THE BIG IDEA: Working with Teachers

Bloomfield (CT) Schools Foodservice Director Tim Cipriano learned to work with teachers when he served as chef in the Cheshire (CT) Middle School kitchen. There, he formed an alliance with a consumer science class to develop and promote healthy dishes made with fresh (though not necessarily locally sourced) ingredients.

When he landed the job as director of his own program at Bloomfield, one of his first moves was to establish similar ties, this time with teachers in the magnet high school's vocational education program.

The initial contact was with biology/environmental sciences teacher Joe Rodrigues.

“I went to see Joe shortly after I arrived,” Cipriano recalls. “He had greenhouses with a couple of raised beds and a small aquaculture program. They were for academic use, though he also worked with Chef Paul Waszkelewicz on growing herbs and a small volume of tomatoes for the culinary program.

“So I said, ‘Why can't we have our own farm at the high school and grow things to serve in the cafeteria? And why can't we work with Chef Paul and team up agri-science and culinary students and teach them the whole cycle of life, from seed to compost and around again?’ After all, we had all the components.”

The collaboration began to bear fruit (and vegetables and herbs) last spring, when some seedlings were started in the greenhouses. Rodrigues tended the beds over the summer. August yielded a huge bounty of vegetables from both inside the greenhouses and from the outdoor beds.

The initial crop yielded arugula, several different kinds of tomatoes and hot peppers, onions, leeks, bell peppers, Hubbard squash, red kuri squash, kale, carrots, oregano and parsley.

“We chose items that were a little different but not too far out,” Cipriano offers.

The culinary students help develop recipes that incorporate the site-grown ingredients. “In many cases, it's just the vegetables with maybe a little spicing,” Cipriano says. “We want to highlight the vegetables and show that it was grown right here in the high school for you.”

Tomatoes — of which there was a more-than-expected bounty — wound up in salads, sauces and even gazpachos. They were even served on salads district-wide on some days because of the volume (the program was otherwise limited to the high school cafeteria).

The agri-science center produces more than just plants. Two of the four greenhouses contain huge aquatanks in which the students raise various species of fish (bass, sunfish, etc.). Cipriano's contribution to the aquaculture program was to suggest adding tilapia, a commonly farmed food fish, so the cafeteria can serve a locally sourced fish dish at some point.

He plans to have enough tilapia raised and ready by late spring to serve a meal at the high school. Meanwhile, Waszkelewicz will be able to use the fish in his classes, perhaps coming up with some recipes. Processing is the big hurdle for the tilapia project, a labor-intensive task that Cipriano plans to do mostly himself with some help from some of the district kitchen staff if he can find training time.

The agri-science center also added chickens to its collection recently. However, the birds produce only about a dozen eggs a week, enough for the culinary classes to play with but hardly useful in the cafeteria's volume feeding environment (there are no plans to slaughter them for future chicken dish recipes as they are layers, not broilers, Cipriano is quick to point out).

The birds are caged in mobile pens that agri-science students move around the campus, “so they are as free-range as you can get in a high school,” Cipriano quips.

Future plans call for aquaponic beds on top of the tilapia tanks in which students can grow herbs for the cafeteria and culinary classes.