We are back for year two! Last year was a great success, we served more than 8000 meals district wide! For those of you new to school, the offering of school lunch at Tri-Valley, Cantwell and Anderson is new as of last year and provided by a non-profit organization called Alaskan Bounty for Children (ABC). Our team makes all meals from scratch using recipes created by the chefs on our team.

All these meals will be made by our team of volunteer chefs from raw ingredients. Because our team is still working their “summer jobs” we will start the year out with a menu that allows them to prepare meals in advance. The menu will likely be altered at the quarter.

Starting Wednesday, August 26th the menu will be:

Monday: Pizza Pasta

Tuesday: Chicken or Bean Burritos

Wednesday: Chili

Thursday: Mac & Cheese

Friday: Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Each meal will be served with fresh fruit and/or vegetables!

FYI, we are making slight adjustments to a few of the recipes to enhance palatability!

Note: If your child has a food intolerance or allergy please let us know.

Parent Involvement Opportunities:

This year we are excited to add a part time Chef to our team to offer continuity and support for the program. That said, we are eager to continue the history of community integration with our school and will have ample opportunities for groups and/or individuals to volunteer to help with lunch service. If you are interested, please contact us directly at

and we will add you to our list of interested volunteers. There will be both certification and behavior requirements if you'd like to participate. Thanks in advance for your continued support!

Donation Portal for Cost Coverage:

Many parents voiced their interest to continue to pay for their child to eat at school, and you can definitely still do that! In fact, we would encourage you to try to cover the cost if you can. Our donation portal is set up to clearly indicate the cost (no markup) of each meal so that families with financial comfort can donate directly, either on a per meal basis or to set up a monthly donation that covers their children.

$3.94 Covers one lunch for a student

$19.68 Covers a week of lunches for a student

$78.70 Covers a month of lunches for a student

Thank you again to all the people who have donated already, Denali Borough, Usibelli Foundation, Tonglen Lake Lodge and all the private donors. Our list of corporate sponsors is growing rapidly as we near the end of the summer season. We also want to thank the School District, the Lions Club and Neighbor to Neighbor for all of their support as well. We are so excited to finally be able to offer an option for school lunch in our communities!

Game, Wild Fish and Garden Donations:

We are really excited that Alaska State allows school programs to accept and serve wild game and fish. Being able to offer moose, caribou and wild caught fish to the children in our school district would be an amazing way to diversify our menu and keep our students connected to the subsistence lifestyle in our area. We can also accept vegetables from your garden if you have overproduced!

If you are hunting this fall, keep this in mind! You can be a part of providing wild game for the school lunch program. We can accept whole primal cuts or sausage/beef processed by a processing business. It’s very easy to swap sausage or ground meat into many of our dishes! If you are interested in getting more specifics on how and what we can accept please reach out to us at

.

We are very proud to serve our students and the community by providing clean, yummy meals again this year! Please feel free to reach out with feedback as usual!

See you next week!

Cali Best

907-750-2257

ABC President