International Dinner has always been one of my favorite Kents Hill traditions. It is such a fun and delicious event with lots of amazing dishes. This year was no exception. The dinner was a hit, and the food was even more amazing. I truly enjoyed the dinner and I know many people would agree with me. The timing of the dinner was much better than it had been in the past few years with a lot more people arriving on time and some fan favorite dishes making their pristine appearances once more. The food was flavorful and showed an impressive range of cultures. It seemed like you could travel the world in our small dining hall.
As much of a hit as International Dinner was, there were many stipulations that we needed to address. Many recipes, much like my own, were multiplied way too much. For example, my dish which usually serves 10-20 people was multiplied by 5, which means I made 50-100 portions of my dish instead. This would normally serve no problem if it is only done to a few recipes, but it was done to almost every single dish in the kitchen. I heard one person say that their recipe was multiplied 20 times! Now, I understand that Sage wants there to be enough food for everyone, but multiplying every dish to make upwards of 50 portions is much more than any amount of students can eat. This brings up the problem with food waste.
“They multiplied our recipe 60 times and we only ended up needing half of that. Three days later, we still have extra that WE have to deal with.” -Adrian Piper
Many people ended up just throwing away the rest of their dishes that people couldn’t finish, but what do people with religious restrictions to throw away food do? Well, as a Buddhist, I am restricted from throwing away food, yet when I brought this up, I was told that I would “figure it out.” In the situation that was caused by Sage multiplying my recipe, I should not be the one responsible for dealing with the aftermath because it is quite literally out of my hands. This is the major flaw from International dinner this year. I ended up throwing out 14 take-home containers of my food the very next morning because there was no way to eat them all and the food pantry would not accept perishable food.
As a school with various religious and even more resources, we should better plan these events to avoid such problems. We should have multiple recipes just a little to reduce food waste and give students more time to cook. Most recipes take multiple hours of preparation that simply cannot be done in the time that we are provided to cook. A majority of students cook their dishes the day before anyways, so why not accommodate the recipes that need that time? In my freshman year, students had multiple days before International Dinner to come in and cook if they needed to. This allowed students to cook more time consuming dishes, and really make it their best. Overall, as enjoyable as International Dinner was, there were many technicalities that made it a difficult experience before and after.
