What’s for Lunch? Nova Scotia Recipes to Cook and Enjoy Together is a warm, welcoming cookbook aimed at families, students, and school communities across Nova Scotia who want to explore simple, nutritious scratch cooking. It’s not a haute cuisine volume, but it doesn’t try to be. What it does achieve is making everyday healthy meals feel inclusive, accessible, fun, and rooted in local school food initiatives.
Here are some highlights:
- Recipes & Variety: The cookbook offers a good mix: breakfast sandwiches, picnic plate, butter chicken, pizzas, wraps, etc. If you have picky eaters or are trying to introduce new foods in small steps, there are thoughtful “swaps” suggested, and toppings or side ideas to customize. This helps reduce the intimidation factor (e.g. “what if my kid doesn’t like curry?”).
- Style & Design: The book is illustrated by Emma FitzGerald and includes student-artwork (from Oxford School in Halifax), which gives it a lively, community-grounded feel. It’s colourful, visually engaging, not just functional. The layout is friendly for novices.
- Content beyond Recipes: Recipes are interspersed with stories — glimpses of school food programs in action, profiles of who prepares the meals, where local ingredients come from, and fun food-facts. This makes the cookbook more than a “how to make dinner” manual: it’s also about food culture, equity, learning.
- Practicality: The recipes are made with real life in mind. Many are designed to work in school settings or family kitchens. They include considerations of cost, ease of preparation, and ingredient flexibility. For example, recipes for “make-your-own” style foods (pizza, wraps) or batch-cooking (breakfast sandwiches) that can stretch. This is especially useful for households or schools operating on tight budgets.
- Room for improvement: Naturally, there are trade-offs. Some recipes may still feel challenging if you have limited access to certain ingredients, or limited time/skills in the kitchen. Also, while swaps are offered, readers might want more guidance for dietary restrictions (though Nourish Nova Scotia has other resources for that). Could maybe use more photos of final plated dishes, for inspiration.
For a sample of a lunch that’s sure to be a hit around your table, try the Chicken Nuggets & Potato Wedges in our Recipe section. Drive-thru will take a back seat to the homemade version, especially if the kids are involved in making it.
Overall, What’s for Lunch? is solid, uplifting, and very well suited to its mission: to support healthier, equitable food at school and at home, while celebrating local community. It invites participation, experimentation, and ownership — not just compliance.
Nourish Nova Scotia — The Program
To appreciate the cookbook is to understand the context around Nourish Nova Scotia — what it is, why it exists, and what it does.
Who they are: Nourish Nova Scotia is a registered charity in Nova Scotia. Their mission is “to inspire and equip young people in Nova Scotia to learn about food and transform the food systems around them.” (Nourish Nova Scotia) They believe nutritious food, food literacy, and opportunities to shape one’s food environment are fundamental to wellbeing.
Why it’s needed: Many children and youth in Nova Scotia face food insecurity — nearly one-third live in households lacking reliable access to adequate food. Additionally, there is recognition that cooking, taste-testing, gardening, learning where food comes from, etc., support healthy eating outcomes, personal and community health. Nourish Nova Scotia draws on that evidence.
What Nourish does:
- Food Literacy – Programs where youth and students learn about food: cooking, nutrition, food safety, growing food, etc.
- Capacity Building – Supports schools and community organizations with tools, resources, funding, training to run school-food programs, gardens, snack and lunch provision.
- Advocacy – Working to influence policy, strengthen food system infrastructure (school food programs, funding, healthy school food policy), ensure equitable access.
- Key Initiatives:
- 1. School Food work includes Provincial School Lunch Program, Farm to School Snack, etc. The cookbook ties into these.
- 2. Grow Eat Learn resources and trailer-based programming to bring hands-on food learning into communities/schools.
- 3. Youth leadership: giving young people roles in shaping their food environment, telling their stories (e.g. through Student Photo Voice, youth zines, etc.).
- Recent impacts: The school lunch program is expanding — for example, in fall 2024, it was made available in 256 schools (Primary through Grade 5) in Nova Scotia. Also, families report reduced financial burdens, better access to nutritious lunches, more sharing of school meals among students, etc.
Why It Matters & Who Will Love It
This cookbook isn’t just for home cooks; it speaks to educators, school administrators, families, and community organizers. It bridges gaps between policy, food access, and daily life.
If you care about:
- Feeding kids well in school and tackling food insecurity,
- Teaching children to cook, to try new foods, to know where food comes from,
- Designing meals that are nutritious but still tasty, flexible, affordable,
- Making connections between local food, community, and equity,
then What’s for Lunch? is a valuable addition to your kitchen or classroom. Support the great work of Nourish Nova Scotia at https://nourishns.ca/whats-for-lunch-in-nova-scotia-schools/ while you enter and win a copy of the book in our Giveaway section.
We live in a world where convenience often overrides nutrition, What’s for Lunch? is a welcome counterpoint — it celebrates the joy of cooking, the power of community, and the importance of nourishing young people (literally and culturally). Nourish Nova Scotia has done well to create a cookbook that is more than a collection of recipes — it’s a tool for education, for equity, and for caring for our young people.
Contents and images used with permission by Nimbus Publishing. https://nimbus.ca/store/whats-for-lunch.html