LET A THOUSAND FLOWERS BLOOM. Baltimore Dining Director Tony Geraci (above) uses a historic nearby farm as a learning tool to expose city kids to what real food is and where it comes from.

Photo: Nicholas McIntosh

Kids digging in the soil and getting their hands dirty on a warm early fall day. That used to be a common sight in America, and may still be in some parts of the country. But certainly not in inner-city Baltimore, where kids are much more likely to be hanging around street corners or holed up inside playing video games. In this urban landscape, soil is what sits under the debris littering vacant lots.

Yet, that's not what has been happening at a 33-acre rural expanse just outside the city. Instead of staring at a TV screen, youngsters from the city school system are busily — and happily — digging, weeding and planting crops they will harvest, sell, cook or eat.

Overseeing it all is Anthony Geraci, director of food and nutrition services for the Baltimore City Public Schools. Geraci, a successful former commercial chef and restaurateur (see the Guest Chef profile in the June 2009 FM), is determined to foment a revolution. Part of that revolution involves reconnecting urbanized kids with the soil, educating them about matters that past generations knew as a matter of course: what real food is and where it comes from. That's what the above-mentioned activities were all about. More on them in a moment.

On a more practical level, however, the revolution involves changing how child nutrition programs in big city schools operate. To that end, Geraci is overseeing the complete overhaul of Baltimore's school meal program, everything from procurement and production to menus and service. The goal: an efficient system that can menu tasty, healthful dishes made with fresh ingredients on a mass scale every day.

A Hub and Spoke System

The core of the overhaul is a new fresh meal production system that is the diametric opposite of the previous one, which relied almost exclusively on preprocessed commodity product. Geraci intends to convert that to one that will use fresh ingredients — as many as possible sourced from within the state — prepared in ways that are both healthy and appealing. Quartered chickens baked with real herbs and spices instead of nuggets, roasted potatoes instead of french fries, pizza topped with fresh vegetables instead of rubbery cheese.

Because Baltimore's school kitchens have almost no production equipment, and the system hasn't got funds to buy any, Geraci has improvised, devising a kind of hub-and-spoke production operation that maximizes scant resources. The hub is a central kitchen that acts as the primary shipping, receiving and production facility.

Around this hub are 20 “spokes,” satellite kitchens located in schools around the city, with some operating as specialty production kitchens for specific menu categories (bakery, pizza shop, sandwich shop, fresh produce processing, etc.). The food is bulk-produced, chilled, transported to the individual school sites and rethermed there.

Geraci is looking at vacuum packaging to make things simple as possible and eliminate the need for expensive equipment at the school sites. “You only need to boil water to heat the food back up,” he says. “Then, you can scoop and serve.

“I want to be able to maximize our kitchens' capabilities,” he explains. “We have no money to work with, so, being from New Orleans, I've adopted the Blanche Dubois approach to business: I rely on the kindness of strangers.”

The Kindness of Strangers

That “kindness” has resulted in more than $3 million in grants and gifts that have gone to purchase trucks, equipment and training for the planned production operation.

VITAL STATS Baltimore City Shools Enrollement: 85,000 Free/Reduces Pct.: 75% Schools: 201 Nutrition Program Budget: $35 Million

The new infrastructure is also expected to save the department money. With its own temperature-controlled storage and trucks, it won't have to pay outsiders to do these tasks. There are even plans to rent out excess production capacity to outside producers to help cover costs.

But that's just one Geraci innovation in the year and a half he has been at his job. Other accomplishments so far include…

• Breakfast With the Birds, a healthy breakfast program promoted in partnership with the city's popular big league baseball and football teams (see sidebar);

• “Meatless Mondays,” which menus vegetarian fare one day a week as a healthy eating initiative, an educational opportunity and a cost saver;

• rewriting RFPs to emphasize local products, especially Maryland-grown fresh produce;

• securing deals with local growers to plant contract crops specifically for the school system's kitchens;

• bringing the student “customers” into the process by soliciting home recipes, taste testing potential dishes and ingredients and generally involving them in menu planning;

• and last but certainly not least, Great Kids Farm, the actual working farm described above that serves as educational tool, test lab, community garden incubator, revenue generator and, frankly, media magnet.