Today our whole day was set up to meet with the USDA Child Care Food Program. The program is a wonderful help to early childcare places, public schools and family homes. We are so proud to be on this program.
Part of the program is collecting paperwork. That's no easy chore. Like any Federal or State program, the paperwork is voluminous! Every child's file must contain, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, .... forms and more.
Menus have to contain certain components in order to count as nutrition for children. We didn't have a single problem there. We serve A+, 100% good food at the GS, and we serve as much as a child wants.
Today we had spaghetti with meat sauce, cottage cheese, green salad, kandy melon, watermelon, green apples, French Bread and butter and milk.
But here's the rub: how much, how much, how much? Everything has to be weighed or measured. That's not usually a problem because what the state says we should be serving to a child in the 3-5 category is so small, we usually laugh and serve several times as much.
For instance: pancakes must equal one 1.1 ounces. Have you ever thought about what that is? It amounts to about one 2.5 inch pancake. We serve about six 3-4 inch pancakes to every child.
The lady who monitors us is Miss Kim. She's an excellent lady and full of bright clear answers to questions and enthusiastic about food. We are very glad to have her on our side.
If you want to know what your child is eating and I don't post it here, I have it posted in the kitchen and will post it on the door of the school a week in advance. If you have any suggestions, please tell one of us.
Food is an important issue because it is an investment in the future of the health of the child. Every effort is made to make sure our children are well fed and happy. Hunger in a country of plenty is a disgrace, but then so is poor nutrition.
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