Dinners from School: Helping Upcoming Chefs Learn
Posted on 11 October 2007 under School Lunches
I listed this post under School Lunches because I really don’t have another place for it. Mary’s bringing home dinner more often now, and at the same time I’m also eating out more at lunch time. Oddly enough though, all this food is coming out of the same kitchen. And none of it comes from any kind of restaurant you might be familiar with.
Mary works at the Penta Career Center in Perrysburg, Ohio, teaching a Nurse Aide program to high schoolers. If you go down the stairs by her classroom and then a couple hundred feet down the hall, you’ll find the high school culinary classroom of Chef Jim Rhegness, whom you might have seen competing in Food Network gingerbread competitions the past couple years.
During lunch hours Chef Jim’s students operate a small restaurant at the school. Mary and I have enjoyed lunches from there quite often lately, including some moist & tender 1/3-pound buffalo burgers yesterday, topped with lettuce, tomato and pickle, served with fresh French fries, a dense carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, and lemonade, all apparently made from scratch … and all for only $5.
Mary has also been scheduling dinners to bring home. She’ll get the schedules for lunches and dinners, I’ll decide when I’m heading down to join her for lunch, and she’ll also schedule dinners to be made for us by Chef Jim’s students. She’ll then just slide by his kitchen on her way out and pick up our order of whatever’s on the menu for the evening. What she ends up with are these aluminum tubs with crimped covers. These have been prepped by the students with everything included except for dessert and drinks. All we need to do is put them in a 375 degree F oven for about 30 minutes and they’re ready to eat.
After cooking I’ll remove the aluminum lid. At that point, you can either eat the meal right out of the metal container or transfer the meal to a plate for eating. This particular meal, which is what we had for dinner yesterday evening, is a chicken breast with a crunchy-n-cheesy coating, over spaghetti with zuchini and tomato sauce, and a very nice vegetable mix on the side. Putting it all on a plate as I did for the first photo, you can’t tell this is any kind of take-out! And just like the buffalo burger lunch from yesterday, these meals are not expensive whatsoever. But they do give the kids an outlet for their work.
Oh, and get this: Mary’s on Weight Watchers, as are other staff and teachers through a Penta-supported program. The dinner you see here is something Chef Jim developed to support this program, and is only 5 points per serving. The buffalo burgers are also part of that program.
We’re always impressed with the work these kids, these budding chefs, put in front of us. They’re great kids … they work hard, they’re fun to talk with, and Chef Jim seems to appreciate each and every one of them. We’re certainly happy to help out by immensely enjoying the students’ wonderful dishes. And Chef Jim gets pretty darn proud when you let him know just how well his students have done.
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11 October 2007 @ 12:17 pm Posted by JEP
This is a very cool thing! I also think it is great you support their efforts