When Tim Cirpiano took the job as foodservice director at Bloomfield (CT) Public Schools a year and a half ago, he was determined to maximize his department's use of locally sourced ingredients.

But instead of just nurturing contacts with local growers, he also reached into the school community and forged somewhat unique alliances with a couple of the teachers at the district high school.

One is with Chef Paul Waszkelewicz, director of the district's culinary arts program, and the other with Joe Rodrigues, who teaches environmental science and biology at the high school. As part of his duties, Rodrigues also oversees the department's vocational agri-science education program. It includes an outdoor garden and four greenhouses where the program's nearly 100 students learn to cultivate various crops and even farm fish (Bloomfield High School is a local magnet school for these programs).

As a result of the alliance, Bloomfield's nutrition services department now works with culinary arts students to develop recipes and promote dishes emphasizing local products. Meanwhile, the environmental science facilities cultivate ingredients that are used by culinary arts and the cafeteria (with waste composted back into the growing cycle).

Participating students get a real-world education in growing crops, developing recipes and cooking dishes. Their participation also helps engage the rest of the students into thinking about issues like eating locally grown foods, consuming more fresh fruits and vegetables and appreciating the ecological impact of their dining choices.

The program has been recognized by the state of Connecticut, which awarded Cipriano and Bloomfield Schools with a Climate Change Leadership award last May.

The Local Food Dude

Cipriano's enthusiasm about local sourcing has become somewhat of an area legend, to the extent that he has been dubbed the “local food dude.” It's a nickname he says was conferred on him by fellow Connecticut local foods activist John Turenne. (Turenne is the former executive chef of Yale University Dining Services who oversaw the culinary transition in the early days of the school's Yale Sustainability Project initiative. He is now a prominent industry consultant on sustainability and local sourcing issues.)

Outside of the schools, Cipriano remains very involved in local farmers markets, is planning a farmers market/culinary education program targeted at seniors that will kick off this summer (see below) and maintains a website (www.localfooddude.com) that promotes ties between Connecticut growers and the state's foodservice operators.

That Cipriano is such a committed local food enthusiast is somewhat of a surprise, given that he spent much of his culinary career cooking for commercial chain restaurant operators like Sbarro's, Dakota Steakhouse and Spaghetti Warehouse. After all, these are not exactly hotbeds of sustainability initiatives — and certainly weren't when Cipriano worked for them back in the 1990s.

Cipriano began his conversion when he started cooking in schools, first at a private academy and then as chef for the public middle school in Cheshire, CT.

Initially, his emphasis was just on promoting fresh foods, wherever they came from. “I thought local was great but we needed to get more fresh product into the kids regardless,” he says. “I saw kids eating and enjoying the summer squash we'd buy in the middle of winter and I thought that was great.”

Cipriano's transition from Fresh Food Dude to Local Food Dude began at a Breakfast With the Farmers event he attended toward the end of his first year with Cheshire Schools.

“We had already been working with a local orchard that gave us fruits but this breakfast exposed me to the other side, the vegetables. Farmers told us that if they could sell schools, they wouldn't have to throw vegetables out at the end of the harvest season. They also said they would be willing to sell to schools at fairly competitive price because we could give them volume.”

Cipriano worked with Connecticut Farm-to-School project coordinator Elizabeth Fleming on a pilot program at Dodd Middle School in which an eighth grade consumer science class worked on developing recipes using local products. They would do nutrition and cost analyses on the best ones, sample it and then market it to their classmates.

“I would sample different things with the kids,” he says. “We'd make a fresh tomato salsa, watermelon gazpacho, blueberry soup---different things and give kids samples and see their expressions. Then we would put it on the menu if they liked it.”

One dish that came out of this process was Squapple Crisp (see recipe on p. xx), which Cipriano brought over to Bloomfield, where it has remained a favorite. Other dishes from this period included balsamic roasted vegetables. “Kids loved the roasted vegetables. They were actually eating beets and turnips and commenting on how sweet they were and how surprised they were that vegetables taste so good.”