The following story is satire. All events and characters are fictional.
One of Lawrence University’s main draws for prospective students is its dedication to sustainability. Food waste reduction is a prime area for improvement, and Lawrence has been trying out different methods to be more sustainable in its food consumption for years. While Lawrence has a food waste reduction program through the Food Recovery Network that works very well, recently they have been considering taking it one step further. Bon Appetit has just announced that they are going to hire a food repurposing chef, who will make new meals from older ingredients.
The idea came about when Bon Appetit had a massive surplus of mashed potatoes last fall. Usually, a food reduction group would have handled it, but there were too many mashed potatoes for any group of people to handle. The sheer amount of mashed potatoes were offloaded to the area behind Warch. Ducks fed on the white goo and became bloated. At the request of many concerned citizens, the city directly ordered Lawrence University to never remove food waste in that way again. If you see an unusual number of ducks roaming the campus this winter, it is due to their inability to fly south given their recent weight gain. They have enough reserves to last them the winter, but it is still concerning, nonetheless.
In an attempt to amend their mistake, Bon Appetit has hired a new chef, Linda Makemore. Makemore is world-renowned for making old food into new meals. Her greatest feat was using the same ingredients in a meal series for three months straight. While the final product may have been full of mold, Makemore’s fans insisted that it was delectable and that any person would be lucky to try it. Bon Appetit hopes that Makemore will bring some of this magic to campus this term.
As Makemore’s first test, the mashed potato catastrophe was recreated. Every Bon Appetit worker was rumored to be called to duty to produce an enormous amount of mashed potatoes. They spent the early hours of the day fervently peeling potatoes and mashing away. Finally, 50 vats of mashed potatoes were ready for action.
Students ate the meal ravenously, but it was not enough to finish off the massive reserves. 30 vats of mashed potatoes were left over. Makemore was called in to fix this issue. We talked with Makemore about her efforts. She said, “I had never seen anything quite like it. I’ve worked with large quantities of food before, and I never back down from a challenge. I ordered for a lot of the mashed potatoes to be reused as is the next day, but took 10 vats to work with.” A gleam danced in her eyes as she explained the process.
Makemore repurposed the mashed potatoes into a dessert. She added a large amount of sugar to the vats, some egg yolks, heavy cream, vanilla, and went to work. The blend was distributed into small pie shells and were baked for a short time. She sprinkled sugar on top and caramelized each one with a blow torch. She was reportedly very excited about her mashed potato turned crème brulee dessert.
No one complained to Bon Appetit, which automatically deemed the meal a resounding success. Bon Appetit is planning to ask Makemore to return to apply her skills to other under-consumed mass food batches. Be on the lookout for some fun surprises in your meals this term.