (including a discussion of the pros and cons of the French approach to lunches), visit the home page for the French Kids School Lunch Project. Happy reading!
My ‘French Kids’ School Lunch Project’ is back by popular demand!
(For a full explanation of how school lunches are organized in France, click here.)
For the yummy menus French kids are eating this week in Paris, read on! These menus come from the 17th arrondissement (similar to a borough), a very mixed part of Paris, with two former industrial zones (Batignolles and Épinettes) which are rapidly gentrifying. It’s off the tourist track (and not even listed in many tourist guides), so this is about as ‘ordinary’ as you can get — for Paris, that is! But their school lunch menus are far from ordinary!
Note the ‘English menu’ on Thursday. Each month, children are served a ‘typical meal’ from a different country. This is meant to introduce French kids to world cuisines and broaden their palates. Seems like the menus the rest of the month are doing that anyway!
As usual, the meals follow a four course structure: vegetable starter; main dish with vegetable side; cheese course; dessert. All meals are served with fresh baguette (eaten plain, usually one piece per child!) and water. No flavoured milk, juice, sports drinks, or pop. No vending machines. No fast food or junk food. Food for thought!
Monday, September 17th
Salad: Rice, tomatoes, surimi
Main: Turkey scallop with Spanish sauteed vegetables
Cheese/Dairy: Organic ‘fromage blanc’ (a white, smooth cheese somewhat like Greek yogurt)
Dessert: Kouign Aman (my favorite cake from Brittany, where my husband is from! A simple buttery cake, with a thin sugar glaze.)
Tuesday, September 18th
Salad: Piemontaise salad (from the Alps, which traditionally includes cooked potatoes, tomatoes, ham or chicken, hard-boiled eggs and pickles)
Main: Omelette with ‘fines herbes’ (herbs: usually parsley, chives, tarragon and chervil)
Cheese/Dairy: Comté (a hard white cheese a bit like cheddar, but drier and tangier)
Dessert: An orange
Wednesday, September 19th
Salad: Beets with vinaigrette
Main: Lasagna with organic beef
Cheese/Dairy: Organic camembert with organic bread
Dessert: A pear
Thursday, September 20th: ‘English Menu’
Salad: Crunchy goat cheese and beet salad
Main: Cottage Pie
Cheese/Dairy combined with Dessert: Cookie with ‘Crème anglaise’ (a sweet vanilla flavored cream)
Friday, September 21st
Salad: Lettuce and cheese salad
Main combined with Dairy: Fish blanquette (fish with vegetables in béchamel sauce) with noodles
Dessert: A kiwi
This blog post is part of my French Kids School Lunch Project. Every week, I post the school lunch menus from a different village or town in France, where three-course, freshly-prepared hot lunches are provided to over 6 million children in the public school system every day. These meals cost, on average, $3 per child per day (and prices for low-income families are subsidised). My hope is that these menus (together with my other blog posts about the French approach to kid’s food) will spark a conversation about what children CAN eat, and how we can do better at educating them to eat well.
My ‘French Kids’ School Lunch Project’ is back by popular demand! (For a full explanation of how school lunches are organized in France, click here.)
This week we’re in St Etienne de Rouvray, a small industrial town of about 28,000 people in Normandy best known for its unusual 16th century church.
The menu below is for the children in kindergarten; in France, children begin at the age of 2 and a half or 3 (whenever they are toilet trained), and attend kindergarten for three years before starting school at the age of 6. From the age of 4 onwards, they spend a full day at school (typically 8 to 5 pm)-so lunch is definitely an important meal. In fact, it’s supposed to be the biggest meal of the day for French children.
Keep in mind that children can’t bring lunch from home (unless they have allergies), and that they are all expected to taste whatever is served-even if they don’t eat it. Food education-introducing children to a wide variety of flavors and tastes-starts right from the early years!
As usual, the meals follow a four course structure: vegetable starter; main dish with vegetable side; cheese course; dessert. All meals are served with fresh baguette (eaten plain, usually one piece per child!) and water. No flavoured milk, juice, sports drinks, or pop. No vending machines. No fast food or junk food. Food for thought!
Monday, September 10th
Salad: Cold tomato potage soup
Main: Chicken sausage with lentils
Cheese/Dairy: Yogurt
Dessert: A pear
Tuesday, September 11th
Salad: Macedonian salad with hard-boiled eggs
Main: Minced chicken with ‘sauce suprême’ and pasta
Cheese/Dairy: Fromage blanc (somewhat like Greek yogurt)
Dessert: Fruit compote (sauce)
Wednesday, September 12th
Salad: Watermelon
Main: Vegetable goulash with carrots ‘vichy’ style
Cheese/Dairy: Mini Babybel (a miniature cheese much like Gouda, in an individual red wrapper that kids tend to love)
Dessert: Apple pie
Thursday, September 13th
Salad: Organic grated carrots
Main: Minced beef tongue with spicy sauce and vegetable puree
Cheese/Dairy: Yogurt
Dessert: None
Friday, September 14th
Salad: Tomatoes with vinaigrette
Main: Filet of hake with cream sauce and bulghur
Cheese/Dairy: None
Dessert: Abricotine (a flaky fruit-filled pastry)
Now, how many of these dishes would your kids have tasted (much less eaten) when they were in kindergarten?
Bon Appétit!
This blog post is part of my French Kids School Lunch Project. Every week, I post the school lunch menus from a different village or town in France, where three-course, freshly-prepared hot lunches are provided to over 6 million children in the public school system every day. These meals cost, on average, $3 per child per day (and prices for low-income families are subsidised). My hope is that these menus (together with my other blog posts about the French approach to kid’s food) will spark a conversation about what children CAN eat, and how we can do better at educating them to eat well.
Just 15 minutes from Cannes, Mougins is a small medieval village in Provence, long frequented by artists. The quiet lanes and streets (shaded by pine, cypress, and olive trees) are a contrast to the hectic pace of life on the coast, where endless traffic jams (particularly in summer) and a concrete jungle have ruined much of the charm of this stretch of the Cote d’Azur. Mougins is, in fact, arguably more chic than Cannes, in a style the French call ‘bohemian-bourgeois’ (or, simply, ‘bo-bo’): Pablo Picasso spent over a decade living here, Yves Saint Laurent was a regular, the famed chef Alain Ducasse ran a restaurant in the village, and the new socialist prime minister, Francois Hollande, has a vacation home here. It’s perhaps no surprise that Mougins hosts an annual ‘gastronomy festival’, and attracts some of the top chefs from around the world each year.
So, what are French kids eating this week in Mougins? All of the meat served is organic, as is the bread, and one of the meals served every week is entirely organic. The average price is 2.92 Euros ($3.60 US) per child per meal, which is the non-subsidised rate (low income families pay less). Not a bad deal, in my opinion!
As usual, the meals follow a four course structure: vegetable starter; main dish with vegetable side; cheese course; dessert. All meals are served with fresh baguette (eaten plain, usually one piece per child!) and water. No flavoured milk, juice, sports drinks, or pop. No vending machines. No fast food or junk food. Food for thought!
Monday June 25th
Paëlla (as this includes vegetables, seafood, and rice, it is considered substantial enough to be a starter and main course)
Dairy: Goat’s cheese
Fresh fruit
Tuesday, June 26th
Seafood salad
Turkey, with cauliflower and ‘sauce agrumes’ (a citrus-based sauce)
Dairy: Fromage blanc
Fresh fruit
Wednesday, June 27th
no school
Thursday, June 28th
Tomato/grapefruit salad
Cordon bleu and green peas
Cheese: Tomme (a firm, aged yet relatively mild cheese from the Alps)
Fresh fruit
Friday, June 29th
Green salad
Roasted fish with roasted tomatoes and polenta gratinée (a baked casserole, with a savory crust)
Dairy: Yogurt
Fresh fruit
For those of you who have read other menus, you’ll note that the food served in Mougins isn’t very different than that served in lots of other French villages. This village may be a bit wealthier than average, but an effort is still made to keep prices low. That allows everyone to have access to the cantine if they need it. This ‘solidarity’ (as the French term it) is an important part of the philosophy of the French school system. Food for thought!
This blog post is part of my French Kids School Lunch Project. Every week, I post the school lunch menus from a different village or town in France, where three-course, freshly-prepared hot lunches are provided to over 6 million children in the public school system every day. These meals cost, on average, $3 per child per day (and prices for low-income families are subsidised). My hope is that these menus (together with my other blog posts about the French approach to kid’s food) will spark a conversation about what children CAN eat, and how we can do better at educating them to eat well.
Not all French people live in charming villages in Provence with a local market just around the corner. Many live in big cities, with long commutes, dual working couples, the usual pressures of modern life. School lunches are even more crucial here, feel the French, as most children don’t have the option of going home for lunch (as some still do in small villages).
School lunches are paid for locally — there is no equivalent of the National School Lunch Program (that’s right-no subsidies, no bulk commodity purchases). Everything is decided and paid for locally; parents pay part of the cost of lunches (typically about 3 Euros or $4 dollars), and local taxes cover any remaining costs. That’s why it’s so interesting so look at lunches in different communities in France-they really do vary tremendously.
This week we’re in the centre of France, in the town of St Etienne: best-known for its role in the arms industry (it was even renamed ‘Armeville’ during the French Revolution!). In addition to arms manufacturing, it was also a big mining town. It’s also one of the first cities in France to decide to convert to organic food for school lunches. As of January 2012, 70% of the food served is organic. And by 2014, 100% will be organic. And most of the food is sourced locally (cabbage and carrots in winter, and only a rare serving of tropical fruit).
And it didn’t turn out to be as expensive as you might think. Eliminating expensive food items (like pineapple in winter) saved some money, and long-term contracts with local organic suppliers reduced costs. School lunches in St Etienne cost between 1 and 4.5 €uros (prices are set on a sliding scale, depending on family revenue)-or between $1.3 and $5. In fact, when the city decided to introduce organic food, it lowered the average cost of meals by 10% (20% for lower-income families). The number of children eating meals at the cantine rose (to 2500 per day).
Regular surveys indicate a high level satisfaction: 85% in summer, and 75% in winter (must be the cabbage). The menus do look delicious….
As usual, the meals follow a four course structure: vegetable starter; main dish with vegetable side; cheese course; dessert. All meals are served with fresh baguette (eaten plain, usually one piece per child!) and water. No flavoured milk, juice, sports drinks, or pop. No vending machines. No fast food or junk food. Food for thought!
Monday, June 18th
Organic beets with shallot sauce
Roast chicken with organic lentils
Dairy: Organic ‘Petit fondu‘ (a soft cheese, somewhat like brie)
Dessert: Seasonal organic fruit (at the moment, peaches, cherries, and apricots!)
Tuesday, June 19th
Organic fusili salad
Organic omelette and organic steamed spinach
Dairy: Plain yogurt (organic) with sugar
Dessert: Seasonal organic fruit
Wednesday, June 20th
no school
Thursday, June 21st
Organic coleslaw salad
Lamb meatballs with tajine (Moroccan) sauce and organic couscous
Dairy: Tomme (a mild, hard cheese from the Alps)
Dessert: Vanilla cream
Friday, June 22nd
Cantaloupe
Fish filet with sautéed organic vegetables and organic potatoes
Dairy: Organic camembert
Dessert: Organic compote (fruit sauce)
You can tell I’m rather enthused about this menu, right? They demonstrate the power of community-parents, teachers, local government working together. They also demonstrate a spirit of solidarity-because meals are priced on a sliding scale, everyone gets a heathy meal.
Food for thought.
This blog post is part of my French Kids School Lunch Project. Every week, I post the school lunch menus from a different village or town in France, where three-course, freshly-prepared hot lunches are provided to over 6 million children in the public school system every day. These meals cost, on average, $3 per child per day (and prices for low-income families are subsidised). My hope is that these menus (together with my other blog posts about the French approach to kid’s food) will spark a conversation about what children CAN eat, and how we can do better at educating them to eat well.
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