And then there was the time that onions went to college, Penn State no less.
The prestigious Penn State University Park campus hosted a full-on Onion Day in five of its residential dining facilities on April 4th and more than 10,000 onion dishes were served during lunch and dinner that day.
The dining halls featured our favorite vegetable in Baby Spinach Salad with Roasted Red Onions, Caramelized Onion White Bean Chicken, Savory Orzo Risotto with Onions, Sweet Onion & Red Onion Soup and Sweet Onion, Olive, & Anchovy Pissaladiere.
The food was stellar, and it came with great info from NOA Director of Public and Industry Relations Kim Reddin, who handed out onion trivia bookmarks, onion recipe brochures and tins of mints during the lunch and dinner service. The NOA also sponsored a drawing for two grilling gift sets to be shipped in early June.
“Today’s campus dining halls are sophisticated and fun, much different from my college days,” Kim said. “This was a great opportunity to share onion information with collegiate diners and to meet with campus dining chefs and nutritionists.”
Penn State agreed.
“Our students enjoy unique menus and finding out about ingredients like onions,” said James Meinecke, residential dining coordinator for Penn State University. “There’s an educational component as students learn about the nutritional benefits of onions and how to cut an onion and they sample some new and interesting dishes.”
Onion Day was promoted via Penn State’s social media outlets including Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. In addition, film students at the university created a video to showcase steps to making the roasted onion spinach salad.
You can view the video at https://www.onions-usa.org/foodservice/recipes.
And check out the photo gallery from the event. Courtesy of Kim Reddin with the NOA.
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