Campus Kitchen kicks off at SLU

CANTON — St. Lawrence University unveiled its Campus Kitchens Project with — what else — a free meal on Thursday.

SLU is the first university in the state to join the nationwide effort. Student volunteers will help to fight hunger by recycling food from dining halls and restaurants that otherwise would be wasted and using it to provide free meals for the community.

"We use food that is reclaimed throughout the week, which is food that was prepared and never went out," said Stacey N. Sommerfield, campus adviser to the SLU Campus Kitchen. "Often dining services will make a bunch of a side and it won't all get used. Instead of getting thrown away, we're reusing it."

The university will offer weekly free meals on Monday nights at the Canton Newman Center.

SUNY Canton also is donating leftover meals from its dining halls, and St. Lawrence plans to work with community restaurants as well.

To celebrate the beginning of the project on campus, students prepared their first meal of salad, spaghetti and lasagna from leftover and donated items Thursday at the Eben Holden Center.

"The spaghetti came from SUNY Canton, the sauce was donated by Sergi's and the lasagna is left over from Dana (Dining Hall)," freshman Robert P. Frese said, as he led people on a tour through the kitchen students will be using. "This used to be the college dining hall, so students are going to use the equipment here to prepare the food."

SLU received a $16,000 grant through the national Campus Kitchens Project to support the program for its first three years. The college also received funding through the project's Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service grant program to fund the kickoff event, dubbed "Hungry for Justice."

"Some people really wanted to volunteer and give service to the community, because that is what it's all about," freshman volunteer Alli K. Shea said. "I just really love cooking, so this will be an outlet for that as well."

In addition to the meal, students put together an array of displays for guests to learn about hunger and food issues at the event.

Sophomore Cassandra L. Dimarino assembled a display comparing the average percent of income that people spend on food in countries across the globe. Her brown bag representing an average American's income showed only 10.4 percent spent on food, compared with 60.5 percent in Sudan.

"I just thought this project was an awesome idea, because there is so much food that is wasted in our dining halls, and it should be put back to use for the community," she said.

Twenty-three colleges and high schools nationwide have served more than 1 million free meals through the Campus Kitchens Project since 2001. The project is an offshoot of the D.C. Central Kitchen in Washington, D.C.