Still life, with spork: Mrs. Q’s snap of pre-fab “Salisbury steak,” with canned peaches and canned corn. Photo: Mrs. Q
In “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related video from around the Web.
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Mrs. Q is an anonymous midwestern public-school teacher who has vowed to eat the rotten dreck being served up in her school cafeteria for an entire school year. Anyone who doesn’t understand all the fuss around school lunches must check out her blog, Fed UP with Lunch, where she documents these unhappy meals.
The blog really is terrific. In addition to the daily accounts of lunch-table disasters like “Salisbury steak,” Mrs. Q offers smart, pungent commentary from inside a public school in an economically depressed region. Her discussion of the “obesity frame”–a topic I’ll be returning to soon–is one of the best I’ve seen. Her post on how “there’s no money” for public schools–not just for lunch but for basic stuff like … teachers–is a heartbreaking commentary on how our public-education system is an ideal mechanism for entrenching class divisions.
I’m delighted to see Mrs. Q getting lots of media attention for her blog. Below is a Good Morning America segment on the courageous teacher. In it, she reveals that she fully expects to be exposed for her blog and fired for daring write it. I believe her. Teachers are supposed to slink into the lounge at lunchtime and not meddle in the affairs of the cafeteria. We are lucky that Mrs. Q refuses to play along. I watched the video twice–and can’t resist noting that the rotating set of adverts that precede the video come from the likes of Pepsi and Dunkin’ Donuts.
