Creating Weekend Food Menus
Kara at the Bonner Community Food Bank
University of Idaho intern, Kara Story volunteered to help with the menus for this year’s Food For Our Children Weekend Food Program XL for the Lake Pend Oreille High School and the Sandpoint Middle School. We met with Kara at the Bonner Community Food Bank to gain an insight into the planning that goes into creating menus for the weekend food bags.
Q: What are you studying at University of Idaho?
A: Food and Nutrition. I’m enrolled in the coordinated dietetics program, which means at the end of the course I will sit for a national credentialing exam to become a Registered Dietitian.
Q: How did your studies lead you to this project?
A: As part of my coursework I’m interning at the Panhandle Health District with Nanci Jenkins, MS, RDN, LD. Nanci offered me a range of project options and the project that most appealed to me was planning menus for the Food For Our Children Weekend Food Program.
Q: How did you decide which food items to include in the menu?
A: It was challenging! The Weekend Food bags contain two breakfasts, two lunches, two dinners and a couple of snacks. To start with, I went to Yoke's Fresh Market in Sandpoint and walked the aisles looking for nutritionally dense food that fitted the guidelines I was given such as budget, nutritional content, non-perishable/shelf stable packing etc. In particular I looked for food high in fiber and protein and overall, I searched for appealing meal ideas that children could easily put together with minimum or no equipment and feel full after eating.
Q: What were the major challenges when putting the menus together?
A: Staying within the budget was the biggest challenge. Keeping the cost to under $8 per bag was more difficult than I anticipated so I had to come up with ways to stretch the budget.
Q. What type of job will you be applying for when you graduate?
A: I’ll be looking for work in the area of Community Health. I enjoy being involved in the community and I think that the area of Community Health will offer great variety and give me a chance to have the most impact on peoples’ lives. Actually, my internship at the Panhandle Health District and this project for Food For Our Children has helped me to cement this direction. Thank you!