Celebrating School Lunch Seafood Heroes

First up in our series of Seafood Heroes is the nutrition team at Bangor High School!

Not All Heroes Wear Capes

Some heroes wear aprons and chef's coats (or matching monkfish shirts)!

October is National Seafood Month, and to celebrate, we will be featuring our Seafood Heroes from across the state of Maine every week for the entire month. First up? Bangor High School. Let us count the ways in which this incredible school has championed getting Maine seafood onto students' plates and into their broader awareness of the local food system.

This year alone, Bangor High School:

• invited chef Joe Robbins, member of the Penobscot tribe and executive chef at Hampden’s Marsh Island Kitchen, to be a special guest in their cafeteria, where he cooked and served Gulf of Maine pollock with pureed local squash, local greens, charred lemons, and sage oil. 99% of students either liked or loved this dish!

• purchased more Gulf of Maine pollock to replicate Chef Robbins' dish and menued it at the high school again to rave reviews.

• menued Maine Coast Monkfish Stew - a delicious and creamy chowder-like soup with Gulf of Maine Monkfish and local potatoes, made by our partner, Hurricane's Soups in Greene, Maine.

• received 50# of dabs (flounder) from our Fishermen Feeding Mainers program to put on the menu this fall (possibly using one of our fun recipes, like the Pretzel-Crusted Flounder developed by Chef Barton Seaver, or the Iraqi Seven Spiced Fish, developed by Huda Abdulmajed)

• planned a soup sampling with our newest seafood soup - a delicious Monkfish Corn Chowder, also made by Hurricane's Soups.

We're so impressed by all of Bangor High School's efforts, especially those of Noelle Scott (the Food Service Director for the Bangor School Department), Rhonda Moulton (the Cafeteria Manager at the High School), Amanda Junkins (Food Service Secretary for the district), and the entire nutrition staff at Bangor High who willingly and enthusiastically committed to trying new things and championing local foods!

Thanks to the efforts of these fine Seafood Heroes, their students get to engage with local foods, nourish their bodies with healthy proteins, and support a robust Maine fishery - actions that will have an impact on their students' brains and bodies today and well into the future.