by Katie Yeaton-Hromada
The stress of finals, graduation, and the end of the semester is here! With the academic year coming to a close, how are you de-stressing?
Last week some of my colleagues and I decided to ‘spice it up’ and compete in a Battle of the Chefs competition. Sodexo hosted as three teams went head-to-head in an Iron Chef-styled competition. With twenty minutes to select ingredients and ten minutes to decide on a dish, each team was then tasked with one hour to prepare an entrée incorporating the secret local ingredient, blueberries. Our mighty group of three collaboratively created a blueberry barbecue sauce chicken and rice dish with a small summer corn-salad. Wanting to fully use our blueberries, our group incorporated the fruit into every portion of our meal, including the blueberry lemonade. The small competition was judged by four students in the center of the dining hall. After sampling each meal and scoring the meal’s presentation, color, and taste on a scale of meh to amazing, our Residential Life team placed second.
For someone who has done fairly little cooking recently and who has little experience cooking meat, I was happy to step out of my comfort zone and do something fun on a Wednesday afternoon. Especially at this point in the semester when I feel I get sucked into the email-vortex and my schedule fills up with meetings, I appreciated the spiced-up to my schedule and I enjoyed seeing the other creative dishes prepared by our competitor teams.
As we enter into our last two weeks of the semester, I am writing this post as a friendly notice to you all to spice things up, change up your routine and step outside of your comfort zone. Doing something outside of your usual schedule that challenges you can help you destress and prioritize on what is most important.
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