Drummoyne Public School
Multicultural Food
The sign in the canteen that reads “Home Cooking” sums up Drummoyne Public School’s approach to providing food from different cultures in their canteen. A few times a month home-style multicultural foods are cooked in the canteen by parents, grandparents and volunteers in the same way that they cook them in their own homes.
Drummoyne Public School has a large number of different cultures represented within their school. These include Greek, Italian, Chinese, Philippino, Japanese and Australian. Serving foods from different cultural backgrounds helps children to feel comfortable within the school environment and helps the students to appreciate and respect cultural traditions and differences. It also allows children to taste and enjoy different flavours and textures that they may not be willing to try outside of the school.
On the day that the Healthyy Kids SCA visited the school it was a real family affair. Cynthia, the grandmother of Alex, from the kindergarten class was preparing “Pansit”. This is a traditional Philippino dish of rice noodles, minced chicken, carrots, bok choy and green beans flavoured with soy sauce. Cynthia’s son in law Yoni was also helping in the canteen that day.
Canteen manager Jacquie says that during the course of each month the children enjoy a variety of foods from many cultures. This includes Nori rolls, fried rice, pansit, pad Thai, lasagne, olive bread, curry puffs and spaghetti Bolognese. School Parents and families all enjoy helping out in the canteen on a regular basis as they too can learn how to prepare multicultural foods and to share cultural secrets from around the globe.
Other foods offered regularly on the menu include tortillas, noodle salad, hummus on grilled French stick slices and honey and soy chicken drumsticks, which have replaced pies and sausage rolls on the menu.
The school has received the $1500 ‘Healthy School Communities’ grant from the Commonwealth Government. They plan to make a canteen garden. The garden will produce many different types of vegetables and herbs including those from other countries. The garden will be used as a learning resource for the classroom as well as produce vegetables for use in the canteen.
The garden will help to draw the community into the school. Jackie plans to invite parents, grandparents and friends of the school to help in the garden and to contribute any special skills that they have.
Back to Case Studies list