Dee Phillips is Davidson College's director of dining services (Davidson College photo)

By KATIE LOVETT
DavidsonNews.net

The phrase “college dining hall” often conjures images of rubbery mac-and-cheese, canned green beans, and bland, frozen chicken nuggets. But that’s not the case at Davidson College, where the campus’s Dining Services focuses on sustainable business practices and cooking from scratch to deliver healthy, delicious meals to students.

Director of Dining Services Dee Phillips has been working hard to decrease Davidson’s carbon footprint. After more than 30 years in food services and eight years as the director at Davidson, Ms. Phillips has the knowledge and experience to bring about change. She also welcomes student voices through feedback dinners, a recipe request program, and comment cards.

Ms. Phillips spoke of these contributions in an interview regarding Davidson’s composting program: “Davidson students have often come to me and made suggestions. They’ve helped me realize that we have to do better and be better.”

Back in 2007, Ms. Phillips rewrote her department’s goals to jump start the move towards more eco-friendly practices. Since then Davidson’s main dining hall, Vail Commons (or fondly referred to by students as simply “Commons”) has evolved toward streamlined sustainability. The dining hall strives to be a scratch kitchen wherever possible, replacing processed food with homemade options. This practice significantly reduces the amount of material waste, while also decreasing sodium and preservatives in the final product.

A trip behind the scenes reveals giant, simmering pots of homemade vegetable stock, desserts still warm from the oven, and piles of fresh, chopped vegetables. Many of these ingredients come from the organic herb and vegetable garden surrounding the building.

Ms. Phillips has worked hard to ensure that these sustainable practices start on the product level. The menus in Vail Commons – as well as other campus eateries the Union Café and the Wildcat Den – now serve Fair Trade and Organic coffee, cage-free eggs, and seafood caught or farmed sustainably.

Dining Services also has switched providers for pork, moving from Smithfield Foods to the more sustainable Cargill. Hormone and antibiotic-free beef, antibiotic-free chicken, and Fair Trade chocolate are next on the list.

Staff members have also contributed to the Commons makeover. This past summer four Davidson College chefs traveled to the University of Massachusetts to participate in the 17th Annual Chef Culinary Conference (CCC). This year’s theme focused on simple, healthier eating and the participants came back with new ideas to share at Davidson. Since then they have implemented vegan salad bar options and switched to dried rather than canned beans for lower sodium content.

[Read more about the participating chefs in a summer article on the college website, http://www3.davidson.edu/cms/x43409.xml. ]

Commons has also taken huge steps to decrease waste levels typically associated with college dining halls. For example, rather than purchasing plastic bags of pre-cooked pulled pork, Commons roasts and shreds their own barbeque, and then whips up three different scratch-made sauces to top it off. Placing paper napkins on individual tables rather than in plastic dispensers creates “amazing savings” according to Ms. Phillips.

Commons also buys in bulk to cut down on unnecessary waste from portion control packs, and eliminates the need for plastic with moisture-controlled warming units. Clean up now requires no chemicals, thanks to “ionators” that sanitize tables and chairs with ionized tap water.

The Red Barrel Compost program eliminates the need for food processors in the kitchens. Instead, food scraps travel down the tray conveyor belt, into a trough of recycled water, and through the food equivalent of a wood chipper before splashing into a bright red collection bucket. Physical Plant workers retrieve these barrels of food waste each day and pass the compost along for use by the grounds department after letting the mixture mature in a “curing yard” for three to six months.

Ms. Phillips plans to continue pushing Davidson towards efficiency and sustainability in every aspect of food production. Currently, her main goal lies in increasing the presence of local food on Davidson menus. While local farmers such as Barbee Farms, Grateful Growers, and Wild Turkey Farms (all within a short drive of Davidson) have occasionally made their way into dining options on campus, Ms. Phillips hopes to increase their presence in the future.

For now, the 1,300 students with a meal plan dining on Georgian spiced pork, paella, salmon with mango cucumber salsa, and acorn squash with corn pudding, just to name a few of the delicious items offered in Commons. It may not be mom’s home cooking, but it sure comes close.