I thought that I would do a little blog on school lunches in honor of my lovely mother-in-law Debbie, who is an excellent lunch lady at an elementary school. To begin with, I don't have to pack a lunch or worry about finding food each day. The school provides snacks and lunch for not only ALL of the students, but for the staff and teachers as well. As a teacher in my homeroom, I dish out the food to the children and then to myself. I find that this is an EXCELLENT way to try new and interesting Korean foods without having to pay for it (win!).
After working here for a month, I have learned about the daily routines of lunch and the children are more aware of what to do each day and are pretty self-sufficient at the point. They take out their metal lunch trays, containing 5 sections, and their spoon and chopsticks. The sticks are the ones made for children, with being attached together at the top with a loop on one stick for the pointer finger (more on these in another blog). I then scoop out each of the five parts of the meal into their trays.
Each day, the children have a rice of some sort, a soup, typically kimchi (spicy cabbage), a protein of some kind, and a vegetable. Generally speaking, this is the menu each day. The type of each does change however, which offers a bit of delicious variety. The children do not complain about the food, like they do in the States. They accept what they are given and don't go into hysterics because they don't like something. My 6 year olds (Korean age) accept the food on their trays and choose to eat it or not. Super cool and a lot less stressful than my last kindergarten in the States where the children went ballistic if a food they hated touched their plates!
Anyway, here is the breakdown for the week. There is a picture for each day (except Wednesday...I forgot my phone for pics..sorry!) and they is also a description of the food. I am NOT an expert and do not know the names of them all, so if you do, please feel free to write in the comments section. Thanks!
MONDAY
From top left moving clockwise:
(1) a pork nugget in a sweet sauce
(2) kimchi, the spicy cabbage
(3) crab meat and bean sprouts
(4) sticky white rice
(5) seaweed soup
TUESDAY
From top left moving clockwise:
(1) dried seaweed with sesame seeds
(2) kimchi
(3) lo mein noodles with beef and carrots
(4) sticky white rice
(5) beef and tofu soup
WEDNESDAY
No Picture...Sorry!!
(1) chicken balls in sweet sauce
(2) kimchi
(3) squid (looks like the stalk of the bean spouts, only they were hard)
(4) white sticky rice with beans
(5) leafy green soup
THURSDAY
From top left moving clockwise:
(1) rice patty with seaweed
(2) zucchini with a spicy taste
(3) eggplant
(4) purple rice
(5) seafood gumbo (if you look closely, you can see the tentacles! This was a medly of all kinds of sea creatures in a soup)
FRIDAY
From top left moving clockwise:
(1) salad (a rarity in Korea) made from lettuce and tomatoes in a sweet frothy yogurt dressing
(2) kimchi
(3) EMPTY! I think because there is protein in the rice
(4) onion soup
(5) rice with ham
Well, I hope that was informative. Hope you enjoy Debbie! Could you make some of these at you school? ;)
맛 있는!
Some of the foods look interesting. Amazing that the kids don't complain or anything! What about the teachers? I could see Debbie setting up these meals.
ReplyDeleteno way I would have nobody eating lunch
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