Turkey Lasagna Dinner - Sustainability Through Food

Trial and Error

For this month, we made turkey lasagna for dinner, which the recipe came from Caitlin’s mother.  One lesson we learned from the recipe is trial and error. As we cooked our meal, we had difficulty reaching consensus of how we should set up the layering of the lasagna because some of us followed directions on the recipe or followed own instinct. We finally reached an agreement. The lesson taught from this meal is that we can never make a recipe perfect, it takes time and practice. The purpose of a recipe is to guide you in cooking your meal, but as a cook, we can make little changes on the way. As our group got together to eat our meal, we greatly enjoyed our turkey lasagna. At the end of the day, lasagna will be lasagna regardless of the order of the layers.

Before!

After!

In the Mood for Food - Vegetarian Month

Hey Everyone! In the Mood for Food explored vegetarianism this month. Despite that most of us are meat lovers this was an interesting experience. We all tried to strive for eating a vegetarian style meal once every week, or even one meal every day. A study showed that 7.3 million Americans are Vegetarians and that another 22.8 million follow a “vegetarian-inclined” diet.  Most reasons people go vegetarian is either to stay healthy from diseases, lose weight, to live longer, to build strong bones, to have more energy (as long as you make sure you keep your protein intake high!), to spare animals, and your plate is sure to be full of color :D.

This month as our monthly meal together we decided to do veggie burgers (just some advice: Boca burgers are better than Amy’s veggie burgers) with individual sides, which some included hummus with carrots and apples with yogurt. If you have any questions about vegetarianism or want resources we’ve found http://www.vegetariantimes.com/ to be very useful and fun :D It was fun to talk about the experience of trying to live a lifestyle very different from our (except for one of our members who is a vegetarian and shared what it is like to be a real vegetarian). We talked about how it could be fun to be a vegetarian but we would struggle to not have a carb heavy diet.

We also filmed our commercial for VIP explaining what we’ve done and how we’ve grown through this project. It’ll be shown at a VIPie event towards the end of November so can’t post details on what happened this month but maybe next month ;)

For fun here is a recipe we found: “Sweet Potato Salad with Apple and Avocado”. Since it is the fall season sweet potatoes are very popular and this is a fairly healthy main course meal with about 3g of Protein and only 179 calories! Go to http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/10866?section= for directions on how to make. It has apples, cilantro, lime juice, olive oil, avocado, corn, pumpkin seeds, and sweet potatoes! A great vegetarian dish for the fall season! YUMMMM!  This is the recipe we recommend (its delicious!).

Hope you had a great October. We'll let you know Living on a Budget month works out next time!

Love,

In the Mood for Food

October 2010 by Dianna

             The month of October has been a very productive and educational month for us! Our project is definitely underway, and we are progressing at a steady pace.

This month turned out to have a theme: conserving water. It is amazing how many people are not aware of how much water and energy they are wasting every day.  All of us have decided to set examples for those on our hall and in our building by conserving water and turning out lights, especially in the bathroom.  Leaving the sink running while someone brushes his or her teeth wastes gallons of water! Also, we have made a few signs to put up in the bathroom, saying to limit showers and turn off the sink while brushing teeth. We have decided as a group to limit our showers to 10 minutes.  One day we will all take 5 minute showers then calculate how much water we saved. It is getting that time of year when people use more hot water and energy because of the weather, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be GREEN! 

Our biggest success of the month was the installment of a new water fountain on our hall! It hadn’t been working all semester, and after we wrote several notes and messages, a new water fountain appeared! We were really concerned when we saw it wasn’t working because people were going through several plastic water bottles a day instead of re-filling the same one.  We all know that is no way to save our environment or conserve water. Not only are we conserving water now, but we are also using less plastic, which is much better for the environment.

To see how much progress we’ve made, we have decided to approach the maintenance advisor of our building and ask him what else we can do to conserve water, energy, and heat. We noticed that our hall has been really cold lately, and while that is uncomfortable for us, it conserves heat for when it is actually 30 degrees outside. So to all our hall mates out there, pile on the blankets and sweaters! We are going to focus on heat and energy the next few weeks as winter approaches, but we are going to keep encouraging people to conserve water and set an example. If nine girls can do it, so can everyone else!

Be Green,

Dianna

VIP on the national stage

Hey, everyone, this is Shawn. We had the chance to go to Charlotte, NC, this past weekend and present at a national living learning conference, where we spoke for 90 minutes about VIP and how we tailored it based on your feedback. Fifty faculty and administrators from over forty schools listened to our talk “Grading on a Curve: How We Changed Our Living Learning Program Based on Assessment.” Through your project work—blogs, surveys, collages, posters, video journals, action plans, and a final report—you provide us with regular input that we study and act upon. So while the spring survey told us your expectations for VIP, the journals and updates help us determine whether we are meeting them. Moreover, we learn from you how you are growing in our three key areas: critical thinking, civic-consciousness, and self-awareness.

Critical Thinking	Civic-Consciousness	Self-Awareness
analysis	community service	self-critique
evaluation	values formation	self-correction
problem-solving	pondering the “good”	self-knowledge

Our ongoing assessment has two goals, to improve your VIP experience and to aid in your personal development. Ideally, you are learning how better to design a project and work in a group, while we are learning how better to offer fun and creative ways to enhance your VIP involvement.

The conference audience LOVED your work, especially the action plans and the video journals. I think they found impressive your level of intellectual curiosity, problem-solving, and organized planning. Special thanks to Beyond Tutoring, From You Guys to Y’all, and Sustainability through Food—who graciously loaned us their materials. Our goal was to show off your progress and, based on the feedback, I feel we succeeded in doing that. So kudos to you, because your work is being viewed on a national scale.

Green Girls Month 1 (actually!) by Aimee

This month, Green Girls held our first event of the year. All of us went out for dinner to discuss our plan of action over sushi. It was a fun way for all of us to hang out and discuss our green ideas.

Essentially, this month we were still trying to get our bearings and evaluate our own habits. We took a look at our own recycling habits, water consumption, and energy consumption. While some of us are ahead of others in terms of implementing more green habits, we are now all ready to move forward and begin our plan of action.

We are all very pleased with our group dynamic and how well we work together. Everyone is open to constructive criticism from other members to help the success of our program. We intend to hold another dinner in the near future to figure out a local event we could host and to hear about everyone’s individual progress thus far. The Green Girls are very pleased with the new water fountain the fourth floor of Vanderbilt received because we now have a practical means of filling up our reusable water bottles instead of being forced to resort to plastic water bottles. However, this is just one of the many changes we hope to see on campus! The Green Girls are off to a great start and we have high expectations for ourselves this year!

xox,
Aimee and the Green Girls

Global Discovery #2

Hello!
Aaron here with updates for Global Discovery's activity in September (and early October). First and foremost, we held our second movie event in the Commons with an excellent turn out. "Ringu," the Japanese inspiration for the American Film "The Ring" attracted roughly 80 students, and on a Saturday night of all times! A week prior to our movie event we held a general body meeting for students interested in our cause and saw a broad range, from freshmen to graduate students, all eager to help our little group grow. We've had two great months so far, and with a speaker's panel event in the works along with an international meet, greet and eat, the next months promise to be even better, if we all survive the classes and tests that is. I'd attach photos if I weren't technologically disinclined. Thanks for reading,

Global Discovery

Building an Ethical Identity

As the year progresses, its unbelievable that it's already October, and how our project has developed so far. We've done a good amount of restructuring and streamlining to our project, dividing our efforts into two phases: research/introspection, and engaging the community. We are well into phase one, and have been holding our weekly dinners, compiling a formidable collection of bioethics-centered articles and news, and discussing the topics at length to figure out what exactly is relevant. In addition, this next month, we will begin meeting with and interviewing authorities on various facets of bioethics and find what exactly are the "hot topic" issues as professionals perceive. We feel that the implementation of our project in phases will give it order and allow us to make the biggest impact with what we're given.

We feel that its important to have focus in our project, as what we're trying to do isn't just to make the community aware of specific issues of bioethical concern, but to change attitudes, and raise a broad concern for ethics in one of the most sensitive fields, medicine. As technology and medicine develops at the rate that it has and does, the specific issues are always contingent - while an ethical evaluation of particulars is important, this discourse can only happen when we are willing step back and reflect not just on the science, but on the values at stake. We hope that the questions that we raise don't just stand independently, but fit together to bring attention to the importance of bioethics as a whole.

- Building an Ethical Identity

Bridging the Gap: Under Construction

We have been busy this month, nailing down the details for our upcoming panel discussion to be held November 9th. Our panel will feature many student organizations including Greek life, VSG, Vanderbilt athletics, and more. This will be a chance for students on campus to talk about how they feel they fit into the Vanderbilt community. Also, we hope to address the interconnectedness of how students’s see their peers and themselves.

In addition, we have completed our Action Plan. Most importantly, though, we have decided on a mission statement that conveys what we plan to accomplish in a succinct sentence.

Mission Statement

The goal of Bridging the Gap is to open up dialogue among ALL students on campus about their place in the Vanderbilt community and their interactions with different groups and organizations on campus.

More to come soon! Including a Facebook page featuring stimulating conversation threads.

Be on the look out!!

Bridging the Gap

Myths in the Making

What would you like to know about your campus?!
This has been our greatest challenge this past month. With a few ideas in mind, we still want to know what there is on campus that would be fascinating, shocking, gross, cool, etc. to the rest of Vanderbilt's inhabitants. With such a diverse student body and faculty, there's bound to be a wide range of interests. So, we are ready to send out a survey. Yes, a survey, one of those things that we all receive in our email a couple times a semester. While most people just delete surveys without even opening them, there are those few that are willing to take 5 or 10 minutes in pushing buttons for a chance to win something. Although we haven't decided to bribe students to fill out our survey, please be one of those students. If you receive it, PLEASE DON'T DELETE THE BUST A MYTH SURVEY!!! Here's the student's advantage to filling it out: the students who receive our survey have the chance to tell us what they think is important to investigate and even possibly get their questions documented and cut into our final movie.
As we finish up gathering information on the history of our beautiful school, contacting faculty, and talking to students, we will start filming ASAP!
If you would, please send us any suggestions that you have in regards to myths, mysteries, or just a funny question you think should be answered.

Good luck on midterms!

~Alyssa Evans
  Bust A Myth

Self-cooking & Asian cuisine

This is the second blog post from Asian Voice group. September is the opening month of our sophomore year. We five girls finally become floor mates and have a lot fun visiting and sharing. Last Friday, some of our members attended the first self-cooked Asian dinner. Tarynn got this idea of self-cooking and it was proved to be a brilliant one. On Thursday, we drove to the Asian market to purchase the food for hotpot and chicken soup. Right after finishing our classes on Friday, we met up at the kitchen and each contributed one dish. The dish-making process was full of joy. Especially for making Asian dishes, we were experimenting and creating new recipes all the time, not to mention that hotpot would always warm the atmosphere. While having the dinner, we casually discussed about our next plan for the project. We agree upon the idea of hosting several movie nights and fireside chats. We are also planning to go on a field trip next semester. On this weekend, we will have our first formal meeting in which detailed action plan will be completed and responsibilities will be assigned. Look forward to our next group dinner and those awesome movie nights!

Sustainably Cooking Omelets

This previous Sunday we went to Davis Cookware in Hillsboro Village and learned about various types and brands of cooking utensils, especially knives.  We learned proper knife care and safety and how to tell when your knives are dull.  They also told us about the fine teas and coffees that they sell and about their free knife sharpening service. 

Our group did our first cooking project this evening.  We had four of our members with us because Hayley could not be with us this evening.  Two of our members, Caitlin and Jose, went out to the farmers' market and Harris Teeter and bought eggs, spinach, cheese, several types of peppers, avocado, salsa, basil, and other ingredients to make omelets.  Lydia, who has cooked omelets before, taught proper omelet making technique to the members of the group.  Caitlin taught everybody the best ways to cut and peel garlic and onions.  We used such sustainable ingredients as eggs from pasture-fed chickens, organic spinach, locally grown tomatoes and peppers from the farmer's market, and locally made salsa.  Jose and Sarah, who had never cooked omelets before, did a great job their first time!  Everyone's omelets turned out very well and tasted delicious!
We are so excited to be getting into our project!

DEAR Vanderbilt, Wake Me Up When September Ends

    Midterms are upon us. This means a mad scramble to fit studying, hanging out with friends and viewing the latest episode of Big Bang Theory into the precious twenty-four hours that make-up the day. And while at times this seems impossible, thousands of Vandy students have proven that yes, it can be done!
    While laying outside of Wilson today enjoying the beautiful fall weather and studying for my International Politics exam, it became apparent to me how such small things in our daily lives can relieve stress. Even though I had a midterm that would comprise a significant portion of my grade in less than an hour, I felt at ease basking in the sunlight. Ahhh, the simple pleasures.
This month, our group DEAR Vanderbilt conducted a survey to find out the causes of students’ stress and activities they enjoy to alleviate this tension. Again I realized how the small things allow people to escape from the stresses of everyday life. Many of the participants in the survey wrote that they work-out, talk to friends and family and sleep to combat stress. While none of these responses surprised me, I was taken back by the level students chose to rate their stress. When asked to describe their stress on a scale of one to ten with one being the lowest and ten being the highest, the average was a six. Based on how much stress my friends claim to face due to homework, extracurricular activities and personal reasons, I figured the average would be higher.  When given the options of family and friends, school, social image, significant other, work and extracurricular activities as causing the most stress, participants selected school and extracurriculars. Personally I too find school and extracurricular activities the most stressful. Not saying the others aren’t stressful because they definitely stress me out from time to time, but the most prominent sources of my stress stem from school and extracurricular activities.
As I write this on a Friday afternoon (after my midterm and classes are over) and the weekend glimmers on the near horizon, stress seems far away for the moment. And even though it is, I know as soon as Monday rolls back around, it will be there to greet me again. But even though this is the case, I will enjoy every second of the weekend and when stress appears once again next week, I will at least have enjoyed my short break and the nice fall weather.

Peace out Vandy!

This pie chart represents the breakdown of the stress levels of our testing pool.


This chart shows the numerical breakdown of the causes of stress.