The Bluffton University Nutrition Association and food service management class hosted the 17th Annual Harvest Dinner Friday, Nov. 15, in Founders Hall. Proceeds from the event support the Bluffton and Lima food pantries.
The Harvest Dinner, which was originally called the Spaghetti Dinner until four years ago, is an event that the community looks forward to every year.
“This dinner is centered around the community and we have been wanting to make the change,” President of BUNA, Kayla McSwords said. “It was Jane Wood’s idea to make it more accessible for everyone along with it being more spacious.”
McSwords is a member of the food service management class. She said she is the first junior president who had to take part in managing both sides, preparing her dish and keeping up with the duties she had as BUNA president.
“I do the volunteer coordinating and had to coordinate essentially 48 roles within the BUNA members and asking people on campus who would be willing to volunteer,” McSwords said.
Although the process is a semester project for the food service management class, the preparation began during the summer. A schedule was the first thing that was made to organize the progress.
The courses for the dinner are chosen based on the produce available each year. This year, it was sweet corn.
The class received seeds donated by Stratton Greenhouses to plant and got corn from Suter’s when the produce was ready. When classes began in August, the students started to can and freeze the produce they had.
“We have been doing labs and trials for recipes to see which ones will taste good,” McSwords said. “We do standardized recipes with exact measurements, and most of them are Bluffton University ‘originals’.”
Everyone was assigned a soup to make in the class. The desserts and side dishes were a team effort. The class also had to break down when foods would need to be prepared and how many people would need to make them in order to get everything ready in time for the dinner.
McSwords said the process of making her soup, smoked corn chowder vegetarian soup, was interesting. She said it is a quality soup because the corn is local from Suter’s.
“There was trial and error to find the perfect thickening for the soup, and we ended up using cornstarch and half and half,” McSwords said. “The process of making the soup was harder than I thought. I didn’t realize that until I had to make it from scratch.”
Everyone in the Food Service Management class was required to become ServSafe certified to be able to serve the community.
“We all got a managers certification, which will look good on résumés,” McSwords said.
Jeanna Haggard, assistant professor of food and nutrition, hopes students have learned the value of taking ownership in a large project and that they realize what is involved with management and coordination to prepare for an event as big as the Harvest Dinner.
“We exceeded expected numbers by increasing 100 people this year to reach 550 attending and we had the highest donation to date at $5,000 that will be donated to local food pantries,” said Jeanna.
