Confessions of Karen Green

Karen Green, school nutrition director at Thomas County Schools, Thomasville, Ga., shows her Southern pride with her love of grits and Paula Deen.

Q. What is the best part of your job?

Getting hugs from the students.

Q. What is the worst part of your job?

Having to release an employee.

Q. What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?

Giving birth to my four beautiful daughters.

Q. If you weren't in foodservice what would you be doing?

Teaching home economics in the classroom.

Q. Which talent would you most like to have?

To be able to sing or play the piano.

Q. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Not to open mouth, insert foot at certain times.

Q. What is your greatest fear?

Being held under the water or being closed in.

Q. Which living person do you most admire?

My husband because of the example that he sets for me every day. He is a compassionate, humble, hard-working man, always thinking of others. 

Q. What is your favorite meal?

Breakfast! My mother taught me that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. After 24 years in schools, I have seen the differences in children who eat breakfast and ones who do not.

Q. What is your guilty pleasure?

Shopping—my closet is full. I also love dessert.

Q. What will people always find in your refrigerator?

Outdated milk; sorry, I should drink more.

Q. What food fad do you wish had never started?

Hamburgers and french fries because of the fast food, high calories and eating on the run, without physical activity that often goes with it.

Q. What is the weirdest food you have ever eaten?

Sushi. We southern girls love grits!

Q. What do you consider to be the most overrated foodservice trend?

À la carte.

Q. What are your words to live by?

As my grandmother used to preach to us, “pretty is as pretty does.”