Abernethy Elementary chef taking her lessons to White House | OregonLive.com

Abernethy Elementary chef taking her lessons to White House | OregonLive.com

Abernethy Elementary chef taking her lessons to White House

By Rebecca Koffman

June 01, 2010, 7:53PM

View full sizeBenjamin Brink, The OregonianNicole Hoffmann, the chef at Portland’s Abernethy Elementary School, prepares a student favorite — potato pizza. Hoffmann will attend an event at the White House on Friday to share information about the public school’s rare from-scratch kitchen and school gardens.
Portland chef who runs a from-scratch "test kitchen" at an elementary school will get a chance to share her knowledge in a high place: the White House.

While students at Southeast Portland's Abernethy Elementary devour her popular breakfast muffins Friday, Nicole Hoffmann will be on the South Lawn to help launch first lady Michelle Obama's Chefs Move to Schools program. The program, part of Obama's initiative to fight childhood obesity, will match chefs with schools to teach kids about nutrition in an engaging, tasty way.

"It's wonderful to have national momentum around school lunch," said Hoffmann, 35. "This is such a niche position for a chef. I'm excited to share recipes and ideas with other interested people."

Abernethy is the rare U.S. public school with meals made from scratch, but the school's 5-year-old comprehensive food curriculum goes much further. The cafeteria -- dubbed Abernethy Cafe -- uses ingredients from the school's gardens, where students grow everything from apples to zucchini. The kitchen also develops and tests recipes for use in other Portland schools.

And the school brings food education into the classroom. Recently, students used strawberries they had grown to make a salad and a drink. "Woven through food-related activities are lessons in math, science, history and social studies," said Sarah Sullivan, the school's garden coordinator.

The kids love it.

"It's cool eating stuff that we grow," said Mary Roach, a fifth-grader who was eating tomato herb salad in the cafeteria one day last week. "We dissected brussels sprouts and looked at all the layers."

"Then we pickled some and roasted some," said her friend, Emilia Witt.

"Then we ate them. Yum!" added Sophie James.

Hoffmann became school chef two years ago after volunteering two years in the kitchen while completing training at Portland's Western Culinary Institute. Now she creates appealing meals such as chicken panang curry and falafel with cucumber raita -- all within the confines of U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional guidelines for school lunches.

The test kitchen is considered a demonstration program, though, and hasn't been copied at other schools largely because of funding issues. The school receives the same amount per meal for its school lunch program as other district schools but pays higher labor costs for Hoffmann and an