While many students are enjoying the last week or two of summer, the Middlebury Residential Life staffers have returned to campus to begin training and preparing for first-year orientation activities. EIA Civic Engagement hosted all 55 First-Year Counselors and Resident Assistants in Coltrane Lounge on Wednesday for a Fireside Chat about service, community and connecting students with service opportunities on campus and in the broader Middlebury and Addison County community.
FYCs and RAs spent half of their evening in discussions, delving into their connections with home communities, experiences with service and civic engagement, and their thoughts on student involvement in service on campus. The FYCs and RAs discussed the value of engaging with the local community and how service strengthens connections between community members and between students. Students also discussed what constitutes meaningful, effective and sustainable service, and how to get first years and other students involved from the beginning of their time at Middlebury.
Students intently place batter onto cookie sheets. Making cookies is serious work.
For the rest of the evening, ResLife staff made no-bake cookies and processed zucchini and tomatoes for the Middlebury Community Care Coalition (MCCC). The cookies will be served at the MCCC Community Supper on Friday. The zucchini and tomatoes came from Nash Farm, which tends three plots of vegetables for MCCC. Students chatted away while slicing zucchini and dicing tomatoes, which went into freezer bags to be used in soups and sauces this fall and winter. In under an hour students processed two heaping bushel baskets of zucchini and just under two bushels of tomatoes. CRA Nadia Schreiber pointed out to the group that if 55 of them spent an hour making cookies for one dinner and processing four bushels of produce, the time and energy that go into MCCC luncheons and dinners is really extraordinary.
Washing tomatoes is clearly serious work, too.
It was exciting to see the teamwork and resourcefulness students demonstrated in balancing all of the cookie sheets in an over-full refrigerator. One FYC ran back to his room to grab a tomato corer, which sped the process up. Some students washed veggies, while others ferried out clean zucchini and tomatoes to the students with knives and cutting boards.
As we move into September, Nash Farm will continue to be inundated with surplus produce – and they would love for volunteer help in processing those veggies for use this fall and winter at MCC luncheons and dinners. Students interested in spending an hour or two slicing squash, or an afternoon making tomato paste should contact Ashley Calkins (jcalkins@middlebury.edu). EIA can coordinate transporting veggies to campus and students can process them in any dorm kitchen!
A number of ResLife staffers had never made no-bake cookies before – and requested the recipe!
No Bake Cookies
Makes ~48 small cookies
- 4 cups sugar
- 1/2 cup margarine, softened
- 1cup milk
- 1/2 cup cocoa
- 2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup peanut butter
- 5-6 cups quick oats **up to 6 cups, use less if the batter seems dry**
- Mix together sugar, margarine, milk, cocoa, and vanilla.
- Heat in microwave 2 minutes. Stir.
- Heat in microwave 2 more minutes.
- Stir in peanut butter until well blended.
- Add oats. Drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheet covered in wax paper.
- Place into the refrigerator. Cookies can be placed into bags once they firm up.