“Well, you didn’t take any of the vegetables.”Ĭafeteria workers are beacons of healthy food and culture in our society, and along with teachers, parents and local farmers, are critical components of a successful farm to school program. “ said that Castile would fist-bump kids, make sure they didn’t have food they shouldn’t have and pushed the healthy stuff, too…“You’re still hungry?” she recalled him saying to them. After his death, the students eloquently spoke about the powerful relationships they had formed with him everyday while they were getting their school lunches. Hill Montessori Magnet School in Saint Paul, was tragically shot and killed. In Minnesota, this came to light when Philando Castile, a cafeteria worker at the J.J. Interestingly, school cafeteria workers are rarely considered change agents in the campaigns to increase healthy food access or reducing childhood obesity. But less frequently mentioned is the engagement of food workers in the successful roll out and maintenance of farm to school programs. These programs, combined with farm to school activities such as farm tours, were especially effective with pre-K students. In 2015, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that 42% or 42,587 schools in the United States had a program where they were buying locally grown produce. That’s what draws us to food and I want to bring that story to life.” Photo Credit Mike Hazardįarm to cafeteria programs are skyrocketing. “When you harvest something like peppers that Hmong people have grown in so many places throughout the world, and for so many years, you are retracing the footsteps of giants who have grown before you!” he says. Yia is excited to work with HAFA because he believes that the story of each dish starts with the raw ingredients and the people who grow them.
It dawn on him that he had been learning how to cook, all the while listening to his father’s stories and fond memories of life in Laos. Then he realized all of the Saturdays he had spent with his dad learning to hold a knife, butchering whole pigs, and perfecting the spice combination for laab (a sesame and chili flavored dish). “What was I doing when all of my friends were learning to roller skate,” he thought. Yia describes his childhood as atypical, but he did not realize it until one afternoon at a roller rink in high school when he found himself confined to the bench as his friends whizzed by and skated circles around him. “When my family was looking to buy a new house, the first two things we looked at were the size of the kitchen and if there was room for a garden in the backyard,” he says.
Yia’s own culinary journey started in Wisconsin where we was born and grew up. It tells us a story… poured from uncorked journeys and seasoned with aged strife.” Photo Credit Mike Hazard Along with Chef Eddie Wu, he runs Union Kitchen, a new kind of restaurant which focuses on the premise that “food is meant for more than survival.
According to Yia, Hmong dishes now reflect the many places Hmong people have called home. From their expulsion out of southern China, their migration throughout Southeast Asia, and their resettlement into countries all around the world including the United States, France and Argentina. Food tells us the story of who we are, where we come from, and where we are headed.”Ĭhef Vang’s dishes retell the nomadic history of the Hmong people. “Foods like these continuously captivate our interests because each bite contains a story. “We care about these dishes beyond their nutritional and caloric values,” says Vang. It was a riff on Hmong sausages and curry gravy topped with potatoes tatter tots, that even folks in Lake Wobegon would have considered as quintessential Minnesotan. This past year, he debuted a hot dish at the Minnesota State Fair that wowed attendees. Yia is re-imaging Hmong cuisines with a modern and local flare. If you are Hmong, most likely, you have eaten some kind of zuab hau (boiled mustard greens), nqaij npua hua (stewed pig), or nqaij qaib hau (simmered chiken), says Yia Vang, a chef in Saint Paul who has begun working with the Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA). Surely, our fascination and gravitation toward food goes much deeper.
But mere sustenance alone does not warrant hours of labor in a hot kitchen, or toiling in a field on a humid day, or treating generational family recipes like sacred treasures. Wh y do we love food so much? Obviously, it is necessary to our survival, and no one enjoys feeling hunger pains.