Bowe knows

PALMER — Barbara Bowe may be one of the few people you’ll see smiling and laughing at 6 in the morning.

With her hair net securely in place, white baker jacket buttoned and a confidence in the kitchen, Bowe is at the tail end of her 20th year cooking food for thousands of Mat-Su Valley students. Every morning during the school year since Oct. 17, 1988, Bowe has risen at the crack of dawn to hustle and lift and pour and mix so hungry students can take a midday break for something good to eat.

“I like to do what I do,” Bowe said during a recent morning at work.

Bowe moved to Alaska from California in 1979. A cook at heart, she worked at the now closed Alaska Pantry Cafe. In those days — and in the days until the Mat-Su Borough School District’s Nutrition Services Center opened — the process of making thousands of lunches rested on the shoulders of diligent cooks toiling away in a mostly non-computerized kitchen.

This past year, however, things became a bit different.

The end of the school year marks the completion of the Sgt. Kurtis Arcala Nutrition Services Facility’s first year in Palmer. The new, high-tech commissary is responsible for cooking, baking, packaging and shipping school lunches for every school in the Mat-Su Borough School District.

Filled with giant machines, computerized assembly lines and mixers the size of a person, workers turn out product at a fever pitch, replacing the pre-packaged lunches of yesterday with freshly made food. To get an idea of the enormity and technology of the facility, one only needs to walk into the freezer, a room the size of a small gymnasium that is as cold as an Alaska winter year-round. With the touch of a button, massive doors slide out of the way giving access to a variety of food waiting to be delivered or prepared. The freezer leads to a refrigerator with equal technology. But the real magic takes place in the sweet-smelling bakery.

Inside, music belts from boom boxes perched on walls near each station. Workers resemble busy bees, seldom stopping to chat and seemingly always focused on what they are doing.

The Nutrition Services Center could be seen as the central nervous system of school food in the Borough. Nearly everything to do with school lunch takes place here.

That means those boxy Nutrition Services trucks roaming around town in the wee hours of the morning are taking lunches as far north as Trapper Creek and as close as Palmer Junior Middle School.

It also means cutting out some of the middle men and delivery companies and replacing them with district employees — a rarity in the increasingly computer-controlled workplace.

“We’ve actually increased our kitchen staff,” equipment technician Rick Byrnes said.

Byrnes, a friendly man whose Hawaiian print hat takes the place of a regulation hair net, explains each machine’s function like a proud parent touts a child’s talents.

There’s the 300-pound mixing bowl with its 63-pound mixer; a long conveyor belt covered in electronics that turns out various dough-based foods; ovens large enough to stand in; and a range of other behemoth machines and gadgets all set to make as much food as possible under strict health and safety guidelines.

Then there’s Lucy.

Lucy is an over-wrap machine named for its tenancy to occasionally spit out lunches faster than desired. The ensuing chaos of taming the over wrap can mimic the iconic scene in the classic television show “I Love Lucy,” where Lucy and Ethel get jobs packaging candy off an assembly line.

Machines like these are designed to not only pump out lunches at a fever pitch, but to keep food preparation safe, Byrnes said. If cooking temperature or any part of the process strays from set guidelines computers will alert the staff. While having computerized gadgets help the process along makes production faster, it also adds the necessity for Bowe and her coworkers — who have been used to more traditional ways of cooking for years — to learn how to operate and respond to computerized demands.

But Bowe and her counterparts say they’re up for the challenge and have fun doing it.

“I enjoy the people I work with,” Bowe said, as she and the other cooks teased each other.

On Monday, Bowe and the rest of the women in the bakery are full of smiles and laughter while preparing the last of this school year’s lunches.

Showing off some of the gadgets she uses, Bowe explains a machine that resembles a seismograph that’s used to record and monitor the temperature in massive kettles. With a myriad of switches and flashing lights the machine might intimidate even the heartiest of computer geeks. For Bowe, it’s become second nature. But making the transition from hands-on, human-powered production to working side-by-side with machines isn’t a walk in the park.

“I don’t know that it’s easier, but it’s more efficient,” she said.

Standing next to a long conveyor, Bowe reminisced of the old rolling pin and dough days. During that time, Bowe said the kitchen staff could turn out just over 100 pans of bread a day.

Bowe’s coworker, Maribeth Weeks, said that number has tripled in today’s facility.

Even with its proclaimed efficiency and rapid deployment of food, the Nutrition Services Facility still falls prey to some of the ills plaguing the food industry. Skyrocketing fuel prices add up as the facility’s fleet of delivery trucks rolls out daily. What some have called a global food crisis is sending prices of food typically used for school lunches through the roof.

The economic situation has the new facility adopting even newer ways of doing business. Truckers now combine trips, leaving out unnecessary runs, and supervisors are looking at the Mat-Su Valley for their products as way to cut down on the costs of shipping from out-of-town or out-of-state suppliers.

“The more we can buy locally, the better off we are,” Nutrition Services Supervisor Chris Johnson said.

Johnson said the district is looking hard at acquiring some sort of state funding to help with school lunches. The help could quell a fear that, to save money, schools will be forced to scale back the amount of healthy ingredients in their food. The problem with healthier school lunches, Byrnes said, is they cost more to make.

Regardless of what the future brings for school lunches, Bowe said you can count on seeing her baking for the students each morning — at least for the next five years. That’s when she plans on retiring, hanging up her hair net and passing the computer controls to the next dedicated school cook.

For now, as bleary-eyed kids roll out of bed and trudge to school, Bowe and the rest of the employees of the Nutrition Services Center will have been at it for hours, making sure no student goes hungry during the school day.

“I’m a cook,” Bowe said. “That’s what I do.”

Contact Frontiersman reporter Michael Rovito at 352-2252 or michael.rovito@frontiersman.com.