Family Dining is UMass Dining
We love to see parents visit our campus, and we are always eager to show them our dining program. It is one of the reasons that we implemented a family dining program five years ago. Any family member who visits a student on a meal plan eats for free. It is always a good thing when our parents dine with their students and experience our award-winning dining program. (After all, they are often the ones paying the bills, and saving them the cost of a meal during their visit is the least we can do.)
But there’s more to the program than free food: we also want to build a bond with parents. We do so in other ways, too. Our Taste of Home program, in which we make recipes from students’ families, is a big hit. Each year, we receive more than 200 recipes from parents. Many of these recipes represent our students’ favorite home-cooked meals; others are treasures that go back two or three generations. From this program, we also create the Taste of Home cookbook, now in its fourth edition. Each year, we produce more than 5,000 copies of the cookbook, which is popular with parents.
Last week, during Family Weekend at UMass, we had even more opportunities to meet parents. Family Weekend is an event on campus for visiting parents and their students. We participated by featuring dishes prepared from nearly fifty family recipes. I enjoyed every one that I tried. (I also lost count of how many samples I tasted.) The food from the recipes was not only delicious but also healthy. Most of the recipes also used wholesome ingredients—even the Mac ‘n Cheese was made from scratch.
I had the pleasure of meeting some of the parents at Worcester DC who sent us their recipes. They were so excited to see their recipes on the menu. I asked whether we followed their recipes accurately, but they assured me we were doing just fine. One parent even preferred our version to hers.
Most of all, Family Weekend is a great opportunity to demonstrate to UMass parents the quality of the food we serve. Even though it’s hard to match home cooking, we give it a good college effort—at every meal.
This is Ken Toong. Thank you for keeping UMass Dining at the top.
Contact Ken at ktoong@mail.aux.umass.edu
You can follow Ken Toong on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/KenToong
We love to see parents visit our campus, and we are always eager to show them our dining program. It is one of the reasons that we implemented a family dining program five years ago. Any family member who visits a student on a meal plan eats for free. It is always a good thing when our parents dine with their students and experience our award-winning dining program. (After all, they are often the ones paying the bills, and saving them the cost of a meal during their visit is the least we can do.)
But there’s more to the program than free food: we also want to build a bond with parents. We do so in other ways, too. Our Taste of Home program, in which we make recipes from students’ families, is a big hit. Each year, we receive more than 200 recipes from parents. Many of these recipes represent our students’ favorite home-cooked meals; others are treasures that go back two or three generations. From this program, we also create the Taste of Home cookbook, now in its fourth edition. Each year, we produce more than 5,000 copies of the cookbook, which is popular with parents.
Last week, during Family Weekend at UMass, we had even more opportunities to meet parents. Family Weekend is an event on campus for visiting parents and their students. We participated by featuring dishes prepared from nearly fifty family recipes. I enjoyed every one that I tried. (I also lost count of how many samples I tasted.) The food from the recipes was not only delicious but also healthy. Most of the recipes also used wholesome ingredients—even the Mac ‘n Cheese was made from scratch.
I had the pleasure of meeting some of the parents at Worcester DC who sent us their recipes. They were so excited to see their recipes on the menu. I asked whether we followed their recipes accurately, but they assured me we were doing just fine. One parent even preferred our version to hers.
Most of all, Family Weekend is a great opportunity to demonstrate to UMass parents the quality of the food we serve. Even though it’s hard to match home cooking, we give it a good college effort—at every meal.
This is Ken Toong. Thank you for keeping UMass Dining at the top.
Contact Ken at ktoong@mail.aux.umass.edu
You can follow Ken Toong on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/KenToong