Homecoming 2024 at Missouri State University featured a variety of food and drinks.

Some of the delicious items were prepared by a group of nutrition and dietetics students in Dietetics and Nutrition (DTN) 437 – Quantity Foods in Healthcare and School Food Service. Taught by per course faculty member Dr. Deborah Piland, the course includes catering for events.

The students in this year’s course served over 200 people. This is the largest number of guests that students in the course have ever catered for to date.

Creating the menu

According to Piland, there are many factors that go into choosing the menu. Among them are the target market, preparation time, production capabilities and whether the food is comfortable for the setting. It is also important to ensure the menu is a proper representation of the McQueary College of Health and Human Services.

“We take into account all the aspects because I want the students to consider everything when they’re planning a menu for an event,” Piland said.

The students’ menu this year included:

• Beef cheddar wrap
• Mediterranean vegetarian gluten-free wrap
• Balsamic blueberry and chicken and goat cheese wrap
• Fruit salad
• Fall fresh vegetable salad
• Cookies
• Iced coffees and mocktails

“The students came up with the selection during a menu planning class period,” Piland said.

Senior Clara Gust is a student in the class.

“I enjoyed the recipe research part the most,” she said. “It was fun to search recipes and see what would work for the event or what mostly worked and how we could change things so they would fit well.”

Preparing for big events

The process of catering a large event like Homecoming involves several steps, so advance preparation is key. Through experience, Piland starts early on projects like these to ensure a smooth flow and readiness.

“We try to make it a very thoughtful and planned out process that doesn’t stress us out. We want to be excellent, so we start a month ahead of time,” she said.

Becoming more knowledgeable

In this course, the students learn through a combination of lectures and a lab to practice what they are learning. They gain knowledge not only about food production, but also food safety.

Students in this class cater for several events during the semester. As such, they were able to get valuable experience from catering for a smaller event prior to this larger Homecoming one.

“We did a post meeting event, where we discussed all the things that went good and bad, as well as suggestions. Then, we applied that to our planning of the Homecoming event,” Piland said.

Dealing with challenges

The biggest challenge for Piland through this process is knowing what expectations to put on her students.

She notes most students do not have food service and planning experience; therefore, it helps that she starts ahead of time to explain and involve each student in the process.

For Gust, she found the biggest challenge to be finding foods that fit the fall theme, are cost effective and not too basic.

Learning important lessons

The biggest lesson Gust learned was how many moving parts are required to cater food for an event.

“From recipe planning to food prep and shopping, it takes so much time and effort to pull it off,” she said.

Piland hopes her students will feel confident to plan events of any type and size after gaining this experience.

“They’ll have opportunities to plan events just by virtue of being registered dietitians,” she said. “They’re going to be asked to plan events for families, churches, schools and work, so they need to be comfortable and confident in their ability to do this. It is a lifelong skill.”

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