Bluffton University was home to a good meal and a good learning experience, with their annual Harvest Dinner.
This is the 17th year that Bluffton University's Nutrition Association put on the benefit meal. The proceeds raised from the event go to food pantries in Bluffton and Lima. Soup was on the menu tonight(11/15/19) along with different homemade desserts jams and jellies. The dinner goes by a 'farm to table' philosophy, meaning everything that they prepared came from the campus garden or from local producers. And depending on the type of year they are having, the menu can change.
“They have to be very creative because you never know what is going to grow right, you never know what kind of season you have,” says Jenna Haggard the Bluffton University Asst. Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics. “In August, we assess what the farmers have produced, what produce has had a good season, then we decide how to use it on the menu.”
The dinner is a great learning experience for the students, not only how to plan a meal for 500, but where locally they are going to get the ingredients for their meal and make sure everything is ready.
“You hear farm to table and it’s like this nice glittering term that is like it’s such fresh food and I realize that you have to plant the food, you have to can the food, you have to make sure that the food's like not burnt when you cook it,” adds Kayla McSwords the Pres. Bluffton Univ. Nutrition Assoc. “How to make soups that is something that I never knew about and that was a really exciting process.”
Besides the meal, the students run Bluffton Bread Company got their first chance to sell their bread they have been making to people who attended the meal.
