We have gone completely insane!
I have no problem with giving parents tours of the food services tax payers fund, but to segregate those tours based on ethnicity is sheer madness—there is apparently no attempt to assimilate immigrants in cities being taken over by assorted refugee/immigrant groups! Just like the ‘culturally appropriate’ day care centers we pay for, stunts like this one only seek to further divide people.
And, let me ask you? If while you were in school, or when you had kids in school, didn’t you just bring (or send) a brown bag lunch from home if you, or your kid, didn’t like what was on the school lunch menu. Is that forbidden now? LOL! I detect Michelle Obama and the food fascists lurking somewhere behind all this.
Here is the story that has me steaming this morning, from the Minneapolis Star Tribune (we assure you that we don’t serve pork in our school system!):
School was out, but for the Somali families touring the St. Paul school’s central kitchen on a recent Friday, it was a time to learn — and to ask important questions.
Mothers went past gleaming kettles and walk-in ovens, and then stopped at a photo display of what looked like pork products, consumption of which is forbidden in the Muslim world.
Questions flew, among them: How could pepperoni be anything but pork? But after being assured that it was chicken or turkey, and that, in fact, St. Paul’s menus were entirely pork-free, the women, satisfied, joined a line serving a school lunch for dinner.
Everyday life can get complicated in a district where students speak more than 100 languages and dialects. Lunch preparation can be a source of mystery, too, for new immigrants, and to ease concerns the district has begun hosting kitchen visits for its Somali, Karen, Hmong and Latino parent groups.
St. Paul’s nutrition services budget is $24.9 million annually, with $21 million covered through federal reimbursement. Last week, Jean Ronnei, the district’s nutrition services director, acknowledged that to cover costs and remain self-sufficient, with no local tax contribution, you need customers — like any restaurant. But that’s not the reason for the outreach efforts, she said.
“We want to make sure our families are happy,” Ronnei said.
We promise! No pork served here!
After receiving cookie samples, the guests moved on to the display of pork lookalike products, and at the very front, asking questions of nutrition specialist Tessa Acker, was Basro Mohamud, the mother of a Cherokee Heights second-grader.
One day, Mohamud said, her son, Hamza Abdiwhab, 10, told her that he’d been given a ham sandwich at school. He assured her he was careful to remove the ham, but she didn’t want him to eat the bread, either. Since then, she has told him: “Just eat the fruit.”
Acker explained that what appeared to be ham stacked in a sandwich actually was smoked turkey. But Mohamud pressed on. What about the hot dog casing? she said. Eventually, she was put at ease, and for Hamza, that could be good news.
Asked if her son might now be eating corn dogs, she replied: “Next week.”
I wonder, when will goat meat follow in St. Paul’s corn dogs?