{"id":8589,"date":"2026-04-12T11:19:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T11:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/12\/schools-compete-in-maine-doe-cook-off-competition-its-important-to-have-meals-like-this-spectrum-news\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T11:19:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T11:19:46","slug":"schools-compete-in-maine-doe-cook-off-competition-its-important-to-have-meals-like-this-spectrum-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/12\/schools-compete-in-maine-doe-cook-off-competition-its-important-to-have-meals-like-this-spectrum-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Schools compete in Maine DOE cook-off com\u00adpe\u00adtition: "It's important to have meals like this" – Spectrum News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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BANGOR \u2014 School nutrition teams from districts across the state took part in a Maine Department of Education cook-off this week.
The annual Farm-to-School Cook-Off competition is meant to promote the use of local, healthy foods in school meals.
\u201cWe are grateful to child nutrition professionals in Maine who do essential work in providing healthy, delicious meals to students at no cost multiple times per day,\u201d said Maine DOE Commissioner Pender Makin.
According to Maine DOE, teams representing MSAD 1, MSAD 52, RSU 22, and the Westbrook School Department were selected to compete in the championship following four rounds of regional competitions in late March.
The teams then went through a final round competition at Bangor High School on Wednesday.
\u201cAs a student, I think it\u2019s important to have meals like this,\u201d said Nolan Coon, a student at B.H.S. and a judge in the competition. \u201cBecause even for a student not interested in school, I think having good nutrition and food value makes people excited.\u201d
Competitors used locally sourced ingredients to prepare two meals, which a panel of judges then scored.
\u201cThe teams have to prepare a breakfast and a lunch meal using at least three local ingredients and one USDA food that they receive from their entitlement money,\u201d said Stephanie Stambach, child nutrition supervisor for the Maine DOE Child Nutrition Office and an organizer of the event.
The competition is now in its 11th year. This year, the \u201cchallenge\u201d ingredients that teams were encouraged to incorporate were local ground beef and wild blueberries.
\u201cIt\u2019s good food. It doesn\u2019t have a whole lot of preservatives; it\u2019s organic. It\u2019s locally sourced from Maine from our farms,\u201d said Riley Davis, a student and competitor from Westbrook High School.
According to the Maine DOE, Maine school nutrition programs have been reimbursed for nearly $385,000 in local food purchases using the state\u2019s local foods funds, which means roughly $770,000 goes to local farmers and producers in Maine.
\u201cMaine really is ahead of the game when it comes to farm and sea to school in Maine,\u201d said Stambach. \u201cAnd supporting our local farmers and fishermen is really important to the culture of Maine and the history of Maine.\u201d
RSU 22, which represents Hampden, Newburgh, Winterport, and Frankfort, took home the crown this year.
\u201cWe absolutely love producing healthy options for our kids,\u201d said Hannah Liberty, who competed on the winning Team Nourish Kids of RSU 22. \u201cAnything that we can do to help feed our kids a little bit better and with a little bit better ingredients, we want to do.\u201d
Organizers said all recipes used during this year\u2019s cook-off will be compiled into a cookbook for other school nutrition teams.<\/p>\n

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Get the best experience and stay connected to your community with our Spectrum News app. Learn More Continue in Browser Get hyperlocal forecasts, radar and weather alerts.Please enter a valid zipcode.SaveBANGOR \u2014 School nutrition teams from districts across the state took part in a Maine Department of Education cook-off this week.The annual Farm-to-School Cook-Off competition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}