Chef's tips help students enjoy healthful snacks

Renowned Valley chef and restaurateur Eddie Matney was joking with the lunch crowd he served Friday, addressing most customers by name as he handed out fruit and vegetable kabobs and low-fat cookies.

And it's a good thing he knew them, too, because the students shopping at Chef Eddie's Snack Wagon in the Cherokee Elementary School cafeteria are also his son's classmates at the school in Paradise Valley.

Even though Matney sometimes comes in to see the students and help serve, the local television personality doesn't claim this is his venture.

The idea for the snack cart came from Sue Bettenhausen, the Scottsdale Unified School District's food services director, as a way to encourage kids to eat healthful snacks while reducing the wait time in the lunch line.

"The entire trend is once they get out of the meal line, anyone who is interested in additional items can go to the snack table," Bettenhausen said. "We're not encouraging kids to eat a fruit stick first before their entrees."

It was an accident that Matney got involved at all.

Bettenhausen wrote a letter home to parents explaining the benefits of the a la carte options coming to campus. Matney saw the e-mail message and responded, asking if he could help.

So Matney came in and met with the schools' fourth- and fifth-graders, asking what kind of food they'd want. He took those requests and made some sample dishes for Bettenhausen's staff to look at, who weighed those and other options as they developed the menu.

Matney said the students' top request was roasted salmon. While that hasn't made it on the menu - at least, not yet - there are several other healthy options, like fruit with yogurt dips and salads.

Matney hopes that giving students healthy food options will encourage them to keep making healthy choices, even outside the Cherokee cafeteria.

"It's awesome that the kids say they want hummus and pita chips," Matney said. "They can't keep edamame (a soybean concoction) in this place."

The food cart has proved popular so far. Cafeteria staff said it brought in about $370 its first day of operation and generally attracts between 320 and 350 of the school's approximately 550 students daily. The upscale snacks go for 50 cents to $2 apiece.

And this is just a pilot project - Bettenhausen wants to replicate the carts at other elementary schools starting this fall.

"I'd like to see two more starting at the beginning of the (school) year," she said. "We weren't even sure it was going to be successful, but now it is."