JACKIE FITZHENRY-RUSSELL, SENIOR FOOD SERVICE, HARBOR HIGH, Santa Cruz, CA

Origin: Reno, Nevada

Jackie is a veteran cook who manned the stoves at the Santa Cruz icon, The Coconut Grove, before coming to school food service. “I wasn’t seeing my kids at home. That job was just too much,” she says. She volunteered in the kitchen at her kids’ school and loved it.

Then she got hired, and paid too, for something she loved.
Not so long ago, Jackie and her colleagues had to cook their hearts out to keep their jobs. The district was talking about bringing in Oakland-based Revolution Foods, an outside school food service contractor, to take over the food service program, and the staff was going to be reduced. The Santa Cruz School Food Service staff was going to give it a good fight, not only to try to keep their jobs, but to show the community out of pride just what they could do on their own.

Jackie told us, “Gina, our supervisor said to us, ‘We can do this. I did it with my mom.’”

Gina Navoroli’s mom had been a food service manager in the nearby Socal High School, and  Gina said her mom cooked everything from scratch there, spaghetti, homemade soups, everything.

Jackie continued, “We knew we could do it right here. We were saving our jobs, showing we could cook right here. I’m glad we pulled it off,” she laughs, smiling.

The district decided to keep the food service staff at work, and discontinued discussion about the outside contractor.

Jackie says there was a time she was embarrassed to be called a lunch lady. Not now.

”I’m not afraid to tell people I’m a lunch lady. I’m proud of what we do and nothing can replace the pride and empowerment our lunch ladies have.”

When we asked her what her favorite tool was, she quickly said, “The lunch lady crack brush that I invented.” When she saw the look on our faces, she said pulled us over to a glassed in service counter that opened onto the cafeteria. “Come here, and take a look. I’ll show you what I mean.”

She took a wooden handled soft paintbrush that was stored in a tool bucket and set upon sweeping out the thin crack between the metal and the glass of a prepared food display case for school lunch. Sure enough, out came tiny crumbs. She told us that she liked everything to be clean, really clean, and those cracks with the tiny crumbs were driving her crazy until she found a way to get rid of them to her satisfaction.

That’s the way Jackie tackles everything, from fighting back with real cooking to inventing the tools to get the cracks clean. Taking no for an answer is not in her vocabulary.

Favorite Tool: “Lunch Lady Crack Brush”

CHRISTINA SANTOS, CENTRAL KITCHEN/HARBOR HIGH, Santa Cruz, CA

Origin: Michoacán, Mexico

Christina Santos, who came to the United States when she was 14, is responsible for, among other things, cooking the black beans and pinto beans that appear on the school lunch menus of the Santa Cruz schools. When we asked the Harbor High Kitchen Lead, Gina Navarolli, if they cooked dried beans from scratch, Gina said immediately, “Talk to Christina, she’s the one.”

She took us to meet the shy, quiet woman who was taking a break in Gina’s small office.

“I cook here like I cook at home. It’s a better taste for the kids. I cook the beans with onions, and salt when I start. A lot of the kids are like me, they always have beans at home. The kids like to have them here.”

On Taco Bar lunch days at the schools, Christina cooks about 60 pounds of dry beans, using up to six of the kitchen’s big pots, making about 200 servings of beans per pot. Cooking beans from scratch is cheaper and more flavorful than using canned beans, and the cooks can control the ingredients, which is why we’re always interested in seeing school districts take this approach.

“I love the big pots!” Christina says, smiling, and showing us how the pots could fit on the stove tops.

We wanted to know what else besides beans Christina cooked at home. “I cook rice, chicken, and vegetables. They love the chile relleño and rice – white rice or Mexican rice, they like both.”

How about nopales we asked? Her face lit up. “Nopales, oh yes, I love them. Nopales salad with cilantro, onions, tomatoes, green chilies, mostly Serrano. And a little torta, a sandwich with shrimp, nopales and red sauce.”

When we asked if she thought they might serve nopales salad for lunch at schools in Santa Cruz,  she laughed and said she didn’t think so, not yet anyway. We told her about school districts in Yolo County that were thinking of putting it on the menu. Pictured left is a Nopales Salad (recipe below) we’ve made as a part of professional development in many of Yolo County’s five school districts.

Favorite tool: A nice knife

Cactus Salad with Radishes (Ensalada de Nopales)
This is a salad we developed for school lunch professional trainings. Either canned or fresh nopales can be used, but each has a different flavor.

3 cups diced nopales, preferably fresh, or canned*
½ cup white onion, minced
½ cup diced radishes
1 teaspoon fresh oregano or ½ teaspoon dried
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon Kosher or sea salt
½ cup finely chopped cilantro leaves
1 Serrano chile, minced, with seeds
Juice of one lime
½ cup crumbled Queso Fresco (fresh Mexican cheese)

If using canned nopales, drain and rinse well prior to using and place in a bowl. Add the onion, radishes, oregano, olive oil, salt, cilantro, chile, and lime juice. Mix well and top with the queso fresco.

Serve as a side dish with beef, pork, or chicken, or with rice and beans.
* If using fresh cactus pads, they must first be cleaned. Using a knife, scrape off the spines, including the dark bases that look like black dots. You can purchase these at local farmers markets, or sometimes through your produce distributor.

Cut off the edges of the cactus pads, then cut them into 1/3 inch wide strips and cut the strips into pieces about 3” in length.  Place those strips in a saucepan of boiling water with 1 teaspoon salt and 1 clove peeled garlic.

Reduce heat to low and simmer until tender and dark green, about 15 minutes. Drain the strips in a colander,  rinse with cold water to remove any mucilaginous substance,  then pat dry.

Serves 4 to 6

GINA NAVOROLI, CENTRAL KITCHEN/HARBOR HIGH FOOD SERVICE LEAD, Santa Cruz, CA

Origin: Santa Cruz

Gina, a tall, lanky woman with an infectious laugh and curly black hair, is a third generation native of Santa Cruz, and a third generation Italian– and her children are the fourth generation. Gina, like her mother and grandmother before her, also married an Italian. Gina and her family grew up eating the artichokes and other Italian vegetables that have long been grown in the sandy, rolling hills of nearby Watsonville. “We ate artichokes every way – frittatas, fried –all kinds of ways.” We asked what else were family favorites, and she replied, “Well, my dad was a hunter – he worked for the Cascade Lumber Company, and we ate a lot of deer.” And of course pasta, she added.

“I get to make pasta here, too, and it’s not that packaged stuff anymore. We make it from scratch. I’m really proud of what we do. I do Chow Mein – we get a lot of veggies from Second  Harvest – I use spaghetti noodles for that -and we make our own pork carnitas from scratch, and cook our own beans too.”

Gina intimates she might have cooking and food service in her blood. “My mom was the Food Service Manger at Soquel High School, and she made everything from scratch there –homemade soups, spaghetti, everything.”

As we talked with Gina in the kitchen we watched as one of the employees filled paper serving boats with straight for the oven (photo left), honest to goodness real Yukon Gold potatoes. Gina saw us ogling them and said, “Do you want to taste them? I cut the potatoes myself this morning.” Smooth and buttery, with the skin on, and just the right amount of salt and pepper, and maybe a dash of paprika, they were delicious. Later they’d be served to the students with a barbeque-sauced bone –in, real chicken breast.

“And we do real potatoes for breakfast too. And we cook the eggs – they’re liquid – add a little cheese. They’re liquid eggs, and we just add a little milk, salt and pepper. They fluff up when they steam,” Gina says.

“Everybody who cooks here really puts their heart into it, and tries to make it perfect. We care – about everything we make here. And we have fun. You gotta have fun.”

In addition to the Barbeque Chicken and Potato entrée, Gina showed us an array of different pizzas that were being cut into slices. “We do all kinds of different pizzas here – Barbequed Chicken, Hawaiian, and a jalapeno one.” She explained that they now have a self-proofing whole-wheat dough they use for the crust.

“And,” Gina smiles, as if saving the best for last, “we make our own homemade croutons from scratch, too.” Now, that is the first time we’d heard about homemade croutons, and although we didn’t get to taste them, they looked like the sort of rustic, slightly irregular shape and crunchy golden brown you’d find on a Caesar Salad at a top-end restaurant.

Now she shared a secret ingredient with us, having a hard time concealing her delight with what she was going to reveal. “We use sweet potatoes in our cheese sauce. We make it from scratch pureeing the cubed, cooked sweet potatoes with a little milk, then adding some shredded cheddar.”  Now, that is one creative way to get orange vegetables into the school lunch.

But everything about Gina and the kitchen she runs is creative and geared toward producing good food that kids love and eat. Willingly Gina shows us a Chinese takeout carton. “Now this is what I serve our Chow Mein in, and the kids just love. If I just put it out plain, they don’t take as much. It’s amazing what presentation can do.”

Favorite tool: A good knife

Santa Cruz, California

Santa Cruz, a city of about 60,000, home to the University of California Santa Cruz campus, a surfer’s paradise, and a long time tourist destination, is tucked into the shoreline of the northern tip of Monterey Bay, and reaches back into the redwood forest stretching behind, just an over- mountain drive from Silicon Valley to the east.

The Franciscan fathers founded the Santa Cruz mission here in 1791, which like other missions, was part of the network of roads that became known as El Camino Real, The King’s Highway. Until the California Gold Rush, Santa Cruz was relatively bucolic, but in the last half of the 19^th century, when California became first a United States territory and then a state, industry arrived. Among the earliest were timbering, limestone mining, commercial agriculture, and commercial fishing.  When it became apparent the forests would not last the predicted 200 years, these were quickly followed by the tourism industry.

By the late 1800s postcards and brochures were touting Santa Cruz as a top recreation destination. A casino was built, which was quite an attraction before it burned down in 1904. To replace it, the now-famous Santa Cruz Boardwalk and Coconut Grove Ballroom were constructed, and both still draw thousands of visitors every year, complementing the water sports that the city is known for, especially surfing. There are numerous renowned surf breaks along the Santa Cruz coastline, such as Steamer Lane, Mitchell’s Cove, and Natural Bridges that attract locals and visitors alike.

In fact, Santa Cruz’ nickname was ‘Surf City’ for years, but in 2004, the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau filed four patent applications for ‘Surf City USA’ and in 2006, three of the patents were granted. Nevertheless, Santa Cruz still calls itself Surf City.

JAMIE SMITH, MANAGER OF FOOD SERVICES, SANTA CRUZ CITY SCHOOLS, SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA

Jamie Smith is one of a new breed of school food service directors who is a professionally trained chef, in his case training at the acclaimed French Culinary Institute in New York, where his instructors included such luminaries as Jacques Pepin and Jacques Torres.

In addition to being professionally trained, Jamie cut his culinary teeth in some of the nation’s top restaurants from Union Square Café in New York, to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in San Francisco. He opened the Left Bank at Santana Row, San Jose, to rave reviews. Next, he opened his own restaurant, Sestri, in Santa Cruz, which became an instant hit. To all these restaurants he brought his ethos of searching out and preparing the very best of fresh, local, in-season ingredients.

He brought that same creed to the University of California Santa Cruz when he became the Chef de Cuisine and Executive Sous Chef there. In two years, he increased the purchase of fresh, local produce from $17,000.00 to nearly $250,000.00 per year and showed what could be done by cooking from scratch with local products.

A little over 4 years ago, in 2009, he accepted a stiff challenge, one that would take him far from the fine dining positions of his past:  Senior Manager Food Services and Nutrition for Santa Cruz City Schools District. He brought his culinary and management skills to school lunch, and most importantly, his determination to bring to the school lunch program the same quality of locally-grown foods, including great baby greens for salad, to the school lunch program that he has valued throughout his career.

The school lunch program would be renamed ‘Surf City Café’, a nod to the city’s nickname. Quickly he began to forge partnerships with local farms, including the famous Gizdich apples from nearby Watsonville. “The scent of those apples fills up the kitchen,” he says.  Alba, the Monterey County aggregator which sources from small farmers, supplies a lot of the local product Jamie buys from and he also works with Taylor Farms, one of the largest produce grower- shippers in the United States to supply vegetables and fruits for his after-school cooking classes.

Harbor High School students enrolled in the Culinary Food Service Assistant class that Jamie developed get credits for working in the kitchen, and Jamie gets extra labor. Chocolate milk, corn dogs, and chicken nuggets were among the first items to go. “Hey, I don’t even know how to order chicken nuggets,” he told us, laughing, but he does know how to order bulk Yukon Gold potatoes to quarter and bake, which he serves with barbeque-sauced bone –in, real chicken breast (pictured left).

He orders stacks of 25 pound bags of pinto beans as well (pictured left) from the USDA Commodity Program. “I’m blown away more people don’t cook with dried beans,” he shakes his head, telling us what a saving it is for this top center of the plate alternative. At our request, Jamie will blog for us about why he cooks with dried beans, the money he saves, and share with us one of his recipes.