You walk through the line, grab your tray, pick your food, and feast. Lunch is some of students’ favorite time of the day. It’s where you can talk with friends, catch-up on homework, and just get your mind away from the daily grind. But what about the people who make this great time of the day happen? The one’s who work hard to make the food that fills our empty stomachs? The one’s who sometime may go unnoticed? The ALHS lunch ladies are who make it all happen.
They arrive at 6:30 am to start preparing our food. Jacqui Callahan, a lunch lady who works on the classic line, said “some food takes 2 to 3 weeks to prepare in advance.”
You know those spicy chicken sandwiches that most people love? The lunch ladies make and prepare over 400 of them for Tuesday afternoons. Along with the mass amounts of spicy chicken sandwiches, the lunch ladies make 350 pizzas, 300 hamburgers, and 500 servings of fries. And this doesn’t include all of the other food students eat, including fruit, vegetables and soup. Some other examples of preparation that they do are checking the temperature of the food, and writing down the exact numbers of the food served.
“The food has to be just the right temperature,” Callahan said.
They keep a diary of exact numbers so they can estimate how much food to make the next week.
After all of the preparation, lunchtime roles along. They serve and feed all 1130 of us.
“I really like to see the kids and what foods they like and dislike,” Callahan said.
“We like to see what lines the students choose to go to,” lunch lady, Jodi Bonnerup said.
Outside of school, the lunch ladies do a lot of different things. They have a lot of different hobbies. Some things they do are ride horse, go camping, and embroidery. They enjoy a lot of things that we students do.
“I really like seeing the kids. You get to see them all grow up and I really enjoy that part of this job,” Bonnerup said.