UC Santa Cruz Dining brought home first-place honors from a national cooking competition highlighting the best vegan recipes.
Every year the National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS) invites dining departments from around the country to submit entries that feature a favorite vegan recipe.
This year's winning recipe, Vegan Polenta Lasagna, was created and submitted by Geraldine McCutcheon, production manager at Crown/Merrill Dining Hall. The lasagna features a layer of colorful Italian vegetables between layers of golden polenta.
The process of preparing for the competition began with a team of tasters, photographers, and marketing folks who gathered dining menus, comment cards, nutritional data, and other information and organized a presentation book for McCutcheon's entry. Criteria for selection included a 500 word essay describing the ingredients and their health benefits. In addition, all ingredients were to be listed with step-by-step cooking instructions and a nutritional analysis.
Vegan and vegetarian fare is increasingly popular with students, dining hall surveys indicate, and UCSC Dining offers many options, including soy burger patties, Tofurky substitutes, tempeh stir frys, portabella burgers, egg substitutes, and full salad bars.
UCSC Dining has competed successfully in previous sectional culinary competitions, including an entry in the Best Local Foods Contest (Third Place, 2007) and the Loyal E. Horton Dining Awards competition (Honorable Mention, 2006).
Winning entries will be on display in book form at the 50th National Conference in Washington, D.C., in July. As the winner of the contest, UC Santa Cruz received free registration to this gala event.
