Day in the life: Teresa Bernhardt, school cook
Teresa Bernhardt oversees meals for hundreds as head of food service for USD 410
By JENNIFER WILSON
News editor
When you walk into the kitchen, the first thing you notice is the cinnamony-sweet smell of the french toast sticks, all warm and crispy and ready for syrup.
It's a Friday morning at the Hillsboro High School cafeteria. While the breakfast students continue to trickle in just after 8, the cooks inside the kitchen are already thinking about the next meal of the day: lunch.
Just another day at work for Teresa Bernhardt, head of food service for the Durham-Hillsboro-Lehigh school district.
Although her job description usually puts her under a mountain of paperwork, Bernhardt works twice a week in the HHS/HMS kitchen, on Mondays and Fridays. She starts her day early at 6:30.
Back in the corner of the kitchen, across the hall from the walk-in refrigerator and the walk-in freezer (set at zero degrees), is Bernhardt's office. But it's not the typical workspace — most offices don't have oversized boxes of muffin mix on the shelves and huge cans of green beans and pears on a rack.
But this morning, she's working with the food. At 11 a.m., the middle schoolers will be in the cafeteria for lunch. On the menu today: hero subs, hash browns, pears, juice, ice cream, rolls, and milk.
About 300 middle school and high school students eat lunch here every day, Bernhardt says. Thursday's frito pie — a combination of frito chips, chili mixture, and cheese just like you find on the menu at Sonic — drew 316 for lunch.
Hamburger and pizza — especially Pizza Hut pizza — are always favorites with the students. They also devour rosy applesauce and a strawberry-banana mixture, Bernhardt says.
And since HHS has an open lunch for all students, freshmen through seniors, the school lunch menu is essentially competing with Hillsboro's restaurants, Bernhardt says.
But there's one thing you can't find just anywhere: homemade bread. All of the bread for both HES and HHS lunches is made from scratch.
This Friday morning, Mary Loewen is laboring over a massive amount of dough. She's making the buns for the hero sandwiches — a job she's been at since she arrived at work at 6 a.m.
First, a massive mixer takes the bare ingredients and forms a huge mass of dough. Loewen takes sections of that dough and puts it onto a large flat circle with small indentations. That circle then goes into another machine, which forms 36 round balls of dough, each weighing three ounces. When she makes rolls, they weigh two ounces each.
Loewen then squishes each ball into an elongated shape and places it on a large aluminum pan. Once each pan of bread is baked, each bun must then be sliced in half.
Making bread is nothing new to Loewen — she does it almost every morning, except on muffin days.
Toward the front of the kitchen, Bernhardt is working on the innards of the sandwiches: ham, turkey, and cheese. Each component arrives at the kitchen in a long tube, which Bernhardt must then slice with a heavy metal meat slicer.
It's a lot of work for sandwiches, but Bernhardt doesn't like the pre-sliced meats — the quality isn't good enough, she says.
Hanging just above Bernhardt's head is a silent observer to the entire process: an inflatable cow, about a yard long. The cow was a gift from the school's dairy supplier, and it's appropriately dressed in a maroon Hillsboro football jersey. Once basketball season starts, the cow will sport the sleeveless look.
Although the cooks expect 300 students for lunch, the numbers for breakfast are much lower. Usually, between 45 and 65 students show up for their first meal of the day. Juice and cereal are always served, in case the students don't like the main course. That can vary from cinnamon rolls to breakfast burritos.
Lunch menus are on a six-week rotation, Bernhardt says. That's not counting chicken strips, pizza, and hamburgers, which are favorites.
And no, the students don't get chicken all the time, Bernhardt says — it's no more than twice a week.
Bernhardt hears a lot of complaints from the students. But they're not in her shoes.
Sometimes they say that the scrambled eggs are powdered. But Bernhardt knows they're fresh — she came in early that morning to crack each egg herself, by hand.
"I serve them the very best I can," she says.
The students also don't know how closely Bernhardt has to watch every component of their meals, from calories to protein and carbohydrate content to the amount of Vitamin A that a food has.
Bernhardt works according to strict guidelines. Students have a recommended daily allowance of 2,000 calories per day. Bernhardt has to make sure that 1/4 of that amount goes into the breakfast meal and 1/3 of that amount goes into lunch.
Each day she receives a detailed printout from the computer, telling her where the menu made the target and where it missed. For example, today's lunch menu has 31.27 percent of its calories from fat. According to the guidelines, that percentage should be 30 percent.
Bernhardt will adjust the rest of the week's menus to hit the target.
All those numbers can get a little confusing, but it's Bernhardt's job to keep track of them and make sure the menus conform to the targets.
Another example: on Pizza Hut days, some of the students complain that they don't get enough pizza. What they don't know, Bernhardt says, is that the one-and-a-half slices that each student gets is all that will fit into the calorie amount allotted.
That's the reason why an HES favorite, macaroni and cheese and sausage, had to be split into two different days. That combination had too many calories for one day, Bernhardt says.
At 8:25, the bell rings — time for students to get to class. But not before one last straggler makes his way through the line.
"You guys need to have seconds," he says, looking longingly down at the french toast sticks.
Although students can get seconds at lunch, they can't at breakfast, Bernhardt says.
"But sometimes they prod a little bit to get two servings," she says, smiling.
With all the breakfast trays, dishes, and utensils in, now it's time for dishwashing. That task falls to Janelle Klaassen, who sends everything through a huge industrial dishwasher at least once — the silverware goes through twice. Then everything must air-dry on racks.
And those racks are full of pots and pans, especially the shallow variety that look to be about 18 inches long. On lasagna and chicken enchilada days, the cooks use more than 20 of them.
On the other side of the room, Kathy Carr is working with the salad portion of today's lunch: pears. She opens can after can, draining away the liquid in the sink.
Since Teresa Bernhardt is the director of food service, most of her time is spent planning out menus and ordering supplies. Besides three main suppliers, Bernhardt gets her milk from Highland Dairy and her meat from the local grocery stores. High school meat comes from Vogt's IGA, and elementary meat comes from Dale's.
"I like it coming in fresh," Bernhardt says.
One change that's come gradually is more sharing of supplies with the two district kitchens at HES and HHS. If one school needs a half a case of bananas and the other school needs one and a half, they'll order two and split the fruit. Also, the homemade bread for HES is made at the high school.
It's a tricky job, this ordering and planning. Bernhardt has to determine how much food to order for each meal. Since they don't have much space to freeze extra food, the leftovers usually get the trash can, she says.
Bernhardt's day typically ends at 3 p.m. And after a whole day spent in the kitchen, she doesn't much feel like cooking at home.
"My husband takes me out to dinner on Sundays," she says, smiling.
But despite all the stresses and the thankless nature of her work, Bernhardt enjoys what she does. She enjoys the kids.
"I really like this job," Bernhardt says.
