Campus foodies club celebrates all things food
By Scott Strasser, August 1 2016 —
For many students, attending university means moving out of mom and dad’s house and learning to cook for the first time. A University of Calgary student club wants to help ease that transition.
UC Foodies is a Students’ Union-registered club devoted to all things food. The club explores Calgary’s culinary scene and teaches students how to cook.
The club was originally called “Best Friends Foodever.” Health sciences students and UC Foodies co-presidents Amanda Boadie and Rebecca Ng founded the club in 2013 after overhearing students discuss their lack of cooking knowledge.
“We heard two of our classmates talking about how they live at home with their parents and they don’t know what they’re going to do when they move out because they don’t know how to cook their own meals,” Boadie said. “We thought about it a bit and realized a lot of students have this problem — they don’t know how to cook or they don’t know how to plan a meal or even grocery shop.”
Now with around 20 members, the club meets once a month for potlucks or outings to various restaurants in the city.
“We [recently] went out to this Thai restaurant, called Juree’s Thai Place,” Ng said. “For our food outings we kind of poll our club members and ask them what things they’re interested in and we’ll try to organize that maybe once a month, depending on how busy people are.”
UC Foodies also organizes and participates in events such as an Iron Chef-style event in partnership with the U of C Community Garden Club, a cupcake-baking contest called Cupcake Wars and Foodiepalooza, a week-long celebration of food during the winter semester.
The club also holds an annual Christmas dinner, where members learn the ins and outs of preparing a large-scale turkey dinner.
“We usually cook a turkey and make a bunch of side dishes, like a typical Christmas dinner,” Ng said. “We try to use that opportunity to teach [members] about different cooking skills.”
While teaching members cooking skills and meal preparation are UC Foodies’ priorities, the club also included food sustainability initiatives in the past. Members recently attended a conference at the University of Toronto to learn about food waste reduction.
“A few of our executives went to Toronto and listened to the conference and some of the ideas that were there. There was a lot of focus around food sustainability and reducing food waste,” Ng said.
Ng said the club hopes to get involved with food waste reduction initiatives again in the future.
One UC Foodie member is Ng’s sister Emily, a recent Werklund School of Education graduate.
“It’s been really interesting. Amanda and Rebecca are both very creative in coming up with ideas to get people together and try new foods. They try to teach us different [culinary] techniques as well,” she said.
For more information on the club, visit https://www.facebook.com/UCalgaryFoodies/