Scholarships for Students from Marriott

The Marriott Scholars Program is currently accepting applications from students in the hospitality management, hotel management, culinary, or food and beverage fields. Scholarships cover a student’s full tuition up to $9,000. Deadline to apply is February 16th, 2010.

For more information AND to apply, please go to http://scholarships.hispanicfund.org/Marriott

If you have any questions, please contact Auri Duarte at aduarte@hispanicfund.org
Application Deadline: February 16th, 2010
Individual Awards: Full Tuition up to $9,000

Eligibility Requirements – Each student must…
• Be of Hispanic/Latino heritage
• Be U.S. citizen or permanent resident residing in the United States or Puerto Rico
• Plan to enroll as a full-time undergraduate student during the 2010 – 2011 school year in an accredited four-year college or university in the U.S. with a hospitality management or culinary program.
• Plan to pursue a degree within the hospitality management, hotel management, culinary, or food and beverage field
• Have a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better on a 4.0 scale

Selected Students Will Benefit from:
• A full renewable scholarship, up to $9,000 to cover tuition and fees
• Internship opportunities with Marriott International
• The opportunity to win a trip to Washington, D.C.
    - Network with influential leaders and executives
    - Learn career skills through workshops and mentoring
    - Attend the Annual Hispanic College Fund Scholarship Awards Gala

Serve Fast Food on Thanksgiving

I subscribe to Wired magazine and recommend it highly as a way to keep pace with the rapid changes of technology and its myriad of applications in the world.  The title for this blog post is the same as an article that appeared in Wired this month.  The Thanksgiving idea was from ErikTrinidad and his Fancy Food blog which can be viewed at: http://www.fancyfastfood.com/

In fact, a quick visit to the blog shows a wide range of high end dishes made with simple ingredients from various fast food places.  The Thanksgiving dinner was fashioned out of corn dogs to make turkey legs, mashed potatoes by pulsing french fries, cranberry sauce from donut filling, and arranged as usual on the plate.

This would be a great creative thinking activity for students to have them forage menu items from fast food restaurants and create gourmet looking and tasting dishes.  All you would need to do is have them review the fast food menu located near campus and select items that could be used to make gourmet dishes, send them to collect, prepare, and then present to the class.  It might be more fun if the class was not told the ingredients to make them guess which items came from which fast food joint to make the dish!

National Toilet Day

Today is National Toilet Day, as proclaimed by the World Toilet Organization.  World Toilet Organization (WTO) is a global non- profit organization committed to improving toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide (http://worldtoiletday.com/).  This is really no joke or laughing matter here in the USA and elsewhere in the world.  In truth, 2.5 billion people worldwide are without access to proper sanitation, which risks their health, strips their dignity, and kills 1.8 million people, mostly children, a year.  Even the world's wealthiest people still have toilet problems - from unhygienic public toilets to sewage disposal that destroys our waterways. 

Another reason that we should bring this to the attention of our students is that the average person goes to the toilet between six and eight times a day. Of the 69 gallons of water Americans use per person per day indoors, 27% (18.5 gallons) goes to flushing -- more than on showering or laundry or any other single activity, says the American Water Works Assn.  And while we flush 69 gallons of water down the toilet there are tens of millions who do not even have access to clean drinking water let alone a decent toilet.  It is also time for students to realize how much water can be wasted in a hotel or foodservice operation if the toilets are not functioning properly, leaking, or in constant use like those at a conference hotel which can impact a business that runs on tight margins.

Green Coca-Cola Bottles

I heard great news today!  Consumer demand and the trend toward sustainability has led to the announcement by Coca-Cola to launch a line of bottles made with plant-based materials.  This action on Coke's part will significantly reduce the amount of plastic used in their products. The new PlantBottles blend as much as 30% plant-based materials derived from sugar cane and molasses with conventional petroleum-based materials. The bottles will first appear in West Coast cities, Denmark and Western Canada, though the company aims to move to worldwide distribution and, eventually, bottles made entirely of plant-based materials.  You can read the article at:
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2253260/coca-cola-launches-plastic

Ideas for Reducing Food Waste

I have finished reading the recently released book, Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal by Tristram Stuart and highly recommend it.  The book is a comprehensive analysis of the production of food (by land and sea) from the farm to the table and the obscene amount of waste that occurs as a result.  Some of the facts and figures having to do with food security was questionable until I read my local newspaper today that reported on the USDA estimating that 1 in 7 households are battling hunger in the United States of America!  To put that in perspective, it means that 49 million people (or 14.6% of US households) are battling hunger in our country while we worry about those elsehwere on the planet.  What is worse is that 1 in 4 children in our country lives on the brink of hunger!

So what to do?  Here are some small steps that some have taken to discourage wastefulness of food while others around us are going hungry.  One restaurant (unnamed by Stuart) in East London charges customers 2.5 sterling (approx $4) that gets donated to Oxfam if they fail to finish their dinner.  Another unnamed restaurant in NYC has a similar scheme.  Another unnamed restaurant in Chicago reduced its portion sizes but will supersize for free those who request it if people ask them to do so at no extra charge.

The old world chefs lived by the waste not, want not credo and it is time we reinstill that value in today's students and hopefully the communities of which we are a part.