Not that I'm feeling down, just a title that pays homage to something I wrote a long time ago, can't really remember what. You, know...inside jokes, man. Been really busy lately, that's why I haven't blogged about anything; nothing interesting is happening. I work 55+ hours a week between the internship and Carmax, so when I'm off I don't always feeling like doing anything cool (unless you count video games as cool).
Should be getting an AircheckTexas voucher any day now. I completed my paperwork and faxed it in Monday. They said it takes four days. And then its goodbye Maxima. I like that car, but it's time is up and I can't wait to get a new car. It'll be the first I've ever financed, so it's a cool feeling (the part about being able to pay for a car, not giving money away). The best part is that with a sweet new ride I can take a trip to San Marcos to see my pals and not have to worry about my car's transmission giving up on me. I like being back in Houston but sometimes I feel like this really isn't my place anymore and I'd be more at home in SM. There's just not much going on for me here, and why would there be after spending almost five years somewhere else?
I'll be leaving for New Orleans tomorrow, hitching a ride with my former prof, Sue Weill, for the Society of Professional Journalist convention. I'm going to be part of a presentation that shows why the Doctors Without Borders exhibit in downtown Houston prepared me to cover a crisis zone. I'll try to have fun with that. Hopefully I can get some downtime, because I'm tired of taking on one thing after another and would like to just zone out for a while. But it'll be a few more weeks until the internship is over, and then I'll go back to just 40 hours. That's sounds good. Not that I don't like working with the people at H Texas, because they are all cool, from the designers, ed staff, advertising, everyone. We've gone out after work a couple times and it's been fun. But I have too many things I want to do outside of a daily job to be investing almost 60 hours a week to work-related stuff.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
new article
This is a piece on Recipe for Success, an organization improving the diet and nutrition of Houston-area children through elementary school education. It will appear in the H Texas April edition. Photos courtesy of Recipe for Success.
By Chris Boehm
Forget the three Rs. For Houston elementary students, it could soon be four: reading, writing, (a)rithmetic and rotisserie.
Recipe for Success is in its second academic year serving five pilot HISD elementary schools: Briscoe, Gross, MacGregor, NQ Henderson and Sylvan Rodriguez. The program fights child obesity by instilling positive and healthy eating habits. “I was concerned with the level of junk food marketed toward children. It’s still alarming,” says organization founder and chairman Gracie Cavnar, who began developments 12 years ago. In Texas, 75 percent of adults could be overweight (excess amount of body weight) or obese (excess amount of body fat) by 2040. In 2005, 29 percent of high school students were overweight or at risk of becoming overweight.
Recipe for Success includes after-school cooking lessons, gardening and a dinner club. But the flagship service is Chefs in Schools, a program made possible through Cavnar’s connections with top culinary artists in Houston, including Chef Monica Pope of T’afia. The two would often discuss how to fight childhood obesity. “I used to joke [that] a lot of people talk,” Pope says. “But five years later [Cavnar] said ‘OK, I’m ready.’” Pope jumped on board immediately.
Last year Cavnar and Pope, the latter a co-chief chef on the organization’s advisory board, recruited top chefs from the city to start Recipe for Success. This year there are more than 40 chefs working in the program, including 24 teaching culinary classes to more than 450 fourth-graders. Chefs such as Robert Del Grande, Lance Fegen, Andrea Lazar and Randy Evans stress the idea that food comes from somewhere besides a box or can, and format easy-to-follow, practical recipes. Some dishes have just five ingredients.
Recipes include pumpkin soup, baked chicken nuggets with homemade ketchup and whole grain pasta. In all, more than 120 recipes have been developed during the program’s two years. “Last year, I did more cooking in front of them,” Pope says. She also encourages students to help prepare the recipes. “We’ve done a lot of salads where they try different types of lettuce. We had them make their own dressing to understand proper proportion of acid to oil. And normally they wouldn’t be exposed to other types of dressings besides ranch. It’s just [about] better choices.”
After a year-and-a-half with the fourth grade classes, it’s clear the program makes a difference. The Texas Department of State Health Services reports during the 2004-2005 academic year, 42 percent of fourth-graders were overweight or at risk of being overweight. But Cavnar says a Baylor College of Medicine study completed in December showed a reversal of trend in connection with Recipe for Success. Data was collected from area elementary students, including those in Cavnar’s pilot program. The schools with Recipe for Success were the only ones not to show an increase in overweight elementary students from year to year. “The data was so jaw-dropping that the researchers had to double check their findings,” Cavnar says. “It’s not rocket science. If you engage children in experimenting and learning, they will try to assimilate it into their everyday behavior. All moms know that.”
Other schools have requested Cavnar’s service, but Recipe for Success has strived to keep the program, which costs approximately $100,000 per location, at five pilot schools to iron out wrinkles. “It means a lot (to be a part of the pilot program),” says MacGregor principal Patricia Allen. “It puts us a step above the other schools with nutrition. It’d be great to get it into middle schools. They have home economics classes, but this is way more intense.”
Next year Recipe for Success will sell bound curriculum to schools and plans to train nutrition professionals to teach the material. Cavnar says the program will look to create “a la carte” packages that will serve as lessons for the classes. Plans also include a downtown Nutritional Education Center, which is about 18 months away from completion and will serve more than 27,000 children once completed.
After making headway in the kitchen, Cavnar plans to carry her message to the living room. Recipe for Success is working with PBS and The Discovery Channel to produce a television show hosted by Evans and children. With guest chefs and experts, the broadcast will include field trips to grocery stores and restaurants to encourage healthy eating habits. The show is in pre-production and doesn’t have a title. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to name a show,” Cavnar jokes. “But it’s going to be national so we have to be careful what we name it.”
The demographic of the show will be ages 6 to 11. Data shows children who develop good eating habits by age 11 can avoid a lifetime of diet and weight problems. “We’re catching them at a time when we they can learn and absorb,” Pope says. “It may not change their life right now but [it could] down the road when they’re 18 or 21.” In addition to a potential lifetime of heart and health problems, studies also link diets high in sugar and fat to poor academics. Recipe for Success attempts to combat this trend with a “seed-to-plate” curriculum – more fascinating than the “seed-to-plant” education taught in most science classes. “From what I see, it does have an effect,” Allen says. “In science class there’s always something where you plant a seed and you see the bean grow. With [seed-to-plate], you see a real interest because they don’t just have a bean, but something they can eat.”
The key to the Recipe for Success model, says Cavnar, is implementation. “What I discovered was there was a lot of research on the shelf – teaching material and data – but not much data for implementation,” she says. “That’s where it falls down and where we decided to pick up the gauntlet: at the school level, mentoring and teaching in-school personnel how to go about this."
Recipe for Success’ level of implementation varies by school. At Sylvan Rodriguez Cavnar operates a full ancillary program, which provides 20 hours of instruction during the year to all 1,050 students at the school. And daily after-school classes are available for all grade levels at MacGregor, where Allen says the program has been more popular than older pre-established ones. Gardening classes are also available for all grade levels at all five schools.
The Recipe for Success Foundation
1401 McKinney, Ste. 925
Houston, TX 77010
713-307-7005
www.recipe4success.org
By Chris BoehmForget the three Rs. For Houston elementary students, it could soon be four: reading, writing, (a)rithmetic and rotisserie.
Recipe for Success is in its second academic year serving five pilot HISD elementary schools: Briscoe, Gross, MacGregor, NQ Henderson and Sylvan Rodriguez. The program fights child obesity by instilling positive and healthy eating habits. “I was concerned with the level of junk food marketed toward children. It’s still alarming,” says organization founder and chairman Gracie Cavnar, who began developments 12 years ago. In Texas, 75 percent of adults could be overweight (excess amount of body weight) or obese (excess amount of body fat) by 2040. In 2005, 29 percent of high school students were overweight or at risk of becoming overweight.
Recipe for Success includes after-school cooking lessons, gardening and a dinner club. But the flagship service is Chefs in Schools, a program made possible through Cavnar’s connections with top culinary artists in Houston, including Chef Monica Pope of T’afia. The two would often discuss how to fight childhood obesity. “I used to joke [that] a lot of people talk,” Pope says. “But five years later [Cavnar] said ‘OK, I’m ready.’” Pope jumped on board immediately.
Last year Cavnar and Pope, the latter a co-chief chef on the organization’s advisory board, recruited top chefs from the city to start Recipe for Success. This year there are more than 40 chefs working in the program, including 24 teaching culinary classes to more than 450 fourth-graders. Chefs such as Robert Del Grande, Lance Fegen, Andrea Lazar and Randy Evans stress the idea that food comes from somewhere besides a box or can, and format easy-to-follow, practical recipes. Some dishes have just five ingredients.
Recipes include pumpkin soup, baked chicken nuggets with homemade ketchup and whole grain pasta. In all, more than 120 recipes have been developed during the program’s two years. “Last year, I did more cooking in front of them,” Pope says. She also encourages students to help prepare the recipes. “We’ve done a lot of salads where they try different types of lettuce. We had them make their own dressing to understand proper proportion of acid to oil. And normally they wouldn’t be exposed to other types of dressings besides ranch. It’s just [about] better choices.”
After a year-and-a-half with the fourth grade classes, it’s clear the program makes a difference. The Texas Department of State Health Services reports during the 2004-2005 academic year, 42 percent of fourth-graders were overweight or at risk of being overweight. But Cavnar says a Baylor College of Medicine study completed in December showed a reversal of trend in connection with Recipe for Success. Data was collected from area elementary students, including those in Cavnar’s pilot program. The schools with Recipe for Success were the only ones not to show an increase in overweight elementary students from year to year. “The data was so jaw-dropping that the researchers had to double check their findings,” Cavnar says. “It’s not rocket science. If you engage children in experimenting and learning, they will try to assimilate it into their everyday behavior. All moms know that.”
Other schools have requested Cavnar’s service, but Recipe for Success has strived to keep the program, which costs approximately $100,000 per location, at five pilot schools to iron out wrinkles. “It means a lot (to be a part of the pilot program),” says MacGregor principal Patricia Allen. “It puts us a step above the other schools with nutrition. It’d be great to get it into middle schools. They have home economics classes, but this is way more intense.”
Next year Recipe for Success will sell bound curriculum to schools and plans to train nutrition professionals to teach the material. Cavnar says the program will look to create “a la carte” packages that will serve as lessons for the classes. Plans also include a downtown Nutritional Education Center, which is about 18 months away from completion and will serve more than 27,000 children once completed.
After making headway in the kitchen, Cavnar plans to carry her message to the living room. Recipe for Success is working with PBS and The Discovery Channel to produce a television show hosted by Evans and children. With guest chefs and experts, the broadcast will include field trips to grocery stores and restaurants to encourage healthy eating habits. The show is in pre-production and doesn’t have a title. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to name a show,” Cavnar jokes. “But it’s going to be national so we have to be careful what we name it.”
The demographic of the show will be ages 6 to 11. Data shows children who develop good eating habits by age 11 can avoid a lifetime of diet and weight problems. “We’re catching them at a time when we they can learn and absorb,” Pope says. “It may not change their life right now but [it could] down the road when they’re 18 or 21.” In addition to a potential lifetime of heart and health problems, studies also link diets high in sugar and fat to poor academics. Recipe for Success attempts to combat this trend with a “seed-to-plate” curriculum – more fascinating than the “seed-to-plant” education taught in most science classes. “From what I see, it does have an effect,” Allen says. “In science class there’s always something where you plant a seed and you see the bean grow. With [seed-to-plate], you see a real interest because they don’t just have a bean, but something they can eat.”
The key to the Recipe for Success model, says Cavnar, is implementation. “What I discovered was there was a lot of research on the shelf – teaching material and data – but not much data for implementation,” she says. “That’s where it falls down and where we decided to pick up the gauntlet: at the school level, mentoring and teaching in-school personnel how to go about this."
Recipe for Success’ level of implementation varies by school. At Sylvan Rodriguez Cavnar operates a full ancillary program, which provides 20 hours of instruction during the year to all 1,050 students at the school. And daily after-school classes are available for all grade levels at MacGregor, where Allen says the program has been more popular than older pre-established ones. Gardening classes are also available for all grade levels at all five schools.
The Recipe for Success Foundation
1401 McKinney, Ste. 925
Houston, TX 77010
713-307-7005
www.recipe4success.org
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