Written by Kenzie James // Graphic by Makayla McDonald
The Family and Consumer Sciences Department celebrated the Centennial year with a special cooking event through the resource and family management class. This class teaches students how to buy ingredients and cook recipes according to budgets they are given for the lab every week.
Junior Elly Harper said they have spices and basics like flour and sugar in the lab but that they budget to buy all other ingredients at Walmart.
For the last two weeks, students were assigned recipes from the Harding cookbook, which was created by the Associated Women for Harding. Each recipe was contributed by women connected to Harding, many of them alumni. The first edition was published in 1965, and the most recent fourth edition was released in 2009.
Megan Jones, the instructor for the resource and family management class, had the idea to use recipes from the cookbook and invite the contributors back as a way to celebrate the Centennial.
“I just wanted to connect the students with some of the ladies that have been associated with Harding for a long time and have connections and [have] submitted a recipe so that they can just talk about their experience at Harding or the special experience with the recipe,” Jones said.
With her group in the class, Harper prepared feta pasta from the Harding cookbook, salad and bread.
“We have two hours to work and prepare the meal and set everything up, and [the alumni] come in the last hour and everyone will eat together and just get to talking,” Harper said.
Freshman Arianna Parker said she enjoyed talking with the alumna whose recipe she cooked during class and that this event is something she hopes the class will continue doing in the future.
“Everything was completely different when she was a student, so I think it’s cool to see her surprise that we made the recipe,” Parker said.
The Family and Consumer Sciences Department is focused on how food can be a ministry at Harding and serve the Searcy community. Jones said the FCS-SA prepares frozen meals for different organizations around Searcy. They have worked with Sparrow’s Promise and are working with Downtown Church of Christ and The Table.
“We have hands-on activities just building those skills but also really serving the people around us, and that’s really important to us and community and connection,” Jones said. “I think this is the perfect event.”
