New Haven Independent

Yes, that’s a fantasy. A delicious fantasy nonetheless. It came to mind — and palate — Friday at the Barnard Magnet School, where Criscuolo prepared the above dish for two dozen kids in the school’s Green Wednesday Club. These are kids who work in the environmentally-themed school’s many gardens and have planted potatoes, tomatoes, and carrots.

In the wake of Aramark’s departure and the Board of Ed’s recent decision to take the food service program in-house, applications are currently being reviewed for a new director. It’s certainly the hope of food advocates like Criscuolo and Jennifer McTiernan, founder of New Haven’s CitySeed markets and a driving force behind a new report calling for more healthful school lunches. She and Criscuolo hope that future menus will, like Friday’s feast, contain a lot more Swiss chard and a lot fewer chicken fingers.

“It’s really an unprecedented opportunity,” said McTiernan, who was consulted by the BOE, among many others, in fashioning the job description, “to reimagine the New Haven Public Schools food service program.”

Friday was Criscuolo’s second appearance at Barnard. Last time, they made parsley and bean dip. Both times the main ingredients were grown by the kids themselves in attractive Earthboxes. Criscuolo, owner of the eponymous restaurant at College and Chapel, and an avid advocate of the locally grown, the fresh, and the organic, has purchased the boxes for several schools.

The Earthboxes, being modeled by the kids’ award-winning science teacher, Marjorie Drucker, come to Barnard courtesy of The Growing Connection. That’s a pilot project of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, targeted at teaching 10 to 15 year olds how to grow their own food and, in the process to connect them with each other.

“The great thing about the Earthboxes,” said Criscuolo as she wowed the kids with the aromas of garlic cooking in oil and explained the deep cruciferous values of the dark leafed vegetable, “is not only that you can grow 30 to 40 pounds of vegetables for little and it’s all wonderful. But the kids, via the program, exchange recipes, email each other from New Haven and Greenwich to Ghana.”

Each of the Earthboxes comes not only with the earth and seeds but a curriculum and Internet access programs. Criscuolo met a man named Bill Patterson, the guru of the UN’s Earthbox program at — where else? — the green market in Union Square. He impressed upon the power of food. “If kids exchange recipes,” she paraphrased Patterson, “they’re also learning all kinds of things about working together too, conflict resolution. Those who cook are far less likely to bomb each other.”

How did the meal go down with the kids? Third-grader Charron Rogers (pictured) said the swiss chard reminded him of spinach. “But it’s even better,” he added.

The review that any chef loves to hear came from third-grader Tariq Williams.

“I love your cooking,” he declared, and asked if there were any more. He said he’d had chard or something like it before, “but it never tasted this good at home.”

Criscuolo went on, with aromatic energy, to tell the kids about Vitamin A. Somehow that put young Tariq (pictured) in mind of a previous food experience, not nearly so tasty. “Once I went to the store and I bought a hot pocket and it had green spots on it, and I ate it, and threw up.”

“Ah,” said Claire. “if you continue to grow your own food, it will be under your own control.”

What was perhaps a little surprising was how many kids raised their hands when Criscuolo asked who had a garden at home. At least half the kids did. What was grown appeared to be far more fruit than vegetables.

The notion that fresh vegetables would not be well received by kids, said Nicole Berube, a program manager with CitySeed, who dropped by to watch Criscuolo’s gastronomy, has been simply disproved time after time. She cited the gardens and programs at Common Ground High School, and the trips that many teachers take their kids on, often at their own expense, to local farms, as evidence of an evolving mindset about growing and eating your own food.

Frank Criscuolo, Claire’s husband, who acted as her sous-chef, said, “The idea here is really psychological too. You want these kids to be walking down the food aisle with their family and to say, ‘Mom, look, stop. Buy that. I had it at school.’”

Indeed, Dayniera Artis, who also liked her apple, said she was going home that night and asking her mom to cook Claire’s dish. That’s chard, olive oil, fresh garlic, diced tomatoes — be careful you don’t cut your finger on the can — whole wheat pasta, salt.

For their part, the Board of Ed is cooking up a new director of food services to be ready for the summer programs, and beyond. Chief Operating Officer Will Clark reported that many applications are coming in. To get the right person to mange the food program in-house, he said, “I’ve received tremendous support from the unions, Yale, the schools’ Wellness Committee, the Food Policy Council. I’m confident we’ll be successful in our efforts.”

Did that mean lots more Swiss chard? He answered alas, not like a cook, but a good and careful administrator: “This process will allow for more control over purchasing decisions and menu offerings.”

The job description and application guidelines are online at the BOE’s website: