Friday 5/7: Pizza Friday

The menu reads as follows: Assorted Pizza, Tossed Salad, Fresh Carrot Sticks, Fresh Apple

What they got: Plain pizza, tossed salad and a fresh apple and milk.

On paper this meal sounded well-balanced but upon execution it kind of failed. If you notice the carrots are missing. Actually the carrots made it to the school.

They just never quite made it onto the kids' plates because while serving them they [the school] realized the carrots had expired. If you look closely you will notice a USE BY: FEB 27 2010  These have been expired for over a month now. That said, the USDA's official stance on this is :

Except for "use-by" dates, product dates don't always refer to home storage and use after purchase. "Use-by" dates usually refer to best quality and are not safety dates. But even if the date expires during home storage, a product should be safe, wholesome and of good quality — if handled properly and kept at 40° F or below

I pretty much follow the above and will still use products even though they have technically expired but I guess the schools are not allowed to make those kinds of determinations....or did they? The food comes from our main kitchen, so did they know that the carrots had expired for over a month already? Needless to say our school caught it and stopped them from being served. Was there something wrong with the carrots? Probably not, but I think the school chose to err on the side of caution and to not offer the carrots to the kids at all. Lets see if they get it right next Friday!