Dear Families ~

I hope that you all have had a terrific summer! I am thrilled and honored to be part of feeding your children again this year! Last year we changed things quite a bit and this year is no different! I had great conversations with your children in the beginning about the changes. We talked about many things, including especially how their families are so busy these days with work, sports, etc, that often there isn’t time to make a meal from scratch that includes everything that they need. My personal philosophy has always been that I hope to include everything that children need in the two meals that we offer every day so that parents need not worry.

We have lots of great new things that we wanted to share with you about our menus this year. We will continue to offer local organic eggs and yogurt and will add local vegetables and grass fed beef. We are blessed with many local farms that are so supportive of us!

This year we will also be adding more menu items, such as a nacho bar and hamburgers and homemade chicken fingers. We offer lots of “bars” such as rice bar, baked potato bar, breakfast bar, wrap lunch and nacho bar so that everyone can be happy, from the five year old that prefers nothing touch, to the senior who just wants to pile everything on! It is a great way also to let your children choose what they would like, the way that they like it. It also helps us with cutting down on food waste. We try hard within the parameters of our nutrition rules, to let each child take what they will eat.

Our fruit and veggie bar last year was very popular and filled each day with lots of great fruits and vegetables, hard boiled eggs, yogurt and cottage cheese. We had a rainbow of colors every day! This year we will be offering more salad options such as a quinoa salad. Our kale chips last year were quite popular!

There are some changes that we wanted to share with you also. We are not able to get good quality chocolate milk, so we will be offering a yummy, nutrient dense dessert once a week instead. We also will be making more snack items from scratch this year, full of really good ingredients.

This fall we are hoping at some point to be able to purchase bulk quantities of tomatoes and winter squash to process and freeze for recipes during the school year. To be able to do this, we need VOLUNTEERS!!! It really is a lot of fun when you can share in the processing! If any families, young or old would like to help us in this way, please let us know and we will keep you in the loop as to when we will be processing.

We strongly encourage families to fill out our free/reduced price application. It is completely discreet and helps not only your family, but our school in many ways. Many grants that we could apply for are only available to us if we have a high f/r percentage.

Thank you all for supporting our program, which allows us to serve better food!

Sincerely ~ Julie Holbrook