Halfway through a food theme year, the University of Alberta’s Augustana campus staff and students have talked about food, read books about food and reflected on the meaning of food.
The best part of the campus’s theme is eating food, said students during a lunch in the college’s cafeteria.
Once a month, cafeteria manager Lilas Bielopotocky creates a meal sourced mostly from local farms. At the beginning of December students dug into elk burgers from Lost Trail Ranch in Paradise Valley, Alta., homemade french fries, sliced onions and carrot sticks from the Donalda Hutterite colony. The creamed cucumbers were from Pik-n-Pak of Lacombe and sautéed mushrooms from Prairie Mushrooms in Sherwood Park, Alta.
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Courtney Gallatin was one of the first students in line for the local lunch meal.
“I think this is a really good idea. It raises awareness of what we eat and where it comes from and it’s a great addition to the cafeteria food. It’s something to look forward to,” said Gallatin of Barrhead, Alta.
Adam Vranos, also of Barrhead, said he hasn’t attended many of the food lectures or discussions on campus, but he has enjoyed the meals.
“The only way I’m involved is eating the local meals and this has been very delicious,” said Vranos a he bit into his elk burger.
Talia Hiebert of Hay River, N.W.T., doesn’t know if she thinks about food any differently, but she does appreciate the local food days.
“They’re a positive experience for everybody on campus. It’s nice we can have things like this,” said Hiebert.
When Bielopotocky was asked to create locally themed meals for the student cafeteria, she didn’t know where to start. Normally weekly food orders were placed through Sysco Food, a national food distribution company. Instead, Bielopotocky started shopping at farmers’ markets and calling local foodies to find local food.
Bielopotocky discovered that local food in quantities to feed 350 students is hard to find and twice as expensive.
“I paid double the price for local carrots.”
But she and her staff received a standing ovation for their first local meal and staff and students have been raving about them ever since, especially the October one with sausages from Irving Farm Fresh Meats.
“It was amazing,” said Denise Renman with the university’s technology department.
“It was great. You could just tell it was healthy,” said Renman, who makes a point of eating in the school cafeteria on local food days.
“This is the best theme we’ve ever had.”
It’s the third year the campus has chosen a school theme, said Paula Marentette, associate dean of teaching and research at Augustana and a major push behind the food theme.
The first year’s theme of plagues, pandemics and viruses was timely because of the avian flu outbreak. Last year’s boom and bust theme looked at a variety of topics but focused on Alberta’s oil economy.
Marentette said students wanted a less apocalyptic theme than thinking about all the ways you could die or become poor.
During registration, every student was given Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Throughout the year professors have incorporated it into their class studies and held read-ins and discussions.
Krystal Gallamore of Edmonton said the readings gave her an increased awareness of food and where it comes from.
“I really appreciate the professors really trying to incorporate the book into classes,” said Gallamore, who also attended the drama department’s production of Babette’s Feast.
Marentette said staff and students have embraced the food theme. Professors have volunteered to give lectures in the faculty colloquial series on everything from kitchen medicine to microbes in the food industry.
“We had to beat people off. We had more takers than spots,” said Marentette of the professors’ lectures.
One of the biggest hits has been the celebrity chef events. Faculty and staff have opened their home kitchens to groups of students to share recipes and discuss food.
One professor taught students how to make mango chutney and apple jelly. University dean Roger Epp used the cafeteria to teach students how to make crabapple juice.
At the end of November, one professor’s husband shot a deer and invited students to his garage to make sausage.
Leslie Lindballe, who helped organize the sausage-making event, said an argument between German and Canadian students about how long to make the sausage links made everyone realize how food is taken for granted.
“It’s more than just nutrition. We learned about its importance and about community and feeding others.”
Epp said the celebrity chef events help take the mystery out of food and help rebuild lost cooking skills.
“It’s teaching people quite simple things that at one time would have been part of the culture, but have been taken out by the emphasis on convenience,” said Epp.
“I still think what we should have for real food honesty is a chicken butchering day.”
Epp said the university will look at continuing local food days after this theme year by working with community members, local governments and an Alberta Agriculture pilot project helping institutions like the university source, store and transport local food.
“We want to be balanced and reasonable and not treat this as just a fad. We’re in it for the long term.”
