Students cut, cook and compost correctly during Sustainability Days

The event on Wednesday was part of the Erasmus Sustainability Days. Alex, a master student part of the Sustainability Hub, explained the correct method of composting. Two-thirds should be brown waste, like twigs, hay or sawdust, and one-third green (fruit and vegetable scraps).

Judith, a member of the Hub’s Food and Agriculture committee, presented the menu of the day: a spring-roll salad, veggie rice paper dumplings, and chocolate strawberry mousse. The members were split into three groups to prepare the dishes. While listening to Spanish music, eating crackers and drinking organic juices, the participants started cooking.

The smell of fresh vegetables spread through the room. Organic and quality products covered the cutting boards, and the participants quickly got to work in teams: chopping carrots, peeling onions and shaving chocolate. Some teams got the amount of peanut butter for the sauce confused; others introduced themselves to their fellow chefs.

“Last year I came to a few workshops. It’s a great way to meet new people, to gather and cook. It inspired me to join the Food and Agriculture Committee.” Maria, from Arts and Culture, joined the Sustainability Hub this year. It has impacted her more than she expected. “You start to understand why sustainable eating is so important. You start thinking more about what you’re eating and implement more sustainable practices. Instead of eating some read meat, you can make a salad, and it will still fill you up.”

Maria is vegan nor vegetarian. “No one in the Food and Agriculture committee is fully restricting their diet”, she said. “The goal is to raise awareness for more sustainable eating, and more understanding that you can reduce your meat consumption and have a salad instead.” Wei-Yu (Business Administration) agrees: “It doesn’t stop us from cooking great vegan dishes.”

Through the laughter, conversations and noisy blenders, recipes were slowly coming to life. “We organise cooking workshops every Wednesday, where we usually create dishes with a sustainable twist”, said Maria. Last week they organised a ‘Tarantino Movies’ workshop, cooking emblematic dishes from movies by director Quentin Tarantino. Apfel strudel was one of them, a reference to Inglorious Basterds.

The recipes for the workshops are found all over the internet. Alex uses LoveandLemons, Maria consults PickupLimes, whilst Judith mostly uses Pinterest. “Or we re-use some from our own archive from last year”, said Maria.

Then, the table was set. The group of strangers quickly exchanged conversations as if they’d been friends for years. Judith described her love for shrimps and sushi: “it’s a rare occurrence that I eat shrimp, because it’s not sustainable”, she said. Josie, an Portland native master’s student in Global Business and Sustainability has been a vegan for ten years: “The area I grew up in was very open to this wave of veganism. It’s something I can find here as well. All the grocery stores have different options for vegans, like tempeh or tofu.”

Following the filling lunch, a digestive walk from Mandeville led the group to the campus garden near the tennis courts, where the waste of the food was dumped. Judith and Alex showed everyone how to compost correctly: first remove some hay, then lay in your green waste, patch it back up and add some more hay, making sure you’re sticking to the one-third, two-thirds ratio.

The journey ended at the garden near the tennis courts where the compost was already in full effect. Clusters of rosemary, bushels of figs and fava bean plants were sprouting for the summer season. “When their fruits grow, the committee will organise a workshop using these ingredients”, said Judith.