Sustain Mizzou hosts bake with local agriculture

The group hosted a bake featuring locally grown sweet potatoes.

By Megan Donohue

Published Dec. 1, 2009

Sustain Mizzou hosted its first sweet potato bake Nov. 4, during which roughly 20 people gathered to bake a handful of sweet potato dishes in addition to several other recipes baked with local ingredients.

"The cooking entailed all sweet potato goodness," said Megan Johnson, Sustain Mizzou Urban Agriculture project leader. "People brought cookware and sides to compliment the sweet potato dishes. By the end, we had the opportunity to sample sweet potato pie, fries, baked sweet potato and hash browns. We also had apple crisp made with local apples and fatata, an egg dish made with local eggs."

The sweet potatoes used were grown in Sustain Mizzou's research farm and were about the only produce left after this harvest season, said Tina Casagrand, Sustain Mizzou vice president of Programming.

"Some of the people that came to cook actually had a hand in growing the food," Casagrand said. "There's something really liberating about being able to grow your own food versus relying on outside sources."

Sustain Mizzou has said it wants to do more social events in the future.

"A lot of Sustain Mizzou projects have been a lot of work, and we really want to give our members an opportunity to just hang out," Casagrand said. "That's part of the reason we had this sweet potato bake."

Johnson said the goal of the bake was to provide a social event for Sustain Mizzou members and to teach people how to cook for themselves in order to promote using local food products.

"The sweet potato cooking benefited the members who attended," Johnson said. "The event's goal was to teach people who are new to the cooking local scene an opportunity to learn how to cook local food. If we can get people comfortable with cooking, we will have less processed, corn-based food buying because the consumer is confident in their cooking of local food and more likely to buy it."

Local food is better for the economy and the user in more ways than one, Casagrand said.

"Cooking local food is usually more nutritious in the way that it's grown," Casagrand said. "It's helpful for the economy if you are getting it from farmers markets, because you are supporting the local area instead of local corporations like Wal-mart for their produce which come from hundreds of miles away, usually from California or not even in America."

Sustain Mizzou President Emily Albertson said the group wants to branch more into sustainable agriculture.

"Sustain Mizzou wants to do more with all sustainable agriculture since it is an easy way to eliminate unneeded waste," Johnson said. "By eating locally, our food is healthier and has traveled less distance, using less oil equaling less energy consumption. We, as a country, are trying to become energy efficient and one way to step toward that goal is to eat locally."

The idea came largely from a Truman State University student co-op, which hosted a monthly vegetarian potluck with the same goals as the sweet potato bake, Casagrand said.

Albertson suggested students consider Columbia Locally Owned Retail and Services, which encourages people to buy food products locally.

"People seemed to really enjoy the cooking and eating," Johnson said. "Some of the people had never eaten sweet potatoes or did not know how to cook them."