By Dayle Hayes, MS, RD

Just three more days to wrap up 31 Days of #RealSchoolFood – and I want to continue sharing school recipe resources. There’s no reason to spend time reinventing recipes that have already been developed. Your valuable time is much better spent making farm to school contacts, arranging culinary training for your staff or providing nutrition education to students.

Rather than starting from zero with a new menu item, find an existing recipe – and adapt it, if necessary, to fit the needs of your customers. Commodity boards – the marketing side of agricultural producer groups – are delicious sources of school recipes. They are eager to have schools incorporate their products into school meals – and offer lots of creative recipes to help you do that. The Mushroom Council has gone all out with a website devoted to Mushrooms in Schools, where they offer newsletters, success stories, complete menus and wonderful recipes. This Vegetable Flatbread offers a colorful combo of on-trend veggies and is perfect for Meatless Mondays.

NOTE: Both Malissa Marsden, my webinar co-presenter, and I consult for The Mushroom Council. You can also find more mushroom inspiration on the School Meals That Rock Pinterest page on the Mushrooms in Schools board.

Speaking of olives, Malissa has also helped the California Olive Committee create some really outstanding recipes. Many of them, like this Southwestern Stuffed Baked Potato, are very cost-effective because they use multiple USDA Foods in one recipe. There are recipes for all grade levels and all taste buds. All the K-12 California Ripe Olive Recipes are designed to meet current meal pattern guidelines – and to please your most discerning customers!

I’ll cover some protein commodity groups, including beef, eggs and dairy, tomorrow. Here are two others that have outstanding resources for school nutrition professionals.

• From USA Cranberries: Cranberries: The Perfect Fruit for School Foodservice Use
• From USA Rice: Recipes, educational toolkit and more