Students see them when they are serving them food and ringing them up at the register. However, LHS students never pause to wonder what’s going on back in the kitchen, behind the scenes as the nutritional service assistants are working to ensure a nice quality meal for each individual student.

“It can definitely be challenging sometimes getting everything prepared, out, hot and ready for you guys when you all come in,” nutritional service assistant Diana Goodwin said.

The day starts for them when many students are still sleeping.

“I get here at 5:30 in the morning,” cafeteria manager Judy Kerekes said. “Usually I’m putting an order in for what we’re planning to make for the following week or we’re getting ready and prepping all morning for what we’re going to be serving for breakfast and lunch. It’s all busy work. There is no down time for us.”

To add to the workload, the nutritional service assistants make everything from scratch, but they can’t make it the way they would for their families.

“We make everything from scratch, from dinner rolls to muffins,” Goodwin said. “The only thing we don’t make from scratch are the cookies, but we still have to bake the dough that is sent to us. All of the hot foods are made from scratch, however we can’t make them like the way we would make food at home. The health department and the nutritional services give us certain criteria. We can’t put a lot of sugar in food. That’s why we can’t give students unlimited amounts of butter, salt and pepper.”

There are also other challenges that the manager and nutritional service assistants have to deal with, especially when it comes to the students.

“We’re trying to solve the problem of the cluster we have in the french fries line, so we’re open to any ideas at all and we would very much appreciate suggestions from the students,” Kerekes said. “Along with that, we have a few kids stealing. Because there are so many students in the area, it can be very hard to control.”

It’s been a busy past month for the team. They implemented their new breakfast menu on November 28.

“The new menu is up to my supervisor. They create the menu and figure out the nutritional balance, but the new menu has definitely been a change that’s taken some getting used to,” Kerekes said.

Each meal comes with its own set of challenges to prepare the food many students enjoy so much.

“The nachos take a lot of time to make,” nutritional service assistant Tess Schwarz said. “You would not believe the amount of dicing it takes to make the salsa. We have to dice the tomatoes, the onion, the cilantro, the jalapeños and the red bell peppers. Luckily, we still have all of our fingers!”

The nutritional service assistants agree it’s a challenging and rushed job, but it’s also a job like no other.

“I like my job period,” Goodwin said. “I enjoy working the register to interact with all of the students and I also enjoy talking with all of the other nutritional service assistants here.”

Schwarz agreed.

“A couple years ago, we used to be able to chat with the kids in line all the time,” she said. “Nowadays we barely have time to put food on their plate and send them on their way. Most of the kids are very friendly though, so that’s a big plus side to the job.”

For everything the nutritional service assistants do for LHS, students in the Leadership class will be returning the favor.

“It’s called cooking with the cooks,” senior Katie Parrott said. “It’s one of our five projects we’re doing for the holidays. My quad and I are going to be cooking a meal for the cafeteria workers on December 20. They put in so much work for our school and we feel like we should reciprocate.”