MOSES LAKE, Wash. — To be honest, the original challenge presented to the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center culinary class was tough enough. Then it got even tougher.
The challenge came from the Washington State Potato Commission, which wanted some recipes—choices for moms and dads who needed to make dinner, want something quick and easy and healthy, but don’t want to cook the same old thing. That was tricky. But over the summer the challenge morphed into something even trickier.
The class is still tasked with creating potato recipes, but now they’re for school lunchrooms. Shawn Jensen and Taylor Freeman, the class’s representatives on the CB Tech leadership council, laid out the new recipe criteria.
The recipes must fit within the dietary guidelines for school lunches, Jensen said. “They’re making lunch for a thousand kids every day,” Freeman said, so it has to be something easy to prepare for mass quantities of kids.
One idea that surfaced already was using new technology, which produces crunchy french fires with a fraction of the oil. But the technology is still expensive, Shawn said, so schools might not be able to afford it. So the culinary class realized that any recipe had to be affordable.
Then there’s the whole salad bar thing. A lot of schools have salad bars, and the commission is asking for potato dishes that will taste good when they’re cold, Freeman said—hopefully something other than potato salad. “So far that”s a challenge in itself,” she said. That might even be the biggest challenge, she said.
Then again, maybe not—the successful recipes have to be something kids will eat, Jensen said. In fact, the recipes will be put to the test Dec. 10, when kids will come to CB Tech for a potato promotion day. Taste-testing the potato recipes will be among the activities.
There are no recipes yet. “We’re still at the paper stage,” Freeman said.
“We have a lot of ideas,” Jensen said. And with all the great minds in the class, he said, he’s convinced they’ll come up with even more. Everything on the tentative menu will have to be tested, he said, since the culinary class has learned that a recipe can look good on paper and not work out on the plate.
The problem has been finding time to work on the project. “We’re very busy next week,” Freeman said, with catering jobs and working out a menu for the school’s café. They’re considering turning the café into a specialty market, said CB Tech director Christine Armstrong. The class also is preparing the food for the school’s annual open house next week, Armstrong said.
All CB Tech classes are working on projects for the potato promotion day, although the details have yet to be worked out. Classes will work on potato games, providing potato nutrition information, and perhaps a potato photo booth, Armstrong said.
Source: Columbia Basin Herald