By Zhiyuan Ma, Staff Writer
The bell rings, signaling the end of the period and the beginning of lunch. Students scramble out of classrooms and rush to be the first ones to get school lunch. Conspicuous lines begin to form in front of the red food carts and cafeteria as friends join each other. After students receive their lunch, they hasten to get to their usual lunch spots and begin gnawing away at the food.
In the kitchen, about an hour before lunch one Friday, I and one of the editors saw one of the cafeteria staff, which some might recognize as the person operating the food cart on the 200s classroom side of the campus, wrapping a slice of pizza with parchment paper and aluminum foil. (Nutritional services assistant lead Raghda remarked that, unsurprisingly, pizza is one of the most popular food items.) Trays and trays of nachos, ready to serve, cover the countertops. We also spotted two trays of what looked like chocolate chip cookies dough.
A small office is tucked away, not immediately noticeable behind all the equipment. In one of the cupboards there lies the menu: a white binder filled with sheets and sheets of paper, each describing a certain dish, from spicy chicken salad to pepperoni stuffed sandwich. Specific preparation instructions are listed along with the source of the ingredients and the nutritional values. Every high school in the district has the same book, though each might serve different items. This book is the beginning of a school lunch meal.
The next step for the cafeteria staff is to place an order for new ingredients from distributor Gold Star Foods before Friday. Mills’ nutritional services lead Sianea Langi explained, “We don’t [order from other companies such as Costco or Cisco] because the regulations for the nutrition doesn’t meet what they have.” The ingredients are then delivered from the Gold Star warehouse at Dixon, California near Sacramento. It arrives at Mills on Tuesday.
Every day, Langi begins work at five in the morning. Because of regulations from the government, every food item ordered is precooked. Some food items only need to be heated up. For hot foods such as pasta, the process is more complicated. “The burgers are already ready, [they’re] patties. Even the chicken [is precooked]. So all we do is cook it for ten minutes.” Langi said, “…Except if we have to make pasta…we cook the meat. So same thing, the meat is precooked. And then we prepare, we put seasoning and then we have to cook the pasta and mix it with the sauce.”
Before the pandemic, there would be a monthly menu listing what dishes would be served each day. Now, ingredients that the cafeteria staff want to order might be unavailable, requiring them to improvise. “We have to go with what we have, what we get,” Raghda said. Langi elaborated, “Maybe burger doesn’t come, they are out of burgers. So, we have to [substitute] it with chicken burger, make more of the chicken burger.”
Even though people argue that lunch is unappetizing, the cafeteria staff still tries their best to make the food appealing. “We think about our own kids. You are like our own kids…if they don’t like [the food], [you won’t like it],” Raghda said. Langi continued, “Because the kids, they have eyes for the food.”
