National School Breakfast Week is here! The theme this year is ‘Surf’s Up with School Breakfast’. The front of your breakfast production record book has the logo for this year’s SNA theme. Page 10 of the record book are suggestions for menus, serving line and cafeteria decorations and other ideas to incorporate excitement during the week. Many schools take this opportunity to invite parents to eat breakfast with their students, featuring ‘Muffins with Mom’ and ‘Donuts with Dad’ days. To find more resources to support your National School Breakfast Week, check out the School Nutrition Association page here: National School Breakfast Week - School Nutrition Association
In North Dakota, you served over 5 MILLION breakfasts during the past school year. Think about how much North Dakota wheat went into the cereal, toast, and pastries, the gallons of North Dakota milk, North Dakota potatoes and other commodities needed to make 5 million school breakfasts! We hope you have fun hosting this event for your school. We appreciate seeing all the fun so please send us your photos and share your social media posts with us.
Message from USDA for National School Breakfast Week:
Join us for a webinar on March 12 at 1 PM CST, where we will share information about the Summer Food Service Program and the Summer EBT program and how schools can help keep kids fed over the summer when school is not in session.
Join on your computer, mobile app or room device
We are happy to provide, upon request, certificates for 10 years of service and for every 5-year interval after that. We also provide awards upon retirement at the request of the school district.
These are quality certificates of appreciation signed by our Director Linda Schloer and NDDPI Superintendent Kirsten Baesler.
If you would like years of service certificates for eligible school foodservice employees, please complete the Years of Service Request form and return it to our office either by e-mail to vlsilva@nd.gov or fax (328-9566) no later than Friday, April 19, 2024. Please check your staff list now and submit your requests as soon as possible to ensure early delivery.
Certificates will be mailed out no later than Thursday, April 25th. Please check the certificates and immediately notify our office if there are any discrepancies. It is suggested that the certificates be presented to your foodservice personnel on School Lunch Hero Day, Friday, May 3, 2024, or during School Nutrition Employee Week, April 29-May 3, 2024.
Should you have questions about the Years of Service Awards, please call Victoria Silva at 328-2294 or toll-free at 1-888-338-3663.
More ways to honor your staff during the School Nutrition Employee Week (April 29 - May 3) can be found on the School Nutrition Association (SNA) website at https://schoolnutrition.org/event/2024-school-lunch-hero-day/
What an “egg-cellent” March!
March is an exciting time, lots of ways to celebrate this month and even more ways to build your Farm to School program.
March is celebrating poultry, and there are tons of ways to enjoy it. Whether it’s a chicken breast recipe or scrambled eggs, you can’t go wrong. Can you say “winner, winner, chicken dinner!”
Check out this link for more recipes and information about poultry. You can even feature recipes from the USDA Foods Cookbook from Tara Koster.
The Lunch Box | Butter Chicken K-5
The other bird in the poultry family is turkeys. Did you know North Dakota’s nine turkey producers raise nearly 1 million turkeys annually in the southeastern part of the state? Turkey processing centers exist in neighboring South Dakota and Minnesota.
National Agriculture Week (March 17-23) is a week-long celebration in March dedicated to acknowledging and honoring the people who are producing our food. This is a time for education, appreciation and engagement with the ag community and a chance to explore the sector's history and future. We hope you take the opportunity to showcase Ag in your cafeteria.
Local Beef Survey Winner!
The winner of the basket is Terri Morgel of Bowbells Public School. I will contact you soon regarding delivery of your goody's basket. Thank you for those who completed the “Beef in ND Schools” Survey in February.
Please join us for the North Dakota Farm to School Webinar Series, February through March
All sessions, except Session 6, will be recorded and shared later on the NDDPI Child Nutrition and Food Distribution website. All sessions will begin at 2:00 pm (Central) and last 45 minutes. Each session will have a unique registration link. The links are shareable with others you think may benefit.
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Session 4: Farm to School Brainstorm
Session 5: The Future of North Dakota Farm to School
Session 6: Office Hours with Amanda Olson
The North Dakota Department of Agriculture is seeking applicants for funding:
- Available to Teachers for Grades 1-4 to incorporate microgreen kits into their curriculum. More information can be found HERE.
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Related to Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI), to strengthen the supply chain and reduce bottlenecks to protect against disruptions. More information can be found HERE.
Beans, Beans the Challenging Subgroup
We will hear from a Guest Speaker - Julie Garden-Robinson of NDSU Extension, as she talks about the beneficial topic of beans! She will lead us through nutritional benefits of beans and provide ways to easily incorporate them into your school meals.
After this session you should be able to easily meet your legume vegetable subgroup and even get some helpful tips and tasty recipes to try at home!
This is a Microsoft Teams meeting, please use the link below to join the meeting.
Join on your computer or mobile app
Click here to join the meeting
As always, this webinar will be recorded and posted to our website (UPDATES | North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (nd.gov)) if you are unable to attend live.
Made-with-whole-grain bread can be misleading for the school nutrition program. Please read the ingredient label!
There are very few whole-grain rich bread products available at the local supermarket. We also know that one of the major fresh bread distributors has eliminated its K12 whole grain rich line, leaving school customers with only the 100% whole wheat choice as the daily bread choice to meet the 80% whole grain rich over the week.
Remember to look at the ingredient label for the sliced bread that may be used daily. The ingredient list must show that a 'whole' grain flour is first on the label (or second behind water).
While you are looking at the ingredient list on the sliced bread, check out the serving weight of a slice of bread. It takes a 28-gram slice to credit one ounce of grain equivalence in the school nutrition programs. Some of the grocery store breads are only 26-gram slices which only credit as .75 ounce of creditable grain.
Food Safety is a good topic all year around.
Initial Food Safety Certification: Every school kitchen site must have a staff person that has a certification of food safety and sanitation.
Once the initial certification has been completed, the site manager has five years to update the certification.
- The initial certification must be in the form of an 8-10 hour course and does not count toward professional development as the site manager/food service director was expected to be hired with the certification.
- The update must be at least 3 hours within a year and can be counted among the required professional development hours.
For those interested in the SERVSafe food safety certification, there are classes coming up on the east side of the state:
- Tuesday, April 16th in Fargo at the Fargo Cass Public Health Building in the Oak Conference Room. Registration form HERE.
- Tuesday, April 23rd in Grand Forks at the Grand Fork Public Health Building in the 6th Floor Conference Room. Registration form HERE.
Each class begins at 8 a.m. with a proctored exam starting at around 4 p.m. Class size is limited to 35 people and registration must be done before March 18 (Fargo) or March 25 (Grand Forks).
Procurement Pieces and Parts
If the school is receiving federal funds for the school foodservice, then the mandates of 2 CFR 200.318 apply to anything purchased with those funds.
Many schools have stopped doing small purchase procurement for milk since there was usually only one company doing milk delivery to rural areas. With the waiver approval for food distribution companies to carry fluid milk across North Dakota this past summer, schools that are purchasing more than $10,000 worth of fluid milk for school meals must do a small purchase procurement to find the distributor that will provide the school’s milk at the best price.
Remember that in a small purchase procurement, the school will identify their needs, such as the quantity of each milk type in cartons or bulk along with the quantities of other milk products that might also be required. After the needs (or specifications) are known, then at least two companies that can supply those needs must be contacted. This can be done through a formal letter process or emailing or simply calling the company to request pricing for the coming school year. Find a template for recording answers and keeping the required documentation for a small purchase (also known as informal) procurement on our website here: SNP Procurement | North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (nd.gov)
The decision on the winning vendor for a small purchase procurement must be made solely on price. If a school/school board strongly desires to support the local business supplying milk or in any other small purchase procurement, then a formal ‘Request for Proposal’ can be sent out that identifies geographic preference as one of the factors in evaluating the submitted proposals.
Please contact our office if you have any questions on the procurement process for school food in the coming year.
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Yes, hot chocolate made with real milk (Skim or 1% Chocolate milk, not powdered substitutes) can count for the milk component of your menu. The Midwest Dairy has a helpful toolkit to download on how to heat the milk, serve the milk, and market the program available here: Hot Chocolate Toolkit - Midwest Dairy
Those who have had to switch to bulk milk because of the carton shortages should give this a try to see if it increases breakfast participation.
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Each March, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics promotes National Nutrition Month. This year's theme is 'Beyond the Table'.
As School Nutrition Professionals, you nourish our Nation's youth with daily meals and nutrition education in the lunchroom. The lessons they learn will go with them Beyond the Table for years to come!
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Below are examples of wonderful nutrition education and opportunities for fruit and vegetable consumption (Thank you Velva and TGU!).
If you would like your own set of Fruit and Vegetable Produce Posters, you can download them here: Fruit and Veggie Produce Posters — DNO Produce (dnoinc.com)
The Whole Grains Council has been urging the nation to eat whole grains on the last Wednesday of March for 12 years now. They have developed graphics and social media messages, quizzes, and games along with a wide range of recipes to help everyone, including schools, celebrate the ‘Goodness of Grains’. Find the resources here: A Whole Day for Whole Grain | The Whole Grains Council
Highlighting the whole grains you are already serving such as oatmeal, French toast sticks and dinner rolls would be easy. For those more daring, a side dish of millet or amaranth pilaf goes well with just about any sandwich entrée. Adding a cold salad to the fresh produce bar made with farro or wild rice, vegetables and a Italian salad dressing can add interest there as well.
If you substitute quinoa for rice in a dish or serve a bulgur or farro salad from one of the recipes at the Whole Grains Council site, use the Exhibit A tool on page 36 and 37 of the Lunch Production Record book to calculate the grains credited to the meal pattern. Group H shows that 1 ounce of dry or ½ cup cooked barley (including farro) quinoa and bulgur will give you 1-ounce equivalent grain for the meal pattern. That’s all grades K-8 will need on any particular day while the grades 9-12 must be offered 2 ounces each day. Group H of Exhibit A does not show wild rice, millet, amaranth or the other uncommon whole grains, but you can use the same 1 ounce dry equals 1 ounce equivalent grain for menu crediting.
Whole Grain question of the day: Buckwheat is in the same plant family as:
- Wheat
- Rice
- Soybeans
- Rhubarb
Find the answer at the end of the newsletter.
Registration should be out in April for the conference. Check out the NDSNA website here: Conference (northdakotasna.com) If you are planning to go, this is the time to talk with your supervisor/business manager to round up transportation, conference fees and hotel rooms.
You just changed your calendar over to 2024, now it's time to pencil in the NDDPI Child Nutrition & Food Distribution Back To School Workshop!
- Fargo - July 30 OR 31
- Bismarck - August 6 OR 7
- Minot - August 8
An agenda will be released with our registration (in April) to assist with planning who attends the Back To School Workshop.
The Food Buying Guide (found here: Food Buying Guide (usda.gov)) is the most valuable resource that a menu planner can have in their toolkit for making sure that the food items on the menu meet the meal pattern requirements.
New foods are available in the FBG! New additions consist of USDA Foods frozen mixed vegetables and a variety of meat items including 11-, 43-, and 48-ounce pouched tuna; boneless, skinless chicken thighs; ground mutton, mutton shoulder chops and stew meat; catfish fillets; and USDA Foods canned pork. Stay tuned for additional yield data releases.
New tools include an ‘Ounces to Pounds Calculator’ and an interactive flow chart on how to use the preparation yield factor in the Recipe Analysis workbook.
USDA has also Updated the Child Nutrition Labeling Manual – Find it here: Child Nutrition Labeling Manual (azureedge.us)
All school kitchens must be using commercially made entrees with a Child Nutrition (CN) label or Product Formulation Statement (PFS). The school kitchen does not know how much meat was used in the manufacturer’s recipe for food items like sausage, deli meats, crispitos, and chicken nuggets. Having the CN label or PFS available is the only way that the school kitchen can use the above items and anything else that is brought in as a heat-and-eat or ready-to-eat item.
Some commercially made entrees may contain grains and vegetables too. The updated Child Nutrition Labeling Manual is an educational tool to understand how all of these food components are calculated for the manufacturer’s product. The interesting facts contained in the update relate to who, what, where, why and how of CN Labels. Remember, reading this update will earn professional development.
Whole Grain Question of the Day Answer:
Buckwheat is a pseudograin which means it is not a member of a cereal grain family but is generally categorized as a grain since it is similar nutritionally and is used in culinary applications the same as any cereal grain. Even though its name implies it is a relative of wheat, the answer to the question is D: Rhubarb! Both buckwheat and Rhubarb are members of the Polygonaceae family of flowering plants.
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