Students concerned about living sustainably can now learn how to celebrate a holiday that revolves around excess.
The Office of Sustainability is holding a Sustainable Thanksgiving dinner at the Ohio University Ecohouse on Monday at 6 p.m. Guests will learn how to prepare sustainable meals with their families. The event is open to current OU students who have registered for the dinner.
According to the event’s Facebook page, guests will learn how to make dishes such as sweet potato casserole, vegetarian stuffing, mashed potatoes with vegetarian gravy, salad and pumpkin and butternut squash pie.
Vicky Kent, a graduate assistant at the Office of Sustainability, is co-hosting the event with colleague Annie Laurie Cadmus, the director of sustainability.
“The whole thing is just about realizing how unsustainable it is, because there’s so much food waste around this time of year,” she said. “It’s just about making people realize this so that then they can go home and think, ‘maybe we can do this instead.’”
Kent, a graduate student studying recreation studies, said she recommends the event for anyone who has interest in sustainability or wants to learn cooking skills.
The Office of Sustainability’s website says that the items that attendees will learn how to make are “sustainable and low-carbon”, and that they are welcome to bring their own meal items to the dinner as well.
Michelle Wilson, the owner of Athens Impact, a “socially-responsible sustainable investment business,” invited her daughter to the event.
“I invited my daughter because I feel like it would be really neat for her to learn how to cook a Thanksgiving meal from fresh ingredients that are local,” she said. “I think it’s important that you eat a lot less meat. So learning how to cook a lot of side dishes that are flavorful, and not having such a meat-focused meal, I think is a really good idea.”
Kent also gave recommendations for how people can cook a more sustainable meal this Thanksgiving.
“A lot of the produce we buy comes from very far away, so (buying locally) would reduce your carbon footprint and the miles that food travels,” she said. “Try to portion size. Think about how many people are going to actually eat and buy the appropriate amount. Try to use things that you can reuse, so don’t buy disposable plates.”
She emphasized that Thanksgiving dinner can still be an enjoyable occasion when made sustainably, saying their goal is to “give people options of how to become more sustainable without taking away the things that people love about Thanksgiving.”
