Schools
Shiver Me Timbers…Kids Eat Mushrooms Too!
As you prepare for the new school year’s menus, Mushrooms in Schools has your back with free resources, trainings, and student-approved recipes that embrace the Mighty Mushroom!.
Bring Mighty Mushroom to School Lunch
Do you want to add a sustainable, tasty vegetarian option for middle and high school students? The Portable Portabella Burger promotion provides recipes, marketing materials, and tips and tricks to engage these students. Everything is ready for you to plug and play simply!
Layers of Flavor Training – worth 1 CEU!
Take your staff through foundational culinary skills to prepare them to serve fresh, local mushrooms.
Check out our student-approved recipes that bring global flavors to life!
Looking to add local mushrooms to your menus? Use our catalog for tips and tricks for writing specifications, understanding mushroom types, and utilizing mushrooms in your kitchens.
Use our social media images below to engage your community in all of the fun events! Consider using pirate-themed names for your recipes, like Pirate Burger. You could also add a fun twist to nutrition education by creating a treasure hunt throughout the celebration.
Don’t forget National School Lunch Week is just around the corner! Start planning today with the Mushrooms in Schools resources.
Social Captions for the Classroom
Need social captions to use for your classroom? We did the work for you!
- Unlike other plants and produce, mushrooms don’t need light 💡 to grow and are often grown indoors 🌱
- There are many types of mushrooms to eat 🍽️ – the most commonly used mushrooms used in recipes are White Button, Portobello and Shiitake. Comment your favorite mushroom!
- Did you know that mushrooms are considered one of the most sustainably produced foods on the planet? Mushrooms provide vital vitamins and minerals, including Vitamin D, B-Vitamins, and antioxidants. 💪
- 🌍 Choosing mushrooms to enhance meat and vegetarian dishes is not only good for your health – it’s good for the planet because mushrooms require less water 💧 energy 💡 and land 🧑🌾 to produce than animal-based proteins.
Ahoy Matey!
Get students ready outside of the cafeteria with fun, interactive classroom activities. Mushrooms are grown indoors and are available year-round, which is a plus for consistent school menu planning and integrating local produce into recipes. If you don’t have a local mushroom farmer available to coordinate a hands-on field trip, there are still many ways to engage your students with the mushroom growing process using our easy-to-use resources.
Who doesn’t love a good coloring page? These are great additions to classroom lessons or taste tests. Try creating a coloring contest to add color to your cafeteria!
Mushrooms are the perfect companion to classroom learning. From mushroom nutrition to growing and processing, our resources can be used to reinforce and promote nutrition and sustainability education with your students.
Farm-to-School Resources
The mighty mushroom is ideal for hands-on demonstrations, classroom growing experiments, and tasty scratch-made meals that support your Farm to School Program! Our Farm to School toolkit provides ready-to-go materials for the classroom and cafeteria to promote local mushrooms and their environmental benefits.
Before they make their way to your plate, mushrooms go through a growing process in a highly controlled environment unlike that of any other produce item. Go through each step with us!
Time Lapse: Watch Mushrooms Grow
Watch the fascinating fungi-growing process over just six days!
Kids Eat Mushrooms Too Recipe Contests
Prepare for back to school with fun, new ways to incorporate mushrooms to add mushrooms on the school lunch menu! Here’s your chance to show off your cooking skills – enter your favorite mushroom recipe in the Kids Eat Mushrooms Too recipe contest!
The K12 Recipe Contest Opens on July 30th (ends September 30, 2024). Submit your favorite recipe that utilizes fresh mushrooms deliciously and innovatively!
Prizes for both contests include:
- First Place Grand Prize: Registration for the National Child Nutrition Conference, National Head Start Conference, or School Nutrition Association’s Annual National Conference (winner’s choice) in 2025
- Second Place Prize: Two Mushroom Grow Kits and Five Mushroom T-Shirts
- Third Place Prize: Three Mushroom T-Shirts and Three Mushroom Sunglasses
For more information, head over to our website here. Be sure to sign up for the School Nutrition newsletter or CACFP newsletter to stay updated with the latest!
See Us at ANC!
Want to chat about the recipe contest or recipes, or just say hi? We will be at booth number 333. We would love to meet you!
#KidsEatMushrooms2
If you plan to add more mushrooms to your menus, we would love to see what you and your students are cooking up!
Tag us on your Facebook and/or X (Twitter) post to win a Mushrooms in Schools T-shirt.
Whenever you share your recipes, we will feature you in our “Mushrooms on the Menu” newsletter (want to subscribe? Click here). We want to celebrate all the hard work you and your team do.
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