Supported by funders, parents, partners, and community, we are committed to healthy eating and active living for all of us. Our menus include new items that include fresh produce, as well as familiar favorites. Our team of food and nutrition professionals, including a Registered Dietitian, collaborate on our menus and ensure all items are healthy and our meals, balanced. For example, one of the newest breakfast items is banana sushi! This balanced breakfast provides a whole grain (whole wheat tortilla), protein (sunflower seed butter), fresh fruit (banana), and milk. It can be assembled by the children to create a fun and hands-on learning experience with food at our child development sites.
We utilize a curriculum called Garden of Eatin’ to teach children about food, nutrition, cooking, gardening, agriculture, nature, and related topics. Children enrolled in our Early Children and Family Services programs also learn about healthy eating by the example of their caregivers, who model healthy habits, manners, and good choices in the classroom.
All of the hard work that goes into our production farm makes us proud. In 2023 our campus farms produced 1,098.5 pounds and 18 different varieties of fresh produce. The harvest included 25 pounds of organic Bok Choy and 179 pounds of Tomatoes! These were delivered to the kitchen and this beautiful produce went right into the meals we served to the children in our programs.
Through a partnership with ExtraFood and San Anselmo-based Insalata’s Restaurant, the restauranteur is using produce gathered from our Production Farm as well as ingredients that ExtraFood is gathering from other locations in Marin, to cook soups twice a week in Community Action Marin’s Central Kitchen. Volunteers deliver the soup to each of our Children and Family Services childcare centers, as well as to two of our Senior Congregant Meal locations.