The last full month of the semester means a month full of dining events! From the Champagne Brunch spotlight meal to our collaboration with the Oshkosh Student Association (OSA) for the Give a Meal event, UW Oshkosh dining offers students savory foods and special dining events to enhance students dining experience.
Every month Aladdin hosts one premium night and one theme night. These events offer UW Oshkosh students a meal with choice ingredients and create a new atmosphere in the student dining experience. This month our premium night featured Italian cuisine with chicken cacciatore, shrimp scampi, ravioli, and garlic butter broccoli. Theme night featured a Thanksgiving feast highlighting holiday classics like brown sugar glazed ham, homemade stuffing, garlic butter turkey and mashed potatoes.
In November, we introduced a new concept: Spotlight Meals. Spotlight Meals allow students to try new foods and explore new types of cuisine. We kicked off this concept with a Surf and Turf dinner, which featured sirloin steaks with mushroom demi, sautéed garlic shrimp, and lemon dill baked salmon. We also had a Champagne Brunch spotlight meal before Thanksgiving, which featured French toast topped with strawberries, cheesy hash browns, build-your-own-omelets, shrimp scampi, and of course, non-alcoholic mimosas.
In an effort to give back, UW Oshkosh students had the opportunity to donate any of their extra Ultimate or Bonus meals to the OSA on-campus food pantry, The Cabinet. These meals were then transferred to a meal card that struggling students may use at Blackhawk Commons, Reeve Marketplace, and Scotty’s. In two days, students donated over 200 meals to the cause!
Our final Taste of Nations event for the semester celebrated Indigenous culture and their ingredients. This is a very popular event among students, faculty and staff as well as members of the community. On our menu we had Three Sisters Salad (a mix of corn, beans, and zucchini with lettuce and lemon juice), bison stew, baby walleye, maple and sage roasted squash, and cranberry walnut bars among others.
By Marshall Lautenbach