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BY ROSARIO PAZ

In print | October 25, 2007

Thursday night before Fall Break, Sharples was packed full of salivating students heaping corn on the cob, butternut squash and tomato and eggplant lasagna onto their trays during the Local Foods Dinner coordinated by Dining Services and the Good Food Project. Though Sharples has always offered some local products, this special event expanded local and organic food options available to diners for one night. The event also drew attention to several Sharples initiatives to improve the eating experience.

“We, as the Swarthmore College dining service and the whole community of the college should be leaders in the field of sustainability,” Sharples Purchasing Director Janet Kassab said. “To our surprise, we are. When we meet with a few other facilities and schools that are working towards this goal we are pleased and surprised to know that we are actually doing quite a great job of it.”

Jamie Hansen-Lewis ’10, a co-coordinator of the Good Food Project, commented on the relationship established between the group and Dining Services, which was facilitated by their previous Sharples takeover last spring semester. “We mostly just initiated the idea of doing a fall harvest takeover with Dining Services. They were very supportive and took on most of the planning on their own … From the beginning of our communication, they have been dedicated to serving students fresh, healthy, and environmentally friendly food whenever they can,” Hansen-Lewis said in an e-mail.

The dinner offered many meal choices, including Lancaster County smashed potatoes, lasagna with herbed vegetable veloute and Kennett Square mushrooms and spinach. Though many students observed the difference in the quality of food, Kassab stressed that Sharples keeps up with new local food options on a daily basis, not just for this one-time event. “It’s not a thing we just do once. It’s a daily thing. We do use as many local products and people as we can because we are committed to being a self-operated dining service to that concept,” Kassab said.

When comparing the financial costs of an average Sharples dinner to the Local Foods Dinner event, neither Director of Dining Services Linda McDougall nor Kassab said they could give an accurate approximation.

According to McDougall, the event was something they eagerly anticipated. “It’s probably something we’d like to do in the spring and the fall,” McDougall said.

“It seems it was a good time of the year because it really is the end of the growing season for [the farmers],” Kassab said. “We have to work within the limits of nature.”

In order to coordinate events such as these, Kassab meets with local farmers who are interested in negotiating produce sales with the college. Several of these farmers have organic options that were incorporated into the Local Foods Dinner, including organic kale from local farmer Noah Gress. Though it is often a more expensive option, every year local food alternatives are closely reviewed and evaluated.

“We are clearly enjoying our relationship with the farmers,” she said. “We encourage other businesses to buy from them to make their efforts more worthwhile,” Kassab said.

According to McDougall, Kassab is currently seeking other ways to support and incorporate sustainability in Sharples. “White Dog is a restaurant in Philadelphia that actually started the sustainability local movement in this area, and Janet has been working with them … on these projects and looking for local farmers that want to do business with us,” McDougall said. “I think this is where most of the ideas [for the Local Foods Dinner] came about.”

Kit La Touche ‘08 was pleased with the local foods night. “It was great, as a friend even noted the salad greens, just better than on an average day,” he said. "Clearly, it’s not something they can feasibly do everyday, but as something to do more regularly or often, it would be great. And I also like that it’s local."

“It was pretty nice and the food was really good except that there was a lot of people there and the lines were too long. It would be nice if they would do it more often,” Michael Ahn ’10 said.

“It was well-received. There’s been a lot of positive feedback. Everyday it seems we’re sort of just, we’re always committed to it. It seems kind of just normal to me. It just makes sense,” Kassab said.

Sharples periodically plans other innovative events. Currently, they are in the process of organizing a dinner with NOLArize!, a campus group dedicated to raising New Orleans-Katrina Relief aid and awareness. “There’s a possibility that we’ll do a New Orleans dinner. [Dinner takeovers] are often generated by student request,” McDougall said. Most student requests are made by campus groups that wish to work in conjunction with Dining Services. McDougall said the initiative can come from either side or can be mutually inspired, as in the case of this year’s Local Foods Dinner.

Sharples is working on a few new initiatives, including new labels for meat-containing, vegetarian and vegan food and the sanitary wipes dispenser on the top floor of the building. According to Kassab, the labels and even the writing on the menu boards use a color-coded system to aid students in identifying whether each dish has meat, or is vegetarian or vegan. Vegan dishes are represented by orange, vegetarian by green and meat by pink. Dining Services also added boards near the entrances of Sharples to display the menu for each day.

“We have gotten responses back from some of the students that have realized how much easier it is to just glance to look for vegan products,” Kassab said.

Dining Services examines elements of other schools’ dining services that seem to work well, according to McDougall. The sanitary hand wipe dispenser is an addition that came about as a result of researching other colleges’ dining services, most of which provide a similar type of hygienic aid.

“A lot of the colleges are starting to do it because of the spread of flu, and [the wipes] are really being used. We weren’t sure if they were going to be used as much as they are, but they really are being used,” McDougall said

McDougall and the rest of Dining Services continue to accept student questions and comments in person, through e-mail to food@swarthmore.edu, or through their napkin-comment board on the top floor of Sharples.

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