School Breakfast Gets Local With New Farm Fresh Muffins!

These muffins are better than my mom's! 

Starting this year, select Chicopee schools will be piloting a new baking program in their kitchens with help from UMass Pastry Chef and Bakeshop Manager, Simon Stevenson. Back in July, Simon visited the Lambert-Lavoie kitchen to teach Cook Manager, Becky, how to prepare a large batch of whole grain, local blueberry muffins from scratch. The lesson was a success, and during this new school year Becky has been baking muffins weekly for her students. The muffins are WG and typically contain one or more local ingredient. So far we have tested blueberry, pumpkin chocolate chip, and blueberry zucchini. All were absolutely delicious, and with the exception of the pumpkin muffin, contained local ingredients from Joe Czajkowski's farm in Hadley, MA. 

We visited Becky on a brisk September morning to see how this new breakfast item was going over with her students. We were thrilled to find many kids taking the muffins and loving them! One student said the muffins were better than his mom's! We couldn't ask for higher praise than that :)

The goal of this baking program is to incorporate more local, freshly made foods into school breakfast. Not only will this help us increase our local food purchasing and elevate the quality of our breakfast to match our local, healthy lunches, but it will also give our students long lasting energy to perform well in school. 

We hope to expand this program as the year goes on, so stay tuned for updates! The next school to begin preparing local muffins is Barry Elementary!