The University of Tennessee at Martin Department of Family and Consumer Sciences hosted a nutrition workshop series coordinated by the Northwest Tennessee Local Food Network (LFN).
The training took place July 24-25 in UT Martin’s Gooch Hall and included four workshops led by six trained chefs as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Healthy Meals Incentives Initiative’s Action for Healthy Kids grant program.
Nutrition staff members from the Bradford, Milan, Trenton and Weakley County school districts participated in the workshop to help boost the nutrition level of their schools’ meals and to bolster students’ interest in eating healthier foods.
More than 120 school nutrition staff members took part in the workshop series, where attendees were divided into groups that rotated among four programs:
• “Spice Theory and Weights and Measures” with Keely Spain.
• “Best Practices for Scratch-Cook Operations” with chefs Cale Meador and Jerrick Dassing.
• “Processing Equipment Demos and Food Hacks” with Dan Spatz and chef Tyler Sangermano.
• “Jazzing up Veggies” with chef Brandon “Turtle” White.
Spain is a 2022 graduate of UT Martin and is a culinary arts teacher at Lake County High School. In the workshops, she discussed working with herbs and spices.
A native of Gleason, Meador has catered to NBA teams, including the Memphis Grizzlies. He is now the Tennessee Chef Ambassador for the Children’s Health through Education and Food (CHEF) program. In the workshop, he showed how to prepare and display melons.
Dassing is a culinary lead at Murray State University’s Winslow Cafeteria and a line cook at Stephano’s Trattoria in Murray. In the workshop, he demonstrated salad preparation.
Spatz and his wife, Nadia, operate the Healthy Flavors farms in Tennessee and Arkansas. In the workshops, he demonstrated food preparation machinery and techniques.
Sangermano is the director of special projects for The Food Corridor, educating shared kitchen operators nationwide. In the workshops, she demonstrated food preparation.
White, a resident of Union City, worked in Nashville for more than a decade, including as sous chef at Maneet Chauhan restaurant. He now works at Oaklawn Southern Dining in Paris. In the workshops, he demonstrated ways to make vegetables more exciting with flavor and presentation.
Each of the four school districts were awarded a two-year grant of almost $150,000 to focus on scratch cooking in school nutrition programs. That money has been used for kitchen updates and renovations, menu evaluation, staff training and professional development.
The Northwest Tennessee LFN serves as a consulting partner for Farm to School initiatives throughout northwest Tennessee. For more information about the Northwest Tennessee LFN, visit nwtnlfn.org.
The Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at UT Martin offers concentrations in food and nutrition, dietetics and hospitality and food service management. The department houses a teaching kitchen lab, which is used throughout the year for food science classes, summer camps for K-12 students across West Tennessee and UT Extension staff trainings. Department faculty have served as board members and advisors to the Local Food Network since its inception.
For more information about UT Martin, visit www.utm.edu or call 1-800-529-UTM1 (-8861).
PHOTO: Keely Spain, a culinary arts teacher at Lake County High School and a 2022 graduate of UT Martin, demonstrates the use of herbs in cooking and food preparation at the nutrition workshop hosted July 24-25 by the UTM Department of Family and Consumer Science.
