Written by: Abby de Riel

The C.H.E.F. Challenge — Children’s Health through Education and Food — has taken root this summer in Arkansas and Tennessee. Developed by Healthy Flavors, a family farm and business in the two states, the C.H.E.F. Challenge is a Farm to School initiative that aims to connect communities, classrooms, and cafeterias across the mid-south by facilitating more scratch cooking in school cafeterias and kids’ engagement in locally sourced food. 

With a two-year grant from the United States Department of Agriculture that began in the fall of 2024, Healthy Flavors engaged Wellness in the Schools to bring our years of experience and expertise to advise on their programming in the Mid-South. This fall, the program will be implemented in Cabot, Little Rock, and North Little Rock school districts in Arkansas and Bradford, Milan, Trenton, and Weakley school districts in Tennessee, for a total of 17 schools. 

We hired two Chef Ambassadors to lead the work in schools on a daily basis. Chef April Alderson will represent schools in Arkansas, bringing to us her 20 years of experience in school food and extensive experience with child nutrition. Chef Cale Meador will represent the Tennessee schools, coming from Atlanta with experience in restaurants, catering, hospitality, and, more recently, culinary training and student education on healthy cooking. Both are passionate, talented chefs who are excited to dive into school kitchens and build communities.

We welcomed Chef Ambassadors April and Cale, along with Dan and Karen, to New York City this May for an on-the-ground, 8-day training experience. The chefs traveled to different NYC public schools to observe WITS Chefs in action: WITS Chef Teak Nam leading a recipe sampling of Lentil Bolognese at P.S. 191 in the Bronx, WITS Chef Lou Foy training school cooks in the kitchen and preparing a salad bar full of fresh ingredients and composed salads at P.S. 335 in Brooklyn, and WITS Lab Instructor Victoria Baluk making an Apple Citrus Pico de Gallo recipe in the classroom with kids at P.S. 166 in Manhattan. April and Cale tried their hand at teaching students how to hold a knife to cut apples and spoke with students in the cafeteria to hear their feedback on the new recipes being served. They observed our “secret sauce”   – WITS Chefs creating a unique, supportive relationship with their cooks in their kitchen, as no school environment is the same, but the training methodologies remain intact.

Now, the chefs are back in the mid-south implementing their learnings and taking root in their school communities. They have hit the ground running by meeting all of their schools, Principals, Innovation Directors, Teachers, and Cafeteria Managers, building the relationships and trust for the upcoming year. Chef Cale has met with several of the Child Nutrition Directors in his schools to develop a collaboration plan and start arranging freezer space for ingredients. Because many of his schools are open this summer, he is diving into recipe development, supporting the recipe data system, and providing kitchen staff with basic culinary skill training ahead of the new recipes and training. Chef April is working on recipe development and administrative support, and will commence culinary training once more of her schools open in advance of the first day of school. 

The team has newly completed their first round of recipe development at the Brightwater Institute of Arkansas, tailoring their recipes to elevate nutrition and local produce that can be featured in school meals. This season, the Healthy Flavors farm is producing a lot of butternut squash and purple hull peas, which provide the seed from which the recipes grow (pun intended). During this process, Karen shared, “The challenge is that a lot of current school food options are heat-and-serve and have ultra-processed foods inside of them. We want to use fresh ingredients from the farm that have more nutrients to benefit students’ health.”

The Chef Ambassadors have chosen four recipes to focus on for inclusion on lunch menus: Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese, Roasted Butternut, Pea Street Tacos, and Bulldog Caviar. These recipes are collaborations, mid-south style. The Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese recipe was made by a WITS Chef. Roasted Butternut is a WITS Lab recipe. Bulldog Caviar is a play on a Cowboy Caviar Salad recipe developed by WITS. Chefs April and Cale are now working with available produce and seasonings that can make these recipes their own. Chef Cale expressed his excitement, saying, “We’re putting butternut squash, grown on farms in Arkansas, into mac and cheese, something that kids will readily eat whenever they can!” 

Chef April has found the recipe development process equally exciting. She remarked, “The benefit of developing recipes at Brightwater is having students here to taste-test the new recipes this summer. In our first tasting of the Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese, the kids wanted us to make it more savory. So, we added a few more spices to it.” Paprika, turmeric, garlic, onion, and black pepper are some of the flavor notes students will be able to taste on the lunch menu soon. 

Students in select schools in Arkansas and Tennessee will have the chance to taste ingredients and produce they may not have had before. With this Farm to School program, success with recipes in a handful of schools will support the local farms to increase their production of produce, growing both factors at the same time. Dan reflected, “A lot of the food, especially fresh ingredients that are grown in America, are grown in California or Florida because of the food system we have in place. The C.H.E.F. Challenge is an opportunity for farmers to understand they can play a role in this food system and that there is somewhere for their produce to grow — not just farmer’s markets, but schools. Though the transition will take some time and systemic change, particularly due to the effects of climate change and the pandemic on our supply chain, our local populations must be able to depend on food grown locally. We’re trying to show the way.”