Xizhou Kindergarten Chef Makes Kids Happily Eat Sweet Potato Leaves Every Day

"Sometimes when I go out to eat with other teachers and we order sweet potato leaves, everyone says, oh my, you can still eat sweet potato leaves! Don't you get tired of them at school every day?" At noon on a summer day in June, Wu Yin-wen, a teacher at Zhangcuo Village Preschool in Xizhou, Changhua, said with a laugh: "In summer, the locally grown vegetables don't vary much, but our kitchen mom is so dedicated that getting tired of them is never a problem!"

"Can you guess how the kitchen mom prepares sweet potato leaves? She's so thoughtful! She picks out the stems one by one, keeping only the tender leaves, then blanches them, lets them cool, and tosses them with soy sauce and garlic. So appetizing!" Hearing the teacher's praise, Annie, an Indonesian kitchen mom who is also a preschool parent, smiled shyly: "On such a hot day, if you stir-fry the leaves in oil, they turn mushy, and the kids won't like them." Faced with the limited vegetables of summer, Annie uses a mother's love to turn out dish after dish that the children love to eat.

Xizhou Preschool, Making Delicious Food with Local Ingredients

Since 2011, in order to let children in this farming village eat vegetables and rice from nearby, Xizhou Township Office began implementing the "Local Ingredient Supply Plan for Preschools." The bidding method for school lunches was changed from "lowest price bid" to "most advantageous bid," requiring vendors to provide local ingredients as much as possible, so that children could eat rice, vegetables, noodles, and fruit produced in Xizhou, instead of filling their stomachs with cheap bread and cookies.

So that local ingredients could be cooked nearby and not go cold and oily from long-distance transport, the township office set up kitchens at preschools in each village. Every week, project manager Chen Tzu-hui drew up menus based on seasonal ingredients, calculated portions, and negotiated purchases with farmers. Then local drivers were hired to collect vegetables from farms daily, and the next day deliver package after package of fresh ingredients to preschools in 10 different villages. After the kitchen moms received the ingredients, they would fine-tune them according to that day's menu and the tastes of teachers and students, cooking healthy and easy-to-eat breakfasts, lunches, and afternoon snacks.

Series Reading: The Chef's Test

(This series of articles was funded by the Jianzhen Environmental Education Foundation for staffing costs, but the foundation did not interfere at all with news topics or interview writing, ensuring journalistic independence.)