Feeding Students from the Ground Up
When school closed abruptly on March 13, 2020 due to the coronavirus, Andrew Bernard, “Chef Andrew” to the 136 Provincetown Schools students he feeds throughout the 180-day school year, became what he calls “a one-man band,” packaging and delivering breakfast and lunch to his charges twice a week. With plans for the 2020-21 academic year up in the air through much of the summer, Bernard is prepared for a double scenario — on-site or remote learning — so he can provide the students the wholesome, diverse meals they have become accustomed to during his four-year tenure no matter what the school year looks like.
Housed in the former Provincetown High School, with an Early Learning Center across the street in what was the elementary school building, Provincetown Schools serve students from Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, Brewster, Harwich and Chatham in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. A 13-bed garden on school grounds has enhanced the chef‘s ability to prepare fresh, healthy food for the student body, as well as the students’ understanding about where their food comes from. Ennie McDonald (“Farmer Ennie”), who works for Sustainable CAPE, built the raised beds with the help of AmeriCorps and planted them at the end of June 2018. “I planted everything in the rain,” she says, then tended the garden through the summer so the students and chef would return to a lush bounty.
Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Bernard had worked for Hilton Hotels, and in restaurants in Peru and Florida but did not really like what he describes as the “rough environment” of that world. Before moving to Provincetown in 2016, he lived in Billerica, Massachusetts, and worked in food preperation for Wegman’s. When his partner got a job teaching third grade at Provincetown, Bernard was hired as a contractor. His position became permanent after he had been in the kitchen for just a few weeks. Initially, Bernard worked with two sisters who had been running the kitchen together for roughly 30 years, dating back to when they were Provincetown High School students. They retired two years after he joined, but the three remain close. “It’s been a dream come true,” he says of his position.
Like Bernard, McDonald says, “It’s like a dream job for me. My goal is to get kids to eat vegetables.” In addition to maintaining the garden, she spends time in the classroom through Sustainable CAPE’s Farmer-in-the-School program. During the 2018-19 school year and the first half of the 2019-20 year, she rotated through classrooms according to teachers’ lesson plans, spending roughly a day per week in school. A certified holistic health coach, she teaches the kids about food security, sustainability and other keys to the core curriculum. She also talks to them about how and what to plant.
“When children grow something, they’re more eager to try it,” explains the mother of a three-year-old, and describes the joy she feels watching a child light up when tasting a new garden vegetable for the first time. “They see how different the vegetables taste than what they get in the store.” Generally, McDonald likes to plant a variety of vegetables so students can see how different things grow. In the last two years the garden has produced garlic, potatoes, carrots, beets, beans, squash, peas, kale, tomatoes and basil. During the summer of 2020, McDonald planted a more limited selection made up mostly of potatoes and root vegetables which keep well in case of another coronavirus-related school closure. But, she says optimistically, “When kids get back, there will be food that grew in the garden.”
Bernard is the first to admit that his cafeteria menu has been developing by trial and error. He discovered, for example, that the students don’t really like soup, something he loves to make. He recalls an apple-and-cheddar-cheese soup he made during the first year as a particular disaster. He rarely makes soup now, save for the occasional tomato variety when it accompanies grilled cheese sandwiches.
The chef serves the same food to the pre-K children as he does the upper school students, occasionally making small allowances for the youngest palates. Every day for lunch he offers one hot meal and six sandwich options (the same six — peanut or sunflower seed butter, egg salad, tuna salad, ham, grilled cheese). His preference is to have as many students as he can get to eat the hot meal. “It’s a funny game we play,” he says, “hot lunch vs. sandwich.” Bernard creates a new menu every month, and for the past two years has been able to incorporate fresh vegetables from Farmer Ennie’s garden. When they are at school together, McDonald harvests for Bernard, sometimes passing him unexpected ingredients to slip a little extra nutrition into menu items — like purslane, carrot tops or kale in his pesto.
A sample menu for one week in the beginning of the school year features “surprise” breakfast pastry, granola and yogurt, egg and cheese sandwich on a biscuit, strawberry overnight oats and cereal with milk for breakfast; lasagna with Caesar salad and garlic bread, burrito with chips and salsa, pork lo mein with vegetables and spring roll, popcorn chicken with mashed potatoes and corn, and pizza for lunch. Every year at Thanksgiving, the school holds a Harvest Feast that in recent years has begun to incorporate the Wampanoag perspective. Provincetown Schools is an International Baccalaureate World School with a diverse population. Serving a culturally varied menu not only fits in with the school’s philosophy and curriculum, it makes for more interesting meals, even if all of the students don’t always see it that way.
Robert Enos II, whose twin son and daughter are seventh graders at the school (his older daughter graduated last year), is CEO of J&E Fruit and Produce Inc. in Provincetown, which has been providing fresh fruits and vegetables to the lower Cape for roughly 70 years. “It certainly wasn’t like that when I was growing up,” says the Provincetown alum of school food. “Andrew has really stepped it up with fresh ingredients, ethnic foods, trying to get kids to experience foods from different cultures. Have they liked it all?,” he asks, thinking of his children. “No, but that’s ok. That’s the experience.” Ham and pineapple pizza may have been one of those near misses. Bernard recounts that the first time he made it students came to him crying. They didn’t know what to make of this strange combination on one of their favorite foods. But after they tried it, he says they “begged for forgiveness.”
Given the family business, Enos says he and his wife have always insisted that their children eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, but until the Farmer-in-the-School program started, “As far as growing food, [our kids] were probably on the same page as others,” which is to say, not very knowledgeable. He says the younger two, especially, are excited when the first green shoots begin to emerge from the little pots they bring home from school that they planted with their classmates. “I couldn’t say enough about that experience and that exposure,” he says.
“The whole program is adapting through coronavirus,” says McDonald. Last spring, she held some video classes, teaching students how to plant carrots. Like so many parents trying to work from home, she says doing it with a then-two-year-old presented some challenges. “It’s been interesting for everyone how we work in these times,” she adds. “We did our best with what we had. I keep telling myself it’s temporary. It won’t last forever.”
Bernard is fired up to be able to meet the new school year with all of the creativity and joy he felt lagging during some of the latter months of last year. Though he is not a classroom teacher, he thrives on seeing students in the cafeteria every day. “I know every single child in the school and I love it,” he says. “They bring so much into my life.” When school closed, he missed the daily contact. And everything shut down so abruptly that there was no time to plan how to continue the regular meal program. The creative chef was forced, instead, to deliver pre-packaged meals to students. The pain of serving food that didn’t live up to his standards is still evident in his voice.
This year, Bernard says, “I want to give [the students] that love coming out of the kitchen again. I want to bring soul back into their lives. [Tell them,] ‘We love you. We care for you.’” And he has had ample time to plan for both in-school and remote scenarios. If school has to be held remotely for any part of the academic year, Bernard is confident that he can cook the fresh, inventive menus he serves in school and package them for families to pick up.
“It’s an interesting time we’re living in and we’re trying to make it work,” he says. “If you empathize with the children and show them we’re going through the same thing, that’s the best we can do right now.”
