A Taste of Home

In our Health class we were assigned to break up into small groups and design projects revolving around four pillars of balance: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional/social. My group chose to combine both physical and social, and for our project we decided to go shopping at the farmers market on campus and then prepare dinner with the ingredients we bought.

Farmers markets have always been one of my favorite places because the vendors are usually extremely genuine and I can tell that they put their hearts and souls into selling their homemade products. Also, since I love food it elevates my experience by being able to taste test the food that I am buying and also makes it far more difficult to resist the temptation of buying even though I usually do not need anything. One girl from my group and I went to the farmers market on Cox bridge to purchase a variety of ingredients to use in the dinner we were preparing for our health project. As we walked down the market we were captivated by all of the delicious looking foods being sold and when we finally were forced to make up our minds so we could get to class on time, we opted on purchasing homemade ginger infused orzo, homemade arugula pecan pesto, and an assortment of locally grown vegetables.

Since we are freshman and are stuck on campus without access to a grocery store, we were forced to improvise when preparing our dinner. We decided to make an orzo vegetable stir-fry. We began by cooking the orzo for 12 minutes in boiling water. Once it was no longer tender, we transferred it onto a plate to cool. We sprayed the pan with some Pam and threw in some cut up red onions, red and green bell peppers, broccoli, and baby corn. We fried up the vegetables until the onions became transparent and the rest of the vegetables were slightly browned. Next, we mixed the orzo back in with the vegetables and tossed on the stove until it was mixed and hot. We then added a pinch of garlic salt, a few tablespoons of Annie Chung’s Pad Thai sauce, and some of the pesto that we purchased at the farmers market.

Despite our limited ingredients, our stir-fry dish actually turned out to be extremely flavorful and delicious (definitely a nice break from the DUC). The assortment of ingredients, which one might not assume would complement each other, surprisingly did. The pesto’s slightly overwhelming garlicky taste gave the predominately tangy Asian dish a nice boost with out taking away from it. There was also a nice balance between the amount of orzo and vegetables and the dish was not swimming in sauce, which is something I hate.

Preparing dinner with a group of friends and eating a freshly made meal was an experience that made me feel like I was at home. It was nice to be eating a homemade meal using local ingredients purchased at the farmers market. After clearing our plates, we kept saying over and over again how much we preferred preparing our own food to eating the DUC and even though we knew it was not realistic to do this nightly, we made a plan to start doing this about once every week or every other week since not only did we have a good time eating it, it was also nice to prepare our own meal and to know where our ingredients came from.