From UMass to Penn State to Taste of Home
April and May seem to be always busy months for all of us at UMass; our catering department is extremely busy, there are many year-end events, from student- to department-sponsored events going on and food is an important part of the celebrations. We are fortunate to be able to move culinary staff around, to help out and in fact, just this past Friday, we served 10 different Asian cuisines at the Cultural Market in the Student Ball Room.
We just completed our biggest event of the year – The Taste of UMass at Mullins, which had the highest turn out in recent memory and I trust everyone enjoyed the variety of street foods in smaller portions, in addition to the ever popular UMass Idol and Nathan’s famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. We will have a debriefing session in the near future; so far it looks like we might have food booths on the concourse next year to absorb some of the traffic (Thanks to the suggestion from Professor Don Sluter). It was so nice to see students having fun outside of the DCs.
I traveled to Penn State, last Sunday to Tuesday, for a peer review of the dining services there. Joining me were peers from BYU, University of Missouri and a veteran of college dining. I had never been to the “State College” the flagship of Penn State, but read about Penn State’s 82-year-old football coach, the most ‘winningest’ coach in major college football history, Joe Paterno; the Nittany Lions and the world-famous Berkey Creamery.
Even though I did not meet coach Paterno, the manager in charge of the DC where the players eat regularly told me the legendary coach has been spending most of his time at home due to a recent hip replacement. The training table for athletes is similar to ours at Hampshire DC, but a lot quieter and only serves one meal a day as per NCAA regulations.
We drove by the famous Berkey Creamery at the Food Science Building; a three story new building located on the middle of the campus. The Creamery occupies the first floor of the building and it was busy selling all sorts of hard ice cream. I did not go in because of the long line-ups and also because we needed to work on the peer study. Creamery ice cream is available, at all DCs, in six to 8 flavors; I tried all of them and my favorites were butter pecan and orange sherbet. How good were they? They were fresh and I was told on average there was four days between the time the ice cream was processed to the time it was served. All the cream and milk used to make the ice-cream was from local sources. In terms of flavor, I don’t think the ice cream was as rich as Ben and Jerry’s, but to many Penn State enthusiasts – it is the best.
There were many similarities between Penn State at State College and UMass Amherst; we both have a Daily Collegian and are located in a ‘Happy Valley’ and have a large residential dining program. Each school’s food service is self operated and has its uniqueness with the common goal of putting students first. Overall, they have a good program and the passion of ‘We are Penn State” is evident everywhere. I do think we have more global cuisines and weekly specials at UMass and if you like sushi, nobody can come close to us.
One thing that I liked the most about Penn State Dining was having warm chocolate cookies available daily at all DCs; a great idea which the students loved. I talked to Simon, our pastry chef about having a similar program at UMass, a small indulgence that I know our students would enjoy.
On the past Thursday, we had the “Taste of Home” special and featured 18 delicious recipes from parents of UMass students. I tried a little of all of them; wholesome food, hearty and yummy. The chocolate Ambrosia was so good that I had three small servings. We had one student take a picture of a dish at Hampshire and sent it home for mom’s approval. The verdict is out – mom’s cooking is always hard to compete with.
This is Ken Toong and thank you for keeping UMass Dining at the top.
Ken Toong
Director
Contact Ken at ktoong@mail.aux.umass.edu