Eat Well, Be Well at Sewanee

Hello everybody can you hear Maine?

Great.

Great so I. I think everyone can hear me now. I don't know if you can see me or not, but my name is chef Rick. I'm the director of dining for the University of South in Swanee, Tennessee.

And I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about our dining program and what we do.

Um were full aboard plan. That means that we open at 7:00 AM and would stay open till 8:00 PM and you can come anytime during that time, Seven days a week and eight.

We run nine different concepts in the dining Hall and we are also a self operated program which means that the University runs the dining program. It's not run by a food service company which allows us a great deal of flexibility in what we can do. An offer, probably about 25% of all of our perishables are fruits, vegetables and meats or source locally.

From the Cumberland Plateau.

Um?

We have our own food hub that aggregates and distributes food from about 20 four different farms on the cover of plateau within 75 miles of Swanee.

And this allows us a very dependable.

Distribution and supply of local and organic fruits and vegetables and meats. We run nine different concepts throughout the day from a vegan program that is rated as an A plus by PETA to a some station which is short for some Ergo Edie, which means you are what you eat, which is a a almost like a broth station, so there's three different broths and lots of meats and vegetables that you can add in. We also have a short order station where you can get breakfast.

All day long a omelets, pancakes, French toast, etc, as well as hamburgers and sandwiches and Paninis. We have a deli station that features hole and antibiotic and hormone free meats.

Where you can have a sandwich made to order to take away with you, uh, we also have a really nice garden bar with a huge selection of fresh fruits and vegetables that compose salads and we feature a specially salad everyday at lunch and dinner. And then we have the Homestyle Station which is kind of a conversation, but we feature international foods in different food cultures there as well. In addition to our pizza station, an uncertain ice cream station and I think I've only also have a seat, a table station almost left that one out.

Where we feature sustainable seafood dishes, lunch and dinner every day. In addition to the dining program, which is in Mcclurg Dining Hall, we also have a Tiger bait pub which is a late night burger and beer concept and we have Sterlings Coffeehouse, which is a kind of a Seattle style coffee house that's run entirely by students. About 45 students run that Coffeehouse, which features sandwiches, salads, and really probably the best coffee on the common plateau.

Then we also have the Cup and gown, which is a small little coffee dessert and sandwich shop in the DuPont library which is open six days a week.

So that's kind of what we do in a nutshell. We serve about 3000 meals a day. The dining Hall employees about 85 to 90 um workers and cooks. We have an incredible culinary team besides myself as a certified executive chef, we have about six other certified chefs at work in the dining program, and we run a from scratch program, which means we make everything from scratch. So we get the produce in the meats in from our local farms and our distributors.

And then we prepare and fabricate and serve it to you, and it most of our dining halls of self serve dining Hall. That means you to serve yourself some of the dishes we serve for you and within the dining program, we have another program called the food literacy project and the food literacy project is about engaging and teaching on issues from anywhere from culinary skill sets to food justice issues.

Topics that are associated with food, so that's kind of the overview of the dining program would be happy to answer any questions at this time.

Anyone?

Yeah Sean, what is your question about the meal plan?

Oh, our meal plan is unlimited, which means you can come and go as you please all through the school year. Uh, a lot of our students come in and spend most of the day in the dining Hall studying in between meals. And as I said, We're open from 7:00 AM until 8:00 PM all day. It's unlimited swipes. Sean, I guess, is to the point. So there is not just 21 meals you could if you have the capacity to it, you could eat 100 meals and the week if that's what you wanted to do. A lot of the students just come in and.

Hum.

You know they kind of hang out and maybe get a cup of coffee or a cookie, or quotes on why they study, or maybe get a slice of pizza. We feature all pizza, sandwiches, hamburgers, and hot dogs, all of that all about food all day long. The majority, the main meal periods are from 7:00 to 10:00 AM in the morning. That's the breakfast period. But lunch period is from 11 to two and the dinner period is from 5 to 8. But during the whole block of time from 78, the salad bar is open. The pizzas open, the deli is open, the some station is open.

And the short order stations open as well as desserts and ice cream. And we feature of vegan fruit softserve for those people that are vegan or trying to avoid dairy as well as hard dip ice cream and novelty ice creams.

So we have a really good burger in the dining Hall, Kelsey, and uh, and the Tiger Bay pub opens at eight in the evening. They have really good burger as well, but if you were to go into the village I would go to the blue chair. They have a incredible burger there as well as the Greensview Grill, which is that our golf course on campus.

Right, the meal plan up Molly did. Meal plan applies to all the free retail units I we have. There's a component of the meal plan called Flex which is about $150 every semester. That's on your prox card that functions as a credit card anywhere on the domain. So you can spend your flex money at the blue chair.

Tavern, or you can spend your money at shenanigans, or you can go to the Green Street Grill and spend your money as well as the bookstore and the three different retail locations I mentioned. So the DuPont or the capping gown Sterlings as well as the Tiger Bay pub.

We love it all. Even students work in the dining Hall. I I I would like to have more students working in the Dino. So yes, there's we have lots of jobs available in the dining Hall as well. When starlings in our coffee shop, which is really popular with student workers and coming down as well as a Tiger Bay pub Ann are catering Department which we employ students in as well.

Yes, we accommodate any sensitivities and allergies. Great deal of people these days have food sensitivities and allergies. There's many students at the Mcclurg that are acquired gluten free meals that require not free meals or Gary for your shelf is free meals and the way we manage that is that I meet with each student individually incoming when they come in as a freshman and then we together the student, myself and my culinary team and management team come up with a.

Uh.

A strategy to make sure you or what's that student as well fed throughout the semester with their. We have had cases in the past where we prepared every meal for four years. For student. I remember one student, particularly about six years ago that was allergic to everything except for broccoli, chicken, and rice. So we prepared his meal everyday separately from all the other meals. We also accommodate religious and.

And diversity meal accommodations. So if you need a whole lot of diglett, diet or kosher diet, we can help you with that as well.

That's a good question, Camille. We try to touch on every every piece of that so we feature nights and launches throughout the school year that feature other food cultures. Part of the food literacy program that we run is exactly that. Embracing and learning from other food cultures. Right now, some of the more popular food cultures that we're doing in the dining Hall or Korean foods and southern Asian foods so, and we do those events throughout the year. We have international nights. We have Asian night, so we have German nights.

Uh, if you have you as a student would like to come.

Have have something featured we work with you as well. Some of some of the things we deal with with incoming freshman is they get kind of homesick for foods. Maybe there they had it, their family home. And if you have that recipe we will replicate it in the dining Hall.

Yeah, I'd be happy to Cassetti everyday. I send out an email to all the students. Right now we're feeding just 77 students on campus because of the current situation we're in with the pandemic.

But I still send them an email every day and within that email it it talks about what we're serving of course in the dining Hall and any special events that are going on but also contains information that's interesting so it might be about food it might be about recipes or it might be about some food justice of social justice issues that email goes out every morning around 7:30 in the morning to get you ready for your day and.

As well, I'm accessible to all the students all the time I answer every meal that email that comes to me from a student.

Thank you Cassie. I'm glad you like those emails.

Wow, we've made hundreds of thousands of meals in the dining Hall. I I guess my favorite meal to make.

Would be Currys. I really like working with Currys a weed and some of the more popular dishes that we do like our chickpea Curry or a chicken. Curry's or red berries and yellow Currys are really popular with the students. I really love the flavor profile of that. That particular food culture and it's one of my more favorite dishes to make. Blending the paste is a lot of fun for me.

I also like just cooking. When I call Appalachian food or the food I grew up with, which is your typical southern Appalachian food.

Good question Molly. About 25% of our food is locally sourced. It might even be higher now. I haven't really put up metric on that recently. During the school year we source from as I said, about 25 local farmers and these are small, family owned farms and many of them are run by women which is really interesting. We also source from our University farm. We have. We started the University farm about Seven years ago an we get almost all of our lettuces and greens.

And squash is from the University farm and then we have agreements with some local farms to supply us with our bib lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes. So during the winter months, when typically you wouldn't get fresh produce, we have an agreement with the farm and Mcminnville. That's a hydroponic greenhouse farm that grows cucumbers. Lettuce is an tomatoes forward, so we get fresh tomatoes and cucumbers in the winter. So about 22 to 25% all over. Milk comes from local dairy purity dairy, which is a cooperative of local dairy farmers in Tennessee.

And, uh, a great day. All of our ground beef comes from two different farms. That's AA farms. Ann Sequatchie Co. Farms. And we also source lamb locally an we raise goats, rabbits and chickens on our University farm that end up in the dining Hall.

Absolutely we. We essentially don't really ever shut down. I think the only time we actually closes during the winter break, but we figure out accommodations for those international students that aren't available to go home during fall break. In spring break, we stay open as well. And of course, our retail units are open.

Wow, right now the favorite event that we do is our hullabaloo. We do a whole. We do a a Contra dance and local feast twice a year. Once in the spring and once in the farm fall and we bring in local fiddlers and bluegrass musicians. and I don't know if you're familiar with Contra dancing, but it's kind of a square dance and then we feature a feast as sourced entirely from local farms. One of the other events that I really like is our midnight pancake breakfast.

We do that twice a year. Once in the spring and once in the fall where we opened up late at night, and faculty and staff cook and serve pancakes and breakfast foods to use students that are studying hard for your finals. Then we do a Lunar New Year event, which is a lot of fun and this past year we started doing seder meals for the community as well so we have a lot going on in the dining Hall. We do food competitions. We have food shows we like culinary competitions. We have a Bakers Guild, which is comprised entirely of students that bakes.

A bread product, some pastry products for the dining Hall as well.

Anything else?

Mcclurg dining Hall is is one of the most incredible places I've ever worked. I'm 61 years old. I've been cooking since I was 16 and we get to do things in our dining Hall that I've that other dining halls do not get to do. It's a pretty incredible place. It not only is it a beautiful facility in state of the art, the people or the workers, and the students just making a very fun place to be. And for many people, it's a home away from home. And thanks for allowing me to talk to you today.

Thank you Cassidy.

And if you have any other questions, just email me. My email address is.

Right here.

Thank you, you guys have a great day. Thank you, Cassidy.