Garfield Beezer once owned and operated a restaurant in his native Jamaica. These days, he cooks for a group of eaters so famously fickle they could strike fear in the heart of any accomplished chef: preschoolers.
As Director of Food and Nutrition Services at Easterseals Southwest Florida, Chef Garfield prepares two nutritious meals and a healthy snack five days a week for about 80 children. (That number is expected to more than double when Easterseals’ new Malcolm Family Autism Center of Excellence opens next January.) His daily diners range from 6 months to 5 years old. Based on the reception he gets when he wheels meals into their classrooms, Chef Garfield has won over the critics.
Served with care
Chef Garfield moves with easy confidence around the Easterseals kitchen. He chops a rainbow of vegetables—red and green peppers, purple cabbage—as a large pot of rice steams on the industrial stovetop and Jamaican curry, pleasingly pungent, simmers nearby. Renell Daniels, his capable assistant, readies carts that will soon carry hot meals and cold milk to the classrooms.
Amid this orchestrated activity, the weekly shipment of food and milk rolls in. “Today is my delivery day,” Chef Garfield says calmly, greeting the vendor while continuing his prep. Soon, the delivery has been checked and loaded into the cooler, and the kitchen team hasn’t missed a beat.
Chef Garfield blends creativity, resourcefulness, and precision as he plans and prepares the daily food service at Lily Preschool, an inclusive early childhood education program serving children with disabilities. State rules require him to publish a full month’s menu in advance. It’s also posted outside every classroom, and students take copies home to their parents.
Meals must meet strict standards for nutritional value and portion size too. Each cart includes custom serving utensils to measure out proteins, grains, vegetables, and fruits to the ounce. Allergies are another concern. Some days, Chef Garfield prepares three versions of a meal to accommodate students’ health needs. And then there’s the toughest standard of all: pleasing dozens of developing palates on a daily basis.
Today’s curried chicken over callaloo rice with stir-fried cabbage does, indeed, please. Chef Garfield notes that callaloo, a nutrient-rich Jamaican green he grows and harvests on site, can be mixed easily into rice. “It’s a good way of hiding something in the meals so the kids will eat it,” he says.
In fact, he tries to introduce something new to the children every month. But he always does so thoughtfully. He starts his curry with ginger, for instance, not only for its health benefits (think antioxidants) but also because it soothes sensitive tummies and supports digestion.
Another menu favorite: Chef Garfield’s tofu tacos, with seasoned pinto beans and tofu (most of the kids think it’s chicken!) stuffed into warmed whole-grain tortillas and topped with organic lettuce and cherry tomatoes grown on site. The kids eat it up—literally. There are never leftovers on taco day.
Special delivery
Chef Garfield is cool and focused in the kitchen, but he beams when he delivers food to the classrooms. “Knock, knock!” he says, entering the infant-transition room. “Hi, buddy!” The toddlers are excited, visibly and audibly. And then on to the next room.
“Helloooo. Helloooo. Hi, Brooklyn,” he says to a familiar face.
“She’s sad right now, Mr. Garfield,” a teacher tells him.
“What happened?” he asks with concern.
“She thought lunch was here already, and it wasn’t.”
“See, I’m here now, Brooklyn!” he assures the youngster, who brightens up and says, “Thank you!”
More “hellos” to other little ones, and out the door again.
“They all know us,” Garfield says of the students. “I get to interact with them on a daily basis. I get to see them for breakfast, for lunch, sometimes for snack, and sometimes for outdoor play.”
Growing lessons
Garfield was born and raised in a farming community in Manchester parish, near Jamaica’s breadbasket. He attended culinary school after high school and college, then leased farmland and grew and exported crops to America in addition to running his restaurant.
His wife, Jody-Ann, came to the U.S.—and Easterseals—first. She’s now the director of Lily Preschool. When Garfield followed and joined the team about eight years ago, many of the children didn’t understand where the food they ate came from. “Most of them thought bananas come from Publix or Walmart, you know?”
So, he started growing a banana tree to teach them the process. Once it began to fruit, he put it in the hallway so the kids could teach their parents about it during morning drop-off. When a banana ripened, they could pick it.
Next, he created a sensory garden just outside the preschool. Farm class is offered there every Wednesday. Students learn to plant seedlings, which will grow, ripen, and eventually make their way into the children’s meals. A full-circle lesson.
Chef Garfield’s most impressive project is probably the Impact100 SRQ Grow and Learn Garden—“the farm,” for short. Seeded by a generous grant from Impact100 SRQ and set on land donated by Bayside Pet Resort and Bob and Lynne Huff, the roughly 1-acre, wheelchair-accessible garden is both educational and functional. Garfield planned, built, plants, and harvests the site with the help of some dedicated volunteers.
Easterseals students of all ages regularly visit the farm to learn about nutrition and work on motor skills with hands-on, gardening-based activities. Some of the produce is brought back to the sensory garden for farm class. Nearly all of it lands on the menu. “We’re trying to get as much fresh and organic stuff into the kids as we can,” says Garfield. “Ninety percent of what we grow here we try to use back in the kitchen.”
Beyond the plate
Though he’s busy in the kitchen, Garfield makes time several days a week to maintain the farm. It’s a passion. But not his only one. “I’m also in charge of soccer,” he says.
On Thursdays, Chef Garfield becomes Coach Garfield, coordinating afternoon soccer on the playground. Sure, it offers the kids some much-needed outdoor movement late in the day. But like his kitchen work, Garfield goes above and beyond here too.
He contracts with an outfit called Story Time Soccer to deliver the program. They develop a story before the game and incorporate it while the children play. Garfield, meanwhile, observes each child’s mobility and reports back regularly to parents.
That care for the kids and commitment to their families shines through in everything he does. He’s invested in Easterseals, creatively dedicating his time and talent however he can. And he sees the fruits of those efforts every day—in growth, in development, in smiles.
“My favorite part about the job is when I run into parents in the hallway—especially on a Monday—and they’ll say, ‘This weekend, I had a hard time with my child. I made dinner and they said it didn’t taste like Mr. Garfield’s. I had to say, “You didn’t hear the doorbell ring? Mr. Garfield dropped it off!”’”
It’s a meaningful compliment. But Garfield knows some parents don’t have the experience to replicate what he does at school. That’s one reason he brought another program—Dr. Yum—to Lily Preschool. He learned about it at the National Child Nutrition Conference and successfully pitched leadership at Easterseals Southwest Florida on how he could implement it there. Now, he presents “Cooking with Dr. Yum” twice a week, bringing simple nutrition and food-prep lessons into the classroom. The curriculum includes materials he sends home to parents, so families can keep learning how to make healthy, tasty food together.
Chef Garfield also runs two food pantries, in partnership with All Faiths Food Bank and Meals on Wheels PLUS of Manatee. On alternating Monday afternoons, he’s either on the Easterseals Southwest Florida campus or at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Sarasota and DeSoto Counties’ Lee Wetherington Club, where Easterseals Academy, the K-12 education program, is housed. At each site, he distributes food “so all my kids and families are fed.” The pantries also serve some adult clients of Easterseals and the wider community too.
For Chef Garfield, food service has never been just about what he puts on the plate. It’s an act of care that helps people feel known, nourished, and ready to thrive.
Help Make an Impact
Want to help Chef Garfield maintain the Grow and Learn Garden? Go here to sign up as a volunteer!
