Close Joins Peers in Recipe-Creation Collaboration

CKC Good Food CEO, Founder and Executive Chef Nancy Close was honored to collaborate with two school nutrition professionals from Twin Cities school districts, and chefs from Land O'Lakes and General Mills on the development of tasty new USDA-compliant, scratch-made recipes. The invitation-only event was hosted by Land O' Lakes, General Mills and the Midwest Dairy Association.

The objectives of the collaboration among chefs was to create 10 new and delicious kid-appealing recipes that:

• Met K-12 school nutrition requirements and the practical needs of school foodservice operations nationwide
• Used K-12 chef expertise to provide quick, scratch-made recipes acceptable to students
• Incorporated school products manufactured by Land O’Lakes and General Mills that include dairy

In advance of the day-long event, each chef created several recipes for discussion and refinement among all the chefs and two from each were chosen for preparation and taste-testing. For taste-testing, Nancy prepared the Southwest Cheddar Chicken and Queso Meatball Nachos. Each recipe was also analyzed with nutritional software to confirm compliance with the federal nutritional guidelines, including required meal components, and again tweaked if necessary to comply with USDA guidelines.

Of the 35 recipes provided for the collaboration, three of Nancy's recipes were chosen to be among the 10 that will be featured nationally: Southwest Cheddar Chicken, Queso Meatball Nachos and (Non-peanut) Chicken Satay Curry. All three recipes, as well as the other recipes (Creamy Chicken Sabzi, Tex-Mex Chicken Alfredo and Sriracha Chicken) Nancy developed for consideration in the event, will be featured on CKC's fall menu rotation.