New School Chef Touts Farm Fresh Menu BALTIMORE, MD (wypr) - When city schools open next week, there will be a fresh peach waiting for each of Baltimore's 82-thousand students. The fruit will be trucked in from a rural farm in Carroll County. It will usher in a new culinary era in the public schools that will highlight a move to fresh, local specialties, including crab soup. WYPR's Melody Simmons filed this report.

The days of Baltimore school lunches that are prepared, frozen and stored in a New Jersey warehouse, then shipped here for prep in a school microwave, are nearly over. The new mid-day meal will consist of fresh, tasty foods like pesto pasta, butternut squash soup and Eastern Shore tomato salads.
Tony Geraci (Ger-A-ci) is the school system's new top chef.
As a chef, I approach everything with the eyes of a cook. So I view Maryland as my pantry.
To Geraci, that pantry should open up to children and teens, who so often rely on fried chicken, fast food and junk snacks to fill their stomachs. He ticked off a list of things to come.
We have crops that are year-round here. The fruit crops here are amazing. Peaches, apples and plums and nectarines and apricots and watermelons and cantaloupe and corn and beans and green beans and
As director of food and nutrition for Baltimore City Public Schools, Geraci is planning to open a 37-thousand-foot central kitchen off of Erdman Avenue by January. He is converting a 33-acre, school-owned facility in east Baltimore into a working farm to grow herbs and vegetables. And he plans to ask students to invent their own recipes for school lunches.
Such inclusion, Geraci added, will help mix mealtime with math and science.
These kids have been McDonalized for so many years that they don't even know or understand where food comes from.
Geraci observes that youth obesity is a top concern at the city Health Department. Last month, officials there released a report showing that, on average, city high school students are more overweight and obese than other Maryland high school teens. With research showing a direct link between poor nutrition and academic woes, Geraci said he must work fast.
I think it's unrealistic to have this expectation of an educator to execute their lesson plan if the kid sitting in front of them is jacked up on Lucky Charms, or worse, no food at all.
Margaret Frothingham, who works at Arnold Farms in rural Chestertown, said Baltimore is the first school district in the state to seek her farm's fresh grown fruits and vegetables. The crops here are shipped to Whole Foods and Giant Foods stores in Maryland daily - fresh from the sprawling fields.
Speaking with Geraci last week, Frothingham said hopes are high that her produce can help to teach healthy lessons.
Eating is such a pleasure, and it's such a huge part of life, so if the food tastes good, the nutrition goes down a little bit easier.
Jeff Wilson, the school system's warehouse supervisor, said the facility is ready to receive crates of fresh fruits and vegetables like lettuce, cabbage, corn, and broccoli. Food costs could actually fall because of the local push, Wilson explained.
Once we get the warehouse up and running, I can accept more deliveries and instead of paying the distributors, their fees for distributing it to schools, I can do it with in-house drivers, we save per case and the difference is about $300,000 or so.

For the moment, some city students will continue to receive frozen, micro-waved lunches. The school system has one year remaining on a 6-million-dollar contract for the less-than-fresh food. But come next week, others will be served some of Maryland's home-grown finest, beginning with that plump, juicy peach on opening day.
I'm Melody Simmons, reporting from Chestertown, for 88.1, WYPR
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