THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 21, 1994 TAG: 9411210068
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: HAMILTON LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
Six-year-old Peter Ceo doesn't look happy as he stands in the cafeteria line at Loudoun County's Hamilton Elementary School.
He scrunches up his face and shakes his head from side to side as he spots the cause of his dismay: salmon loaf.
``It doesn't sound good, and it smells bad,'' says Peter. He opts for the chicken nuggets.
Most people think corn dogs, mystery meat and limp string beans when they think school lunch. But recently, flaked salmon has showed up on cafeteria menus and asparagus is headed in that direction, thanks to a government program that buys surplus food and gives it to schools.
Teachers may love these more unusual items that often have gourmet cachet, but many children say ``Yuck!''
``It's not something we love to get,'' said Serena Suthers, Prince William Schools Food Services Supervisor, about salmon. ``We made wonderful salmon cakes but only the adults liked them. It's good quality salmon, it's just not many 10-year-olds like salmon.''
Last year the U.S. Department of Agriculture bought more than 6.6 million pounds of flaked salmon from the Pacific Northwest at about $1.50 per pound to prop up the salmon market.
Most of the fish was then shipped to the nation's schools free of charge - including 140,000 pounds for Virginia.
And this year, schools are already flipping through their recipe books to figure out how to use masses of frozen asparagus that is expected if a government purchase is completed.
Two years ago, the USDA bought 1.6 million pounds of the vegetable due to increasing yields and growing competition from Mexican imports. This year, Virginia schools are expecting three truck loads - about 50 tons - of asparagus if the USDA makes the purchase.
School cafeteria directors said they've tried everything they can to get kids to eat salmon - mostly without success. In addition to doing salmon ``burgers,'' they've tried camouflaging the salmon in tuna and calling it ``seafood salad,'' but it doesn't work. Kids locate the pink meat and refuse to eat it.
And lunchroom workers say the fishy smell that fills the air when they're cooking salmon dishes usually drives away customers.
Penny McConnell, Fairfax Schools Food Services Director, expects a similar problem if 7 tons of asparagus roll into Fairfax.
``We are going to have to be very creative to get our kids to eat it. We're challenged,'' she said. ``We'll probably try marinated asparagus on chef salads and possibly cream of asparagus soup.''
Finding uses for offbeat foods is nothing new for the nation's public schools.
For almost 60 years theUSDA has been purchasing products in bulk to support their open market prices. For many of these years, these foods have been sent mainly to schools and to child support programs, American Indian reservations and soup kitchens.
USDA food buyers say that unusual items such as salmon and asparagus make up only a small portion of the foods they purchase, and cafeteria directors say the department has become more responsive to school needs.
The directors say the USDA foods they usually get - like fruit, poultry and potatoes - are useful. But once in a while, school pantries get a shipment that looks more like an upscale deli than USDA.
Arlington school's food service director Bailey McCreery remembers when 200 cases of olives showed up. It took three years to use them up.
More recently almond butter (like peanut butter but much darker) has been the challenge.
``I shake my head sometimes,'' said Sherry Atkisson, supervisor of food services for Loudoun County schools. ``I don't understand why we get some of the things we get.''
But an optimistic Ken Clayton, who oversees the section of USDA that's been buying salmon, thinks kids would eat the fish if it were repackaged into ``salmon nuggets'' -- an idea he's working on.
Salmon nuggets or not, some schools are telling USDA they don't want any more salmon, even free. Prince William County is one of those saying no more.
The county's schools are still struggling with their last 9,300-pound shipment from two years ago. Sixty cases, or 2,600 pounds, of it is sitting on their shelves. The county hopes to get rid of the surplus by offering it as a side dish in the schools' salad bars. by CNB