Jam session: Judging of locally made jam/jelly/preserves at the D.C. State Fair.Photo courtesy of Mr T in DC via Flickr Can a state that's not a state have a state fair? Until now, deep-fried Twinkies (or worse; see Grist's slide show), Ferris wheels, and pie-eating contests have been denied the nearly 600,000 residents of the District of Columbia, who also hold the distinction of being the only jurisdiction in the Lower 48 that pays federal income taxes while having no voting representation in Congress. Congress still treats us as its private plantation. But as of this year, we do have …

Like every family, we've had our food battles with our 10-year-old daughter. With great dismay, we watched a pre-schooler who amazed us with the range of her palate (she couldn't get enough Altoids or wasabe peas) morph into a bratty pre-teen who turns dinner into a slugfest with a litany of foods she refuses to eat. "What's for dinner?" is no longer an innocent question, but the opening salvo of our nightly culinary donnybrook. Meanwhile, we've been trying to teach Leila to lay off the sugar and also the refined carbohydrates. She would eat pasta three times a day if she could. …

Let's keep this on the down-low. Photo courtesy of Mike Schmid via flickrAttorneys for D.C. Public Schools have refused to release an accounting of more than $1 million in rebates received from corporate food manufacturers, claiming that details about the rebates constitute "trade secrets" and that exposing them to public scrutiny would hurt the "competitive position" of Chartwells, the school system's contracted food service provider. (I first reported the extent of Chartwell's use of rebates in D.C. school lunches in a July article.) The ruling by the D.C. Public Schools general counsel's office places the school district in the awkward position …

What’s more important: children’s health, or helping a sponsor move product?The School Nutrition Association, representing thousands of school food service workers across the country, exists to "advance good nutrition for all children." Yet it has embraced a "study" promoting chocolate milk and other sugar-added milkbeverages that was paid for by the dairy industry and conducted by a firm that specializes in devising corporate marketing schemes. As for whether the study is based on solid science, it's impossible to say -- the dairy group that funded it refuses to release it for public inspection. Yet the SNA has announced it plans to …

Students at D.C.’s Next Step Public Charter School visit salad bar provided by D.C. Central Kitchen’s contract-foods division.Photo: D.C. Central KitchenThe District of Columbia is about to embark on what may be the nation's most unorthodox public-school food program: meals made from scratch, using locally grown ingredients, by a charitable social-services agency whose primary mission is feeding the homeless and teaching ex-offenders how to cook. Beginning next week, the agency in question -- D.C. Central Kitchen -- will set up shop at Kelly Miller Middle School in Northeast Washington and get ready to start cooking meals for seven D.C. schools when classes resume Aug. 23. …

Sodexo, one of the world's largest food service companies, has agreed to pay New York $20 million to settle complaints that it fraudulently pocketed rebates from food manufacturers that it was supposed to turn over to some 21 public school districts and the State University of New York, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced today. "This company cut sweetheart deals with suppliers and then denied taxpayer-supported schools the benefits," Cuomo said in a statement. An investigation revealed that over a five-year period beginning in 2004, Sodexo "received significant rebates from its suppliers without acknowledging or passing the savings on …

A group of chefs and parents plan to turn Tyler Elementary’s kitchen-cum-makeshift-office into a place to cook actual food.(Ed Bruske photos) A group of prominent Washington, D.C.-area restaurant chefs has volunteered to introduce a novel concept in school-food service to one Capitol Hill elementary school: collaborating with parents to take over kitchen operations on a nonprofit basis, replacing the prepackaged, reheated factory meals that Tyler Elementary kids currently eat with food cooked from scratch, served on real plates with real cutlery. Led by Cathal Armstrong, chef and owner of Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, Va., the group would undo the historically knotty issue of school …

D.C. Public Schools in the last two years have taken in more than $1 million in corporate rebates -- referred to by some as "kickbacks" -- paid by giant food manufacturers as an inducement to place their brands on kids' cafeteria trays at school. Documents I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that Chartwells, the company hired by D.C. Schools to provide food services at 122 schools across the city, through February of this year had declared $1,076,738 in rebates it received since its contract began in the fall of 2008. That represents 5 percent of the $18.7 …

Colorado cafeteria workers learn about efficient meal planning from consultant Andrea Martin. (Photo by Ed Bruske.) School cafeteria workers, a.k.a "lunch ladies," rank somewhere below custodial staff in the school pecking order, yet they're expected to perform miracles in the kitchen, turning pennies into full-blown meals. As part of my Cafeteria Confidential reporting, I recently went to Colorado to observe a "culinary boot camp" in which food-service directors and workers from around the state spent four days learning how to cook food from scratch, rather than with frozen convenience foods, and better use their meager finances to do so. The oldest …

First Lady Michelle Obama and assistant chef Sam Kass in the White House garden. (White House photo)Bravo's new season of "Top Chef," set in D.C. and billed as "from the White House to your house," debuts tomorrow with a big wet kiss for Michelle Obama and her campaign to end childhood obesity. Even the White House assistant chef, Sam Kass, who has become more and more of a TV presence, gets into the act as a judge for episode No. 2 of the contest on June 23. That's when the 17 contestants -- all competing for the "Top Chef" designation, plus prize …