Lengthy-time native Lindsie Feldner brings wholesome, sustainable, scrumptious meals choices to Ophir College and Lone Peak Excessive College—the scholars like it
By Julia Barton DIGITAL PRODUCER
BIG SKY—Lindsie Feldner, the meals service supervisor on the Large Sky College District, was shocked within the lunchroom on Oct. 10 with the Montana Skilled Instructing Foundations’ John Morrison and Cathy Wright Wholesome Montana Youngsters Award.
Feldner was amongst eight nominees for the award, which serves to acknowledge a Montana educator for revolutionary methods that improve scholar well being.
“I’m simply so grateful that it was a lunch program that was acknowledged,” Feldner mentioned. “I hope it’s helpful to different lunch packages on the market they usually see that the work they’re doing is efficacious.”
Throughout her five-year tenure, Feldner has labored exhausting to emphasise entire meals cooking practices and sourcing produce from throughout the state. She defined that domestically sourced and selfmade meals will not be solely extra nutritious, however tastes higher.
The numbers recommend that Large Sky college students agree. When Feldner began this system, roughly 20% of scholars bought lunches from the cafeteria; now, it’s 80%.
“It’s good for everyone to get acknowledged for the exhausting work that they do, no matter their place in our college,” mentioned BSSD Superintendent Dustin Shipman. “She does lots, her impacts have been lots.”
Feldner was nominated for the award final yr by BSSD colleagues Dr. Kate Eisele and Vanessa Wilson, and mentioned that sufficient time had handed since her nomination that she assumed the award had already been given out to another person. When she obtained the award, she was honored and shocked.
Current lunch favorites amongst college students embrace hen pesto pasta, grilled hen gyros and Thai Buddha bowls. Feldner makes meals which have varied worldly origins and he or she has gained sufficient belief along with her lunches that college students are open to increasing their palettes. A part of this course of comes from involving college students on each degree of meals manufacturing, from ideating recipes and serving to to prepare dinner, to serving their friends and doing dishes.
“That is their program,” Feldner mentioned in regards to the college students. “Basically, it’s solely profitable in the event that they eat it.”
Scholar lunch helpers get a free lunch, which allowed extra children to attempt Feldner’s meals and finally inspired them to maintain coming again, contributing to this system’s regular progress.
This system’s success goes past the meals that’s served on the lunch tray. By making extra meals from scratch and utilizing domestically sourced substances, Feldner has minimize down on packaging waste, carbon emissions from meals transportation and total meals prices. This system additionally makes use of composting to sustainably get rid of waste.
The price range for lunches is tight, Feldner defined, as the varsity receives little funding from the US Division of Agriculture to subsidize lunch prices. As such, Feldner’s efforts in securing grants from native organizations have been a critical consider this system’s success.
Feldner holds a level in diet and brings experiences from a protracted historical past of meals service in Large Sky to the BSSD cafeteria. She began the domestically famend Wrap Shack and ran the restaurant for seven years earlier than promoting it, has labored as a personal chef, ran a industrial kitchen and supplies catering providers.
“I feel cooking is sort of a misplaced artwork and I’m attempting to convey it again,” Feldner mentioned. “It’s one thing that each scholar ought to have going with them out into the large world. It is going to assist them to reside extra economically and have expertise to prepare dinner for themselves. In so some ways it’s gonna profit them of their futures.”
A program that can be returning this yr after a hiatus throughout COVID-19 is household cooking night time, the place Feldner invitations college students and their households into the kitchen to be taught to make meals along with recent, seasonal substances.
