ALLEN, Texas (AP) - Navy veteran John Lara has whipped up meals for high-ranking military officials, members of George W. Bush’s Cabinet and the former president himself.
Now he develops recipes and trains cooks to win over another crowd: the students at Allen Independent School District.
Though Lara no longer prepares gourmet menus at the White House, feeding a 20,000-student district is no small potatoes.
“What’s more rewarding than here?” Lara told The Dallas Morning News (https://dallasne.ws/1clxKMc) as he peeled a cantaloupe on a steel counter in the Allen High School cafeteria kitchen. “It brings me back to my element, feeding the sailors.”
Lara, 47, has served as Allen ISD’s culinary specialist since 2010, when the position first opened. He retired from the Navy in 2009 and worked as Bush’s personal chef for a year. He said he took the Allen job to spend more time with his wife and three sons, ages 9 through 15.
Dorothy Thompson, director of student nutrition, said Lara was brought on board to train staff to cook more meals from scratch. In recent years, the federal government has put in guidelines to make school lunches healthier.
“I interviewed a lot of different chefs, and John was the person who was the most down-to-earth,” Thompson said.
Lara spends most of his time in the kitchen, training groups of campus staff or working with cooks one-on-one. On busy days he’ll help chop fruits and vegetables at the high school.
Training sessions with Lara range from how to make faux mashed potatoes with cauliflower to how to mop the kitchen floor properly.
His career began with the dirty work. Lara said he was 15 when he took a summer job as a dish washer at La Fuente’s, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Austin. By his senior year, he was fixing the enchilada sauce.
The youngest of eight siblings and the first to graduate from high school, Lara chose to continue his education through the Navy. He started as a seaman cleaning the deck of the battleship U.S.S. Missouri.
It wasn’t his cup of tea. He said he talked about working in the kitchens to another crew member, who told Lara to go “mess cranking.”
“I said, ’Cranking?’” Lara said. “He goes, ’Yeah, you got to go mess cooking, meaning you got to wash dishes, pick up trash.’”
Lara ended up toiling in the wardroom, the place in the ship where commissioned officers eat. He tasted an opportunity when he spotted avocados in the kitchen and offered to help the cooks make guacamole. Promotions followed.
“Cooking became a big part of what I did in the Navy and something that I mastered,” said Lara, who served for 24 years. “Not just cooking, but managing in the food service side and budgeting, human resources.”
Allen ISD doesn’t have the resources of the Navy or the White House Mess, a restaurant in the West Wing where Lara rose to executive chef. But the food staff at the school district tries to be creative, Lara said.
Just as he makes recipes for staples such as chicken, pizza and burgers, Lara injects international flavors he picked up in the Navy. He said a favorite at Allen High is the Yum Yum Noodle Bar. It combines noodles, meat, fresh vegetables and chicken stock or miso soup, a broth common in Japanese cuisine.
All elementary schools in Allen ISD are now equipped with dedicated salad bars. But making fruits and vegetables attractive to kids calls for strategy.
Broccoli is blanched to keep it bright green and crunchy. Carrots and green peppers are cut into matchstick-size strips. Apples are sliced and served neatly in cups.
On a recent Tuesday, Cheatham Elementary students obediently scooped at least one fruit or vegetable onto their plate, as required by federal rules.
“There’s a learning curve the first couple of weeks, but they’re actually doing good now,” said Doreen Perkic, cafeteria manager at Cheatham, as she manned the lunch line.
Cooks rushed in and out of the kitchen to restock trays with food they’d spent hours preparing.
Some kids ignored their veggies as they bit into whole-grain burgers and quesadillas. Others dipped or drenched their carrot strips in ranch and dug into their apple slices.
Enticing students with healthy food is a team effort, Lara said. It’s the kind of challenging task that reminds him of the Navy.
“It’s not your traditional lunch-lady routine,” he said. “It’s more than that. It’s a lot more than that.”
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Information from: The Dallas Morning News, https://www.dallasnews.com
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