Culinary training for noon meal workers

MADURAI: It was a day of learning for cooks of government, aided schools and anganwadis from various unions and municipalities, who took lessons from well-known chef Damodaran in Madurai, on Wednesday. The initiative comes following the state government’s recent proposal to add multiple dishes in the noon meal provided in these school and anganwadis.
The cooks were given hands-on training for preparing a variety of delicious food items for the midday meals, as well as some useful tips during the training held at the district collectorate. In Madurai district, 150 such workers consisting of noon meal organisers, cooks and assistants, who were selected from 13 panchayat unions, Madurai Corporation and Thirumangalam and Melur municipalities, attended the training on Wednesday. Those who were trained on Wednesday will be the master trainers in their unions and local bodies and train other noon meal workers in about 1,440 centres.
Chef Damu, along with his assistants has been training these master trainers across the state and they have already covered 26 districts. Interacting with the media persons, Damu said, “The government provides Rs 5.62 per child for the scheme and a variety of dishes can be prepared well within the budget as we are replacing the regular vegetables with other items like lemon, pulses etc. During our studies, we have found these varieties indeed attract school children and the wastage of food was nil. We have also studied that the nutrition value of these new food items, is equally high.” Damu urged the headmasters and teachers to play an equal role in making the scheme successful.
A noon meal worker, R Vallimalai from Sivarakottai, said, “We are eager to learn these varieties of dishes in places of regular rice and dhal. It will also reduce our working hours as we used to spend lot of time cutting vegetables,” she quipped. However, few noon meal workers in the training expressed their apprehensions whether these new dishes can be managed with the stipulated amount as the prices of groceries are soaring high.