Richfield SECA's Journey to the Top of Healthy Kids Recipe Competition

"I thought the whole thing was pretty intense," Terry Guthrie said of competing in Texas for First Lady Michelle Obama's Recipe for Healthy Kids Contest grand prize.

Guthrie, a Richfield South Education Center Alternative (SECA) teacher, along with Parasole corporate chef Todd Bolton, student Dolores Popescu and Bloomington Public Health Nurse Mary Lair, made and presented a recipe, which are mini turkey burgers, that her life skills class had helped to create and refine.

Their dish, entered in the grains category, came out on top, winning SECA's school lunch program $3,000 on top of the . It was one of more than 340 total entries.

It's been quite a trip for all involved, one that started when Guthrie heard about the contest and suggested it to her garden-themed life skills class at SECA.

SECA is an educational program within Intermediate District 287 which provides classes to pregnant and parenting teens and those who need to recover credits and work on basic skills from the 13 member suburban school districts.

"I asked them, 'Do you guys want to enter this contest?' and said 'You are not going to expect me to do all the work,'" Guthrie told Patch.

Her four students, Dominic Lembo, Chris Dykes, Adilene Dominguez and Dolores Popescu, said yes to both questions and went to work, with help from Lair, food service director Wanda Nikolai and chef Todd Bolton, who Guthrie recruited by calling the restaurant and being passed along to Parasole's corporate offices. By coincidence, Bolton's stepson was at SECA and he agreed to help.

After a brainstorming session with the kids—in which Guthrie remembered her mother's porcupine meatballs—Bolton came up with the idea for the sliders, made of spinach, lean turkey, cranberries and brown rice patties on multi-grain rolls.

After reformulating and tweaking the recipe numerous times, the students served the sliders as a SECA school lunch in front of officials from the USDA, ACF and the Food and Nutrition Service on May 9.

"It was all a big deal," Guthrie said of that visit, "The students did a great job."

That placed them in the finals, having won the grains category.

As , the finals were on a much larger scale in Texas. The crew flew in on Sunday, and at around 2 p.m. on Monday, made their sliders in a big display kitchen in the middle of the convention.

"On the floor of the trade show there were 100, maybe 200 people," Bolton calculated. "We did our best and cooked our little hearts out."

Athough only one student could participate in the cook-off per the rules, the three others had played a large role in the entire process.

"We brought all but one kid who was unable to go because of family committments," explained Julie Bess Gavares, a communications staffer from District 287.

White House chef Sam Kass was on hand and inspired the group, even stopping to talk to student representative Popescu.

But after finishing up the cooking, a searing critique from the ACF and USDA judges wilted Guthrie's hopes.

"They kept focusing on the bun, that it was too hard or something. And that I didn't chop the spinach fine enough," she recalled.

Nonetheless, at the reception that evening, the SECA group won top honors (see video here).

Lembo and Dykes, new students to SECA this year, and Popescu and Dominguez, both young mothers, had done what they set out to do: follow Gandhi's iconic phrase, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

They had created a healthy dish that Guthrie, Bolton and the whole team hope to see in SECA's lunchroom rotation next year.

As for the chef, Bolton couldn't be more effusive about the SECA students and staff, saying, "I'd love to be involved in this on an ongoing basis."

Guthrie, still catching up on sleep from the trip said, "I will probably do it next year. But, I would not want to do it without Chef Todd (Bolton). And, the support from the district as a whole has been overwhelming."

Sounds like it will be same time, next year for devising a new healthy recipe at SECA.

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The winning recipe for the Porcupine Sliders is attached to this article as a pdf. Or if you'd prefer to eat them to order, try them at the at the Edina Galleria. They'll run you $8.95 for two and a choice of root vegetable chips or a small field green salad.