Classes support enviro-friendly cooking

Four professors developed the Food for Thought cluster, appropriately enough, during a meal together two years ago. After their second annual Harvest Bounty Shared Meal Sunday night, they said they still approach new ideas the same way: around a table.

"Food is often involved in our meetings," said Karin Peterson, associate sociology professor and co-coordinator of Food for Thought. "The four of us sat down around a meal and chatted about what would be good ways to engage our students and how they could bring the expertise from their discipline to educating themselves and others in the clusters. The great thing about this project is students learn from other students in their group."

The addition of associate biology professor David Clarke to the cluster and the invitation of local farmers and restaurant owners as guests were two changes made to the event this year.

Like last year, students from the cluster courses formed teams and created a meal for 10 people with an assigned constraint. Each group had a constraint of local foods, organic foods, whole foods or limited budget.

"The constraints we chose based on common constraints that families deal with. We tried to pool the different aspects and constraints so the group would have a challenge," said Sally Wasileski, assistant chemistry professor and a co-coordinator for the event. "It wasn't just about them cooking and having a meal together; it was about them really having to think through all the different aspects that go into preparing just one meal."

The result was a diverse range of carefully prepared meals and table decorations, but the students were graded on more than taste and ambiance. Each group had to analyze the nutritional value of their meal and consider sustainability.

"One of our main goals is to help students reconnect with the source of their food and have an understanding of how to be an informed consumer of food, so it's kind of rolling those pieces back together," said Amy Lanou, assistant professor of health and wellness.

Lanou said her focus, as a nutritionist, was on the health aspect.

Junior environmental economics student Noah Carlson helped prepare a meal for team apple, which worked with the low budget constraint. Carlson said his team sacrificed sustainability to drive as far as Wal-Mart for supplies, but they did meet budget. Carlson said he had cooking experience prior to his land economics class with associate professor of economics Leah Mathews, but the challenge to feed 10 people for $30 made him approach cooking in a new way.

Wasileski said the chemistry of food class is the only one in the cluster to incorprate cooking during class.

"In our class, the main learning outcome is to understand chemistry principles and how they relate to our everyday world," Wasileski said.

Several science labs require students to cook or bake and then analyze the chemistry involved during the process. According to Wasileski, one of the experiments includes a common food.

"In learning about how molecules interact with one another, we make butter, because that's an example of changing the intermolecular interactions between molecules that are in cream to make the solid butter and the liquid kind of buttermilk that comes off," she said.

Team jicama was not obligated to make their own butter for their homemade wheat bread, but it was necessary to cook with only organic ingredients. Senior literature student Rachel Poole said after two courses within the cluster, her cooking experience is still fairly minimal.

"I don't think it made me a better cook; it just made me more aware of what I'm consuming. I don't think the point is to learn how to cook," Poole said. "It's learning about the process of what you're putting into your body."

Team jicama won the aesthetics award for the execution of their autumn theme. Team leeks, one of the low budget teams, won the most innovative use of food for their homemade ice cream. The prize was a pumpkin from Jafasa Farm for each member of each winning team.

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