Lincoln PTSA

This year, Lincoln Elementary was a recipient of a Slow Foods Grant.  This money will be used to help fund our school garden and Youth Farmer's Market Programs.

The Youth Farmer's Market program brings fruits and vegetables from local farms to schools and provides them for sale to the school and local community. The profits go to the garden program. The end dates will depend on weather and availability of produce.  The Youth Farmer's Market will be held on the Lincoln School grounds.

 

 

Youth Farmers' Markets come to Lincoln:

We are very excited to announce Lincoln's participation in the Youth Farmers’ Market.  Slow Foods Denver and Denver Urban Gardens have teamed up to bring Youth Farmers' Markets to neighborhoods all across Denver to promote healthy eating and purchasing of Colorado farm products. Over 27 schools in the Denver Metro area will host at least one YFM. The YFM features produce form local Colorado farms supplemented by produce from our own garden.

Our season starts Thursday, Sept 8,  and will go for 7-8 weeks into October (scheduled dates: 9/8, 9/15, 9/22, 9/29, 10/6, 10/13 and 10/20).  We are excited to work with fifth grade students. The students will help organize and run the market. 

School Gardens Headlines 2010:

• DPS Pursues Local Fruits, Vegetables, and Meat for Meals
• Lincoln Students enjoy a fresh Salad Bar This Year
• Lincoln Gardens Contribute Produce for the Salad Bar

For the past two years, DPS Food Services has participated in a Kellogg Foundation grant called School Food Learning Lab whose goal is to transform the procurement process that districts use to purchase their food.  Through this project, DPS is targeting 5 areas of their food purchases to get as much CO grown and produced food as possible.  These areas include: Fruits, Vegetables, Meat, Dairy and Whole Grains.  Slow Food Denver has been the community partner in the Learning Lab and has assisted in identifying new sources for locally grown fruits and vegetables and locally–raised meats for the school meals.  Each month this year, DPS will feature a “CO Proud Meal” that will feature all CO products on the menu.  Although the project just started last year, DPS was able to purchase 27% of all its fruits and vegetables from CO farms.  This school year the purchases from CO farms will be much greater as the program is in full swing.

 

DPS commits to scratch kitchens;

 

Leo Lesh, director of DPS Food and Nutrition Services continues the transformation of school meals by announcing the commitment to converting all school kitchens to scratch cooking within three years.  The goal of this program is to train DPS cooks so that they can handle all the whole, fresh and raw ingredients that are coming into the District.  This past summer 120 DPS cooks, including Lincoln's cafeteria manager, Vianney Naranjo, went through a 3-week training session called “Back To The Future With Scratch Cooking”.  The cooks received training in 3 main areas: Cold Prep (salad bars, prepared salads and sandwiches), Hot Prep (casseroles, sauces and raw meat handling) and Bread Baking (quick and yeast breads).  Slow Food Denver assisted in the scratch cooking training by bringing 8 local chefs, including Lincoln's own Chef D (Daniel Young) to work with the DPS cooks. 

 

85 New Salad bars in DPS cafeterias;

 

DPS Food and Nutrition Services has ordered 85 new salad bars for DPS cafeterias.  Training for the new salad bars started this summer during the Scratch Cooking training.  The goal for each salad bar is to have a green salad, several choices for fresh vegetables and even more choices of fresh fruit.  The salad bars replace the individually portioned fruit that the students have seen before.  Students will get to go through the salad bar as part of the hot lunch service.  Kitchen Manager Vianney Naranjo and her assistant, Kisa Varnham, are doing a fantastic job of beautifully presenting the fresh fruits and vegetables.  We appreciate their passion for providing healthy meals to our students.

 

School Garden produce to be used in new salad bars

 

DPS Food and Nutrition Services and Slow Food Denver launched the Garden to Cafeteria program, the first of its kind in Denver, this fall.  School gardens can contribute salad ready vegetables to the school cafeteria to be used in the salad bars.  Approximately 15 schools, including Lincoln, have signed on to allow students and garden leaders to safely harvest produce once a week and to hand it over to the kitchen manager.  Students will help keep track of the weight of the produce from the school gardens. DPS Food and Nutrition Services will pay for the produce and the proceeds will go back into the garden program.