Guest: Chef Monique Jamet Hooker - food enthusiast
Yes, there is a movement underway to improve the quality of meals children receive at school - just one of the efforts to combat childhood obesity. On this program, Chef Monique Hooker describes the next phase in her illustrious culinary career - partnering with school districts in Wisconsin and other areas of the Midwest to put schools and communities on a new course of healthy eating.
Trained in Europe...chef, teacher and author, Monique Hooker, moved from France to New York (where she worked alongside Jaques Pepin and other famous chefs) and then moved to continue her culinary endeavors in Chicago. She and her husband now live in Viroqua, Wisconsin - hand chosen because of its rolling hills, water and rich agricultural terrain.
It is here that Monique's enthusiasm for preparing nutritious meals with fresh ingredients from the local farms has found a new home - in the Viroqua Area School District. It is here she joined the Chefs Move to Schools program which helps chefs partner with interested schools to create healthy meals and teach parents, teachers, school nutrition professionals and kids about nutrition and making balanced and healthy choices. Getting Chefs involved is part of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move Campaign to solve the childhood obesity epidemic within a generation.
Wisconsin's Farm to School Program also establishes relationships between local foods and school children - another initiative embraced by Monique. Chef Hooker describes how she obtains bountiful vegetables from the local farms and uses them in a multi-vegetable dish like ratatouille to make school lunches a gourmet delight. Her tips on making nutritious meals simply can be used by all of us in our own kitchens.
For more information, go to any of the websites below:
ACF_CM5 | Chefs Move to Schools
NFSMI Cooks for Kids Season Four: Chefs Move to School
Wisconsin Farm to School Programs -- FarmtoSchool2.org
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