Top Dressing The Lesson of a Peach by Eva Syrovy “Ms. S.,” asked the sweet sixth-grader who had unaccountably earned lunch detention in my classroom, “can you eat the skin?”
“What?” I was deep in the midst of readying for my four afternoon classes. She held up a beautiful, whole peach. “Is it OK to eat the skin?” “Yes, of course. Haven’t you ever had a fresh peach
before?” “No.” Then she bit into it.
She had my attention now. “How is it?” “Good! Sweet and a little sour ... mm, it’s really juicy!” Watching her munch on the perfectly ripe fruit, my thoughts were catapulted to a couple of weeks before. I’d been tasked with attending the local Farms-to-Schools meeting. It was at the end of a long day, the kids in my last period class had misbehaved, I couldn’t find a parking space, and I’d ar- rived late, disgusted and impatient with the liberal claptrap I was sure I’d hear.
There was a college professor who encouraged all
school district employees to fight for our principles, to make waves. As I listened, I thought, “She has no idea of the hierarchical nature of teaching, that making waves is hardly ever a good idea in the era of shrinking budgets and high credit card bills.”
Then Rick Hughes, the food and nutrition director for my school district, told of his trip to Palisade. He’d found an organic orchard and purchased peaches for the lunches of all the students in our school district as part of the district’s Good Food Project.
He relished telling the tale of the orchard owner who’d been out picking fruit when he called her. “I’ll serve the peaches whole—just like that—for dessert!” he enthused.
feinated.
At the time, I had listened a little dyspeptically and wished not for a peach but for a cup of something caf- I left as soon as I could, not looking forward to the next meeting.
Now, I watched the girl finish the fruit and realized that it wasn’t really surprising that it was the first time she’d eaten a fresh peach.
I recalled that, last summer, I’d walked by and looked longingly at the grocery-store display of Honeycrisp apples. Since each apple weighed about a pound, they cost about $3 per serving—and that was a little rich for my budget.
Around the corner stood a display of peanut butter and chocolate bars, the kind I love and used to indulge in fairly frequently, before I lost 60 pounds by basically eschewing all processed foods. The bars, each of which was two- to three-times the calories of one of the apples, cost $3—for a case of 12.
If I were a financially stressed parent trying to feed a family, I had to consider, which would I choose? The apples or the sugar- and fat-filled snack bars? All I can say to Mr. Hughes now is, “Kudos!”
The only downside? There weren’t quite enough peaches. When I asked Jake, my own seventh-grader, whether he’d tasted any of the delicious fruit, he said, “I saw them. But by the time I got to the front of the lunch line, they were gone.”
That broke my heart. But then again, Jake gets plenty of fruit at home. 72 Winter/Spring 2012
greenwomanmagazine.com
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