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Food and Community
C ommunity and food go hand in hand at Tandem Friends; we like to eat together! From potlucks to pancakes, theatre tech week meals to tacos, this community agrees that food brings people together. Our school lunch program, catered by Whole Foods Market, provides delicious and healthy choices for our community. Sports teams sometimes share post-game meals together, and our theatre and concert concessions always include home-baked goods. Our seniors and their families share a final baccalaureate meal together. Our PACEM Emphasis program finds students cooking breakfast and dinner for local homeless men. Our Parents Association showers our faculty with delicious snacks during Faculty Appreciation days. And if it's a beautiful day outside, you can usually find a bake sale going on to support a community service effort or a good cause.
Environmental stewardship dictates how, and sometimes what, we eat. Our lunches are served on real plates with real cups and silverware. We do not have soda machines on campus (just water coolers). We save lunch scraps for our chickens and local pigs. When we have a large community gathering, we use biodegradable (corn-based) paper products. Don't even think of using styrofoam!. Our faculty drinks Fair Trade coffee and Whole Foods, our lunch provider, uses many locally and organically raised foods.
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Our daily lunches, Tuesday through Friday, are provided by Whole Foods Market, our lunch caterer. Meals are delicious and healthy, created with good nutrition and tasty local ingredients at the forefront. Students can sign up and pay for lunches (by day of week) online. Lunch is served in our cafe and students can eat inside the cafe, outside at shaded tables, or many other places, inside or outside, on campus.
Whole Foods' mission around our lunch program is simple: "The over-arching goal is to incorporate what the kids are eating into a holistic understanding of where their food comes from, how the food is produced, some of the scientific aspects of how the specific dish is made, different farming techniques, and nutrition."
Students who prefer to pack a lunch may do so easily at Tandem. The cafe is well stocked with microwaves and refrigerators, as is the Middle School Meeting Room. The Senior Lounge provides juniors and seniors with a place to store and heat their lunches as well. Students can refrigerate their lunches, then reheat them at lunch. Water coolers are located all over campus.
For those who might forget a lunch one day, there is always something available, including a large store of peanut butter and jelly!
Early every Wednesday morning, for many years, a dedicated faculty and parent crew has gathered to make pancakes in the cafe. Students and their families arrive early, and all are invited to dine from 7:30 to 8:25AM. Students may help assemble the breakfasts, which usually include additional items like sausage, eggs, juice or coffee. Wednesdays offer us a reason to either get going a little early, or sleep in a little knowing that breakfast will be waiting. Griddles line the counters, vats of batter are mixed, and spatulas fly as tall piles of pancakes are consumed, plate by plate, by smiling students, parents and faculty.
On Mondays, 8th graders prepare a 'Taco Lunch' for sale to their peers. The lunch consists of two tortillas (bean or beef) with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and salsa, chips, dessert and lemonade. Buying locally is a big part of the plan, and money earned supports 8th grade trips, the end-of-year dinner dance, and at least one philanthropic cause (recent projects have included paying for a well in an African village, and supporting the building of the national Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial). 8th grade students, three or four volunteers per week, help set up, sell, cook, serve, and clean up for the meal. Every 8th grader helps at some point during the year. Monday lunches are very popular!
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Our community gathers on the front lawn one evening during the first week of school for a Community Potluck. Tables of food, families on blankets, a large circle of silence to begin the event, and then a wonderful evening of catching up or getting acquainted with new families make Community Potluck one of our favorite annual events.
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The Wednesday Pancake Crew cooks up delicious pancakes every Wednesday morning for the entire Tandem community.
The annual fall community picnic.
Students enjoy s'mores on Blue Ridge Day.
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.jpg "7th grade students volunteer at a soup kitchen")
