Calla, my mother's family is French Canadian and I attended a French Canadian Catholic school in the 4th grade. We had to bring our own lunch (6-oz bottle of whole milk, peanut butter & jelly sandwich on white bread), an apple and a cookie), but most important to me was the afternoon gouter (4 pm-ish), which for us was a slice of hard white bread spread with dark, delicious, molasses!
It will take me time to vision and think about the taste of dark molasses on bread. Can't help thinking about Boston's great molasses flood of 1919 when a big tank of molasses burst, free molasses everywhere. A pre-lunch snack in grade school was gram cracker and milk which I always looked forward to. My granddad recited a recipe from memory as he puffed on his pipe. It was a recipe for gingerbread which used molasses as one of the twelve ingredients. Food recipes were just another formula as he would use when he had a photography business back in the silver-nitrate glass plate era.
Food is indeed medicine. When will Americans decide to choose wisely what we consume? I resent being taxed to pay for obesity and the self imposed costly medical problems of others refusing to accept personal responsibility for their own health and well-being. It’s possible to avoid processed foods and liquids including fruit juices containing multiple additives. Locally, a banana, an apple or carrot and celery sticks with string cheese and nuts are easy and preferred to any school cafeteria lunch. It’s easier and cheap to squeeze a lemon or lime into a glass or water or tea. Let’s face it: we’re addicted to the flavors of processed foods and drinks, to eating out. MAHA has increased our awareness: it’s up to us! Now for the hard part: Can we modify our behavior? Practice impulse control? As pointed out by the Author, eating is learned behavior and must be taught.
Wonderful column, thanks for inviting us to what a school lunch can and should be. In the way back machine our 1950's high school only had apple vending machines, and they were as good as any treat needed to be.
A shout out to the Santa Barbara Cheese shop who at one time offered a passable raclette - my own cheese addiction too after living in Switzerland. However, I see they have now changed those prior commercial raclette offerings to another more obscure type, that deserves a testing since I have not yet tried it. The sign of a really good raclette is to hold your nose when entering the restaurant, while observing the rapture of on the faces of the raclette diners.
"Schlechter Geruch, guter Geschmack" (Bad smell, good taste auf Deutsch) we would always nod in mutual agreement. While I do own a table top raclette cooker, I find melting slices in the toaster oven on broil works just fine for a quick, tasty and welcoming winter meal. - with the obligatory small boiled potatoes and gherkins. Pearl onions too.
Thank you for your very easy to digest columns Calla, packed with excellent nutrition for our souls.
Thank you, Calla. I seldom comment on SB Current anymore but I feel a need to respond here.
There have been great advances in Santa Barbara public organizations where food is concerned. Cottage Hospital's meals used to be slop, but the meals they offer now are terrific - there's a wide enough range of cuisines that you don't get bored, and the ingredients are fresh. I'm a fairly sophisticated home cook and restaurant goer. I lived in downtown NYC for thirty years. I wrote pieces about food for NYT. And I was impressed by Cottage's meals. I've heard some people complain about Cottage food, but they've always been people who normally lived on Rusty's Pizza.
One of the brilliant things Cottage does food-wise is give the patient options to choose from. For a lot of patients, learning how to assemble a meal that both satisfies their cravings and their nutritional needs is a major recovery, life-changing tool. So here are my two problems with the French school meal that Callie includes:
1) It seems to be decided on by the school, rather than give the kids options so they would learn how to eat healthily on their own. I know, I know - they're French. The French, though, obey French food culture. But if you're asking RFK Jr. to do likewise here, I think you're wrong. Kids here mostly have zero idea how to put together a meal.
2) If I could do anything to help change the Santa Barbara Public School system it would be to make food prep, shopping and cooking classes mandatory. That's the only way we're going to have kids eating well. If they were required to learn to make meals rather than simply buy processed ones, that would be a major step forward.
Nice though the French way is, this is America and RFK Jr. is courageous for taking on decades of bad eating and non-cooking habits. If he gets a third of what he's promised with MAHA done, he's a hero.
I agree, Polly. I was unfortunate enough to spend a few days there a while ago. I really looked forward to the meal selection. It was the highlight of my boring day.
I was there for seven weeks earlier this year. I'm with you. Highlight of my day, other than my husband visiting. I cook almost all our meals now I'm home and I learned from the meals there. I believe the person who was responsible for this was Four Seasons chef Martin Frost (no relation), who loved Santa Barbara very much and planned to retire here after cheffing around the world. He tragically died young in a freak diving accident.
I once had a long conversation with an ex-VietNam-vet-medic who was the doctor at a Boy's Camp in the High Sierras. He explained to me that most of these somewhat delinquent boys ate a family sit-down dinner with the regularity some Christians go to church: only on Thanksgiving and Christmas. He explained that every other meal they eat in their entire lives is eaten on the fly, and consists of fast junk food. He took blood samples and biometrics on each boy upon arrival, and then repeated the tests after 10 days of hiking, camping, and riding mules and horses on the trails. He said he could see measurable improvement in even just that short a time of "lifestyle change" and healthy food.
This gives me hope that were our schools to set the example so exemplified by the French we could turn around some of the malaise in the younger generation.
I recall that Mr Kinko funded an experiment with local school cafeterias decades ago, getting an Alice Waters menu introduced. And the report I heard was that the kids would carefully pick any smidge of vegetable off the "healthy" pizza, and most of the food went into the trash.
Would I endorse an authoritarian approach? Hell yes. All cell phones left in the office at start of school day. One menu served to each child. Eat it or go hungry.
Currently the majority of EBT / Food Stamps money is spent on sugar drinks. Addictive and filled with aspartame and sugar. The schools are the perfect place to start breaking this vicious cycle.
Heading off to Trieste, Italy fairly soon, and have been exploring some of their noted restaurants online. The following link demonstrates how far we have fallen into a culinary black hole, with 14 (FOURTEEN) different food allergies listed by code on their Michelin-rated menu on the last page of the menu..
How are school cafeterias today dealing with similar food allergy demands? MAHA.
TJ- Sounds like an AI question to ask by school district and CA State ed code to learn the presumably ludicrous public school policy of feeding students. The answer might be: Let them eat cake, and possibly candy, too. Caffeinated sugar drinks are a must!
In Southern Louisiana, way back when in 1970s, Coke offset the marijuana given kindergartners at schools close to one massive housing project. Schools manage student behaviors differently. States rights; District rights.
Can you imagine such wisdom finding purchase in today’s USA? How sad so many in leadership do not understand the connection between healthy consistent meals and literacy. I remember during the elections how many people attacked Waltz for his kids lunch program being a socialist something. Thank you for reminding me of what happens when wisdom and compassion are valued.
In Georgia nearly everyone is big. The fast-food commercials emphasize fried everything. Both men and women are big in the South. If someone is skinny now, they'll be bigger later.
SB is a skinny-people city in comparison. My Honda Pilot driver's seat automatically moves "back" into the bed position every time I open the door ... the Pilot presumes I'm a fat Georgian.
Good point, all the homes in my area have air conditioning and most of the homeowners are skinny. Medicare could offer free air conditioning for health purposes <g>.
The secret of the best seller a few years ago, "French Women Don't Get Fat", was to limit yourself to three bites only of anything you eat. But make sure it absolutely delicious and savored slowly for all its nuance, taste and texture. Plus a weekend fast every three months of boiled leek broth only. Is this true, Calla? The author at the time was an executive for Vueve Cliquot so she also recommended her house brand champagne, with everything.
French women really get on my nerves. Except for Catherine Deneuve who said something like “At a certain point you have to choose between your tummy and your face.”
It's comforting to know the French eat very healthy meals. Too bad their politics are totally screwed up (widespread rioting in Paris this past weekend) and Jews are literally in danger for their lives in this antisemitic country. France with their increasingly radicalized Islamic population is looking at a very dismal future.
Lou, Yes, the "increasingly radicalised Islamic population" in France is worrisome, but Calla is simply pointing out how nutritious (and relatively inexpensive) school lunches are in French schools. And, by the way, things don't look so good on Ivy League campuses and elsewhere for Jewish folk here either at the moment.
Jim, I don't see the meal Calla describes as that healthy for growing kids. Where are the probiotics? Where are the good fats? The Omega3 foods? And this is France where the healthiness of regional food like Gascony is rich in all of that and has been thoroughly studied. I would take my kid out of that school. Their nutrition is out of date. It's all about keeping kids slim not nourishing their overall health, certainly not their gut health, which more and more is being linked to emotional, mental and physical development and well-being in growing kids.
The musk-taco feud is a lot more entertaining than the Drake-Kendrick Lamar was. It’s all so junior high. Although I’m glad musk is calling taco out. Musk served his purpose as a hit man and scapegoat for taco. He should’ve known and that’s what he gets.
Thank you for writing. I don't understand why a parent can't make a lunch for "their" kid everyday. It's not that dear to put together a sandwich and fruit. The cost for a school system to feed a lunch is an expense that is unnecessary. Feeding one's offspring is part of the deal; schools can provide ideas for lunch in their brochures if parents are unclear. The same concept applies to a decent breakfast and dinner. France is a different country with different ideas; Californians could learn good lessons from France. It's blatantly obvious that "you are what you eat."
And we "are" not that healthy; however, depending on government dining is NOT an answer.
This whole article is pure sentimentalism, glazing the French as cultured... because of cheese, what kids eat? That is such a low bar. Sure, to America which has no culture (at least one of value), and with garbage food and eating habits the French look cultured, but they're not - they just gild degeneracy and call it art. Only the bourgeoise (don't care how its spelled, the third estate can kick rocks) could look at France and call it cultured, because these were the same people who dismantled Christendom and gave us materialism, hedonism, and comfort to replace God, throne, and duty.
"French children are smarter" right, that's why they embrace the same rot their post revolutionary ancestors produced and sent out to thr whole world. France has been a hotbed for degeneracy, it gave us "art" divorced from beauty and dignity, promoted porn which degrades all people, embraced secularism which relegated God to mere private devotion, even leaders of the more "conservative" era (Third French Republic) like the Prime Minster Leon Blum, promoted pre-sexual revolution slop - where men and women would be free to hookup and fornicate without committments, and he led in the 30's mind you...
I am sorry but this is straight copium. American children may be dying from garbage food, and French children like their American counterparts are spiritually dead. They have Marianne for a mother, the harlot of the revolution, she may give school children "healthy food", yet she doesn't give the bread of life to them - instead she offers them nihilism, degradation, atomization - all the errors of the modern world. France destroyed Christendom, it has no culture - if they did they'd be united by God, King, and fatherland, none of that exists now - all they have are cheese, wine, and porn. How cultured. Not.
Calla, my mother's family is French Canadian and I attended a French Canadian Catholic school in the 4th grade. We had to bring our own lunch (6-oz bottle of whole milk, peanut butter & jelly sandwich on white bread), an apple and a cookie), but most important to me was the afternoon gouter (4 pm-ish), which for us was a slice of hard white bread spread with dark, delicious, molasses!
It will take me time to vision and think about the taste of dark molasses on bread. Can't help thinking about Boston's great molasses flood of 1919 when a big tank of molasses burst, free molasses everywhere. A pre-lunch snack in grade school was gram cracker and milk which I always looked forward to. My granddad recited a recipe from memory as he puffed on his pipe. It was a recipe for gingerbread which used molasses as one of the twelve ingredients. Food recipes were just another formula as he would use when he had a photography business back in the silver-nitrate glass plate era.
Food is indeed medicine. When will Americans decide to choose wisely what we consume? I resent being taxed to pay for obesity and the self imposed costly medical problems of others refusing to accept personal responsibility for their own health and well-being. It’s possible to avoid processed foods and liquids including fruit juices containing multiple additives. Locally, a banana, an apple or carrot and celery sticks with string cheese and nuts are easy and preferred to any school cafeteria lunch. It’s easier and cheap to squeeze a lemon or lime into a glass or water or tea. Let’s face it: we’re addicted to the flavors of processed foods and drinks, to eating out. MAHA has increased our awareness: it’s up to us! Now for the hard part: Can we modify our behavior? Practice impulse control? As pointed out by the Author, eating is learned behavior and must be taught.
Wonderful column, thanks for inviting us to what a school lunch can and should be. In the way back machine our 1950's high school only had apple vending machines, and they were as good as any treat needed to be.
A shout out to the Santa Barbara Cheese shop who at one time offered a passable raclette - my own cheese addiction too after living in Switzerland. However, I see they have now changed those prior commercial raclette offerings to another more obscure type, that deserves a testing since I have not yet tried it. The sign of a really good raclette is to hold your nose when entering the restaurant, while observing the rapture of on the faces of the raclette diners.
"Schlechter Geruch, guter Geschmack" (Bad smell, good taste auf Deutsch) we would always nod in mutual agreement. While I do own a table top raclette cooker, I find melting slices in the toaster oven on broil works just fine for a quick, tasty and welcoming winter meal. - with the obligatory small boiled potatoes and gherkins. Pearl onions too.
Thank you for your very easy to digest columns Calla, packed with excellent nutrition for our souls.
https://www.cheeseshopsb.com/collections/shop-cheese/products/whitney-andante-dairy
Merci J.L. For your lovely comment (s). You made my day on this rainy, Burgundian day. CJC
You are in luck, that still sounds like raclette weather.
Gloomy here on the south coast too - a rather cold long spring. June gloom is living up to its name, but will it burn off by noon? Stay tuned.
Thank you, Calla. I seldom comment on SB Current anymore but I feel a need to respond here.
There have been great advances in Santa Barbara public organizations where food is concerned. Cottage Hospital's meals used to be slop, but the meals they offer now are terrific - there's a wide enough range of cuisines that you don't get bored, and the ingredients are fresh. I'm a fairly sophisticated home cook and restaurant goer. I lived in downtown NYC for thirty years. I wrote pieces about food for NYT. And I was impressed by Cottage's meals. I've heard some people complain about Cottage food, but they've always been people who normally lived on Rusty's Pizza.
One of the brilliant things Cottage does food-wise is give the patient options to choose from. For a lot of patients, learning how to assemble a meal that both satisfies their cravings and their nutritional needs is a major recovery, life-changing tool. So here are my two problems with the French school meal that Callie includes:
1) It seems to be decided on by the school, rather than give the kids options so they would learn how to eat healthily on their own. I know, I know - they're French. The French, though, obey French food culture. But if you're asking RFK Jr. to do likewise here, I think you're wrong. Kids here mostly have zero idea how to put together a meal.
2) If I could do anything to help change the Santa Barbara Public School system it would be to make food prep, shopping and cooking classes mandatory. That's the only way we're going to have kids eating well. If they were required to learn to make meals rather than simply buy processed ones, that would be a major step forward.
Nice though the French way is, this is America and RFK Jr. is courageous for taking on decades of bad eating and non-cooking habits. If he gets a third of what he's promised with MAHA done, he's a hero.
I agree, Polly. I was unfortunate enough to spend a few days there a while ago. I really looked forward to the meal selection. It was the highlight of my boring day.
I was there for seven weeks earlier this year. I'm with you. Highlight of my day, other than my husband visiting. I cook almost all our meals now I'm home and I learned from the meals there. I believe the person who was responsible for this was Four Seasons chef Martin Frost (no relation), who loved Santa Barbara very much and planned to retire here after cheffing around the world. He tragically died young in a freak diving accident.
"Highlight of my day, other than my husband visiting." What a beautiful compliment!
Lovely!
I once had a long conversation with an ex-VietNam-vet-medic who was the doctor at a Boy's Camp in the High Sierras. He explained to me that most of these somewhat delinquent boys ate a family sit-down dinner with the regularity some Christians go to church: only on Thanksgiving and Christmas. He explained that every other meal they eat in their entire lives is eaten on the fly, and consists of fast junk food. He took blood samples and biometrics on each boy upon arrival, and then repeated the tests after 10 days of hiking, camping, and riding mules and horses on the trails. He said he could see measurable improvement in even just that short a time of "lifestyle change" and healthy food.
This gives me hope that were our schools to set the example so exemplified by the French we could turn around some of the malaise in the younger generation.
I recall that Mr Kinko funded an experiment with local school cafeterias decades ago, getting an Alice Waters menu introduced. And the report I heard was that the kids would carefully pick any smidge of vegetable off the "healthy" pizza, and most of the food went into the trash.
Would I endorse an authoritarian approach? Hell yes. All cell phones left in the office at start of school day. One menu served to each child. Eat it or go hungry.
Currently the majority of EBT / Food Stamps money is spent on sugar drinks. Addictive and filled with aspartame and sugar. The schools are the perfect place to start breaking this vicious cycle.
Heading off to Trieste, Italy fairly soon, and have been exploring some of their noted restaurants online. The following link demonstrates how far we have fallen into a culinary black hole, with 14 (FOURTEEN) different food allergies listed by code on their Michelin-rated menu on the last page of the menu..
How are school cafeterias today dealing with similar food allergy demands? MAHA.
https://duchidaosta.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Menu-Harrys-EN-per-sito.pdf
Wow, I didn't know this one was an issue -- “9” Celery and products thereof
TJ- Sounds like an AI question to ask by school district and CA State ed code to learn the presumably ludicrous public school policy of feeding students. The answer might be: Let them eat cake, and possibly candy, too. Caffeinated sugar drinks are a must!
In Southern Louisiana, way back when in 1970s, Coke offset the marijuana given kindergartners at schools close to one massive housing project. Schools manage student behaviors differently. States rights; District rights.
I checked SB Unifed breakfest menu for today. It's conchas.
Had to look them up. Wasn't sure what they were.
Conchas = 400 calories - butter/lard, sugar, flour
Bowl of oatmeal = 150 calories -whole grain
MAHA
Can you imagine such wisdom finding purchase in today’s USA? How sad so many in leadership do not understand the connection between healthy consistent meals and literacy. I remember during the elections how many people attacked Waltz for his kids lunch program being a socialist something. Thank you for reminding me of what happens when wisdom and compassion are valued.
Delightful story. When I first rode the metro in Paris years ago the thing that struck me first was the absence of really fat people.
In Georgia nearly everyone is big. The fast-food commercials emphasize fried everything. Both men and women are big in the South. If someone is skinny now, they'll be bigger later.
SB is a skinny-people city in comparison. My Honda Pilot driver's seat automatically moves "back" into the bed position every time I open the door ... the Pilot presumes I'm a fat Georgian.
Heat=fatigue, carbs give energy. Perhaps more air conditioning in that part of the country would help.
Good point, all the homes in my area have air conditioning and most of the homeowners are skinny. Medicare could offer free air conditioning for health purposes <g>.
The secret of the best seller a few years ago, "French Women Don't Get Fat", was to limit yourself to three bites only of anything you eat. But make sure it absolutely delicious and savored slowly for all its nuance, taste and texture. Plus a weekend fast every three months of boiled leek broth only. Is this true, Calla? The author at the time was an executive for Vueve Cliquot so she also recommended her house brand champagne, with everything.
French women really get on my nerves. Except for Catherine Deneuve who said something like “At a certain point you have to choose between your tummy and your face.”
Or was it fanny? Her I love. The other French women can go tie their Hermes scarves for all I care.
It's comforting to know the French eat very healthy meals. Too bad their politics are totally screwed up (widespread rioting in Paris this past weekend) and Jews are literally in danger for their lives in this antisemitic country. France with their increasingly radicalized Islamic population is looking at a very dismal future.
Lou, Yes, the "increasingly radicalised Islamic population" in France is worrisome, but Calla is simply pointing out how nutritious (and relatively inexpensive) school lunches are in French schools. And, by the way, things don't look so good on Ivy League campuses and elsewhere for Jewish folk here either at the moment.
Jim, I don't see the meal Calla describes as that healthy for growing kids. Where are the probiotics? Where are the good fats? The Omega3 foods? And this is France where the healthiness of regional food like Gascony is rich in all of that and has been thoroughly studied. I would take my kid out of that school. Their nutrition is out of date. It's all about keeping kids slim not nourishing their overall health, certainly not their gut health, which more and more is being linked to emotional, mental and physical development and well-being in growing kids.
Here's a link to an article by Joel Salatin about an American school for boys.
https://www.thelunaticfarmer.com/blog/5/14/2025/1000-of-these-schools-needed
True
The musk-taco feud is a lot more entertaining than the Drake-Kendrick Lamar was. It’s all so junior high. Although I’m glad musk is calling taco out. Musk served his purpose as a hit man and scapegoat for taco. He should’ve known and that’s what he gets.
Thank you for writing. I don't understand why a parent can't make a lunch for "their" kid everyday. It's not that dear to put together a sandwich and fruit. The cost for a school system to feed a lunch is an expense that is unnecessary. Feeding one's offspring is part of the deal; schools can provide ideas for lunch in their brochures if parents are unclear. The same concept applies to a decent breakfast and dinner. France is a different country with different ideas; Californians could learn good lessons from France. It's blatantly obvious that "you are what you eat."
And we "are" not that healthy; however, depending on government dining is NOT an answer.
This whole article is pure sentimentalism, glazing the French as cultured... because of cheese, what kids eat? That is such a low bar. Sure, to America which has no culture (at least one of value), and with garbage food and eating habits the French look cultured, but they're not - they just gild degeneracy and call it art. Only the bourgeoise (don't care how its spelled, the third estate can kick rocks) could look at France and call it cultured, because these were the same people who dismantled Christendom and gave us materialism, hedonism, and comfort to replace God, throne, and duty.
"French children are smarter" right, that's why they embrace the same rot their post revolutionary ancestors produced and sent out to thr whole world. France has been a hotbed for degeneracy, it gave us "art" divorced from beauty and dignity, promoted porn which degrades all people, embraced secularism which relegated God to mere private devotion, even leaders of the more "conservative" era (Third French Republic) like the Prime Minster Leon Blum, promoted pre-sexual revolution slop - where men and women would be free to hookup and fornicate without committments, and he led in the 30's mind you...
I am sorry but this is straight copium. American children may be dying from garbage food, and French children like their American counterparts are spiritually dead. They have Marianne for a mother, the harlot of the revolution, she may give school children "healthy food", yet she doesn't give the bread of life to them - instead she offers them nihilism, degradation, atomization - all the errors of the modern world. France destroyed Christendom, it has no culture - if they did they'd be united by God, King, and fatherland, none of that exists now - all they have are cheese, wine, and porn. How cultured. Not.
This post was made by Carlism gang.
Socializing...not a bad idea.