You won’t find peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white bread in this kitchen.
What you will find are adjectives. Lovely, unforgettable, nutritious, choice, happy. Luscious, unsurpassed, napkin, colorful, heavenly. These are a few of the adjectives hanging above the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School kitchen, written by students to describe their lunch experiences.
“Today we’re having what you smell,” school chef Christina Napolitan said, taking from the oven a fragrant pan of freshly roasted potatoes from Morning Glory Farm garnished with herbs grown by the students.
Wednesdays are sandwich days at the charter school, and on this day students had a choice of ham and cheese, chicken salad or a veggie burger with cheese. The roasted potatoes were offered as a side. Dessert was pineapple.
For the past 15 years Chef Napolitan has crafted an unforgettable lunch program that students eat with enthusiasm. But this week was her last — she is planning a career change — and she paused between busy prep work and long lines of happy eaters to share the memories.
“In 15 years I’ve never been able to figure out how to make a canned pea taste good. I give up, just couldn’t do it,” she said. “What I had in mind was serving the kids food as fresh as possible and as freshly prepared as possible. So that they got used to those kinds of flavors.
“If all you’ve ever eaten is a chicken nugget and a tater tot, then when somebody serves you baked herb chicken with brown rice and black beans the flavors are going to be stronger to you. But after awhile, that’s what you’re going to like to eat,” she said.
She admits to a few tricks. Pasta days are Mondays and Ms. Napolitan likes to make a homemade pesto with sunflower seeds. When she tosses the pasta she adds Island-grown vegetables to the toss.
“All of the sudden you might realize, gee, I really do like broccoli or carrots are tasty,” she said. “That was my vision to have kids happy to eat something we would be happy to eat.”
Ms. Napolitan began cooking as a parent volunteer when the charter school first opened 15 years ago. But she is not your average school cook. She trained at the French culinary school Le Cordon Bleu and studied under Marcella Hazan in Venice and Bologna. When she moved to the Vineyard many years ago, she worked at the Greek restaurant Helio’s, and also the Black Dog. She designed the kitchen at the Ritz Café and had a small restaurant at the Gay Head Cliffs.
Her worldly experience is reflected in the lunch menu and her students rarely complain.
“We do have a super foody bunch of kids,” she said. “I have days when people are very excited because I have a Japanese salad with tofu and seaweed which they recognize, not only the tofu but what kind of seaweed it is.”
Cooking from scratch with fresh ingredients costs more. The school charges $3.75 a day per lunch; she said about 70 per cent of students choose to buy lunch. She uses produce purchased through the Island Grown Schools network.
One thing she would like to see in the schools is more access to local seafood.
“I think that’s something that’s sadly missing on our menus,” she said.
For her last lunch Ms. Napolitan made quesadillas — chicken and cheese, corn and red pepper, tomato and cheese — with a side of black beans and salsa. Dessert was a fruit smoothie.
Ms. Napolitan is now interested in creating dining programs like the one at the charter school in nursing homes and senior centers.
But first, she is going to have a rest.
“Right now I’m just going to go home and enjoy being on my porch for a while,” she said.
Cooking aside, she said she’ll miss the people she works with — especially the children.
I’ve made some of my best friends here,” she said. “There’s a great group of teachers and fabulous group of kids and I love watching them grow up. That’s what I’ll miss.”
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