Nebraska Quarterly Fall 2020 Edition

Do you live to eat or eat to live? In this food-themed edition you’ll learn how campus dining has evolved over the years.

Casseroles are out, international cuisine is in. And read about alumni restaurateurs who pivoted their business models to stay solvent during the current pandemic while staying true to their roots in

Q U A R T E R LY

also : KID FOOD A researcher works to get children eating better from an early age. page 10 LOVE STORY Lincoln eateries come and go but The Mill keeps its caffeinated grip. page 64

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EXPLORE THE WORLD THE HUSKER WAY Take your dream vacation with fellow Huskers through our Adventure Travel program. These adventures are open to all travelers! Join us on exciting trips to breathtaking destinations in Europe and Africa, plus domestic journeys to Cape Cod, the 2021 Masters and the Kentucky Derby!

huskeralum.org/alumni-adventures

“I’m just at that edge all the time.

And it affects my health.”

Angela, a Nebraska student, wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to care for her partner, who recently resumed full-time work after being laid off from his job due to COVID-19. She helps get him ready for work and cancer treatment. She recently received assistance from the University of Nebraska Emergency Assistance Fund, which she used to pay rent and buy healthy groceries.

It gave her a breather, for which she is grateful.

Typically, the University of Nebraska focuses on helping students achieve long-term goals, like education, graduation and careers. Today, however, there is very little that is typical. The lives of many students are upended by the pandemic and the economic crisis it has left in its wake.

Jobs are lost. Families are hungry. Tuition and rent are due. Students who were focusing on future opportunities are now forced to focus on simply getting through the day.

The University of Nebraska Emergency Assistance Fund is there to help students and employees, but it relies on the generosity of those who remain fortunate in unfortunate times.

If you’re able to make a donation right now, please do by visiting nufoundation.org/COVID19.

P ICTURE PE R FECT Calendar cuisine Each summer Nebraska Extension produces a calendar as part of its Nutrition Education Program (NEP) to give to the participants of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and others throughout the state. The team prepares meals over two days and sets up a photo shoot to have images augment the recipes. The calendars, printed in Spanish and English, reach 35,000 people.

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WHAT DOES NEP PROVIDE? It helps families on a limited budget make healthier food choices and choose physically active lifestyles by acquiring the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behavior changes necessary to improve their health. The program is free to all participants who meet income guidelines.

WHO MAKES THIS HAPPEN? From left, campus photographer Craig Chandler; along with extension educators Kayla Colgrove (’08, ’11); Natalie Sehi (’01, ’03) and Donnia Behrends (’03, ’05).

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Contents 2020

We are known as the Cornhusker State and while corn is certainly plentiful, there is so much more to our culinary collective. We grow our own food, we perfect it, we prepare it and we eat it — ideally not too much of it. In this themed-issue of Nebraska Quarterly we take a look at all things food. Find out how campus dining is adapting to changing food preferences by bidding farewell to casseroles. P38 Read about an entrepreneurial alumnus who opened a cabaret-style restaurant in Lincoln’s Haymarket paying homage to his college show choir days.

P56 Meet a small-town baker in McCook who won the prestigious James Beard Award.

P54 Now go grab a bowl of chili and a cinnamon roll and dive in to our inaugural food issue.

4 Contributors 8 Community 10 UNL news 27 Voices 53 Bulletin 62 Obituaries 64 Love Story

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28

60

Kid food

Gastrodiplomacy

Snack Attack

Researcher and early childhood educator Dipti Dev works with kids to encourage better eating habits at an early age.

U.S. Foreign Service Officer J.J. Harder travels the globe showcasing American cuisine to various State Departments.

Alumni reminisce about crisp meat burritos from Amigos, Valentino’s pizza and popcorn filling their late night cravings.

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NEBRASKA

CONTRIBUTORS

QUARTERLY

Fall 2020 VOLUME 116 NO. 3

PAULA LAVIGNE

Paula Lavigne is an investigative reporter for ESPN, where she tells stories on the news side of sports on multiple platforms. She graduated from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications in 1998, and went to work for a variety of newspapers across the country, including in Tacoma, Wash; Des Moines, Iowa; and Dallas, before landing at ESPN in 2008. She grew up near Gretna.

Shelley Zaborowski, ’96, ’00 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Kirstin Swanson Wilder, ’89 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SENIOR DIRECTOR, PUBLICATIONS

Kevin Wright, ’78 DIRECTOR, DESIGN

Quentin Lueninghoener, ’06 Ben VanKat, ’06 MAGAZINE DESIGN

J.J. HARDER

HANSCOM PARK STUDIO

J.J. Harder (’00, ’06) is a U.S. Foreign Service Officer currently stationed in South Africa with his wife, Shahrazad, and daughter, Zareen. J.J. speaks Arabic and Spanish.

He spends most of his money on eating and drinking; he spends most of his time reading printed books, traveling and concocting inventive ways of being more of a cheapskate.

Jialei Sun COVER ILLUSTRATION

NEBRASKA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION STAFF Kim Brownell EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

Charlie Bush CUSTODIAN

AAKRITI AGRAWAL

Aakriti Agrawal (’16) is a data governance analyst at Ameritas by day and a nonprofit founder on the weekends.

She spends her time closing the gender gap in technology through Girls Code Lincoln, and loves being involved in her community. Her favorite writing spot is The Bay Coffee Shop.

Conrad Casillas ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, VENUES

Derek Engelbart ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ALUMNI RELATIONS

Julie Gehring, ’91 ALUMNI RELATIONS AND PROGRAM COORDINATOR

LINDSEY YONEDA

Lindsey Yoneda graduated in 2018 with degrees in journalism and fine art. While in college, she worked on The Daily Nebraskan’s photo staff and interned with Hear Nebraska as a multimedia journalist. She currently works at a local screen printing company, Relentless Merch, and works part-time as a freelance photographer and artist.

Jordan Gonzales ’17

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materials and reader comments are welcome.

SE ND MAI L T O:

Nebraska Quarterly Wick Alumni Center / 1520 R Street Lincoln, NE 68508-1651 Phone: 402-472-2841 Toll-free: 888-353-1874 Website: huskeralum.org Views expressed in Nebraska Quarterly do not necessarily reflect the official

position of the Nebraska Alumni Association. The alumni association does not discriminate on the basis of gender, age, disability, race, color, religion, marital status, veteran’s status, national or ethnic origin, or sexual orientation.

EDITORIAL QUERIES:

Kirstin Wilder (kwilder@huskeralum.org) ADVERTISING QUERIES:

Jeff Sheldon (jsheldon@huskeralum.org)

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

Ethan Rowley, ’03, ’13 DIRECTOR, MEMBERSHIP

Viann Schroeder ALUMNI CAMPUS TOURS

Deb Schwab ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, VENUES

Hannah Segura ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR

DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT

Jeff Sheldon, ’04, ’07

Wendy Kempcke

SENIOR DIRECTOR, MARKETING AND BUSINESS RELATIONS

ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR

Tyler Kruger ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, VENUES

Michael Mahnken, ’13

Nebraska Quarterly (USPS 10970) is published quarterly by the Nebraska Alumni Association, the known office of publication is 1520 R St., Lincoln NE 68508-1651. Alumni association dues are $65 annually of which $10 is for a subscription to Nebraska Quarterly. Periodicals postage is paid at Lincoln Nebraska 68501 and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS. Requests for permission to reprint

Heather Rempe, ’03

Laura Springer Arriola, ’18 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, ALUMNI AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Lauren Taylor, ’19

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, VENUES

VENUES AND EVENTS COORDINATOR

Maria Muhlbach, ’09

Andy Washburn, ’00, ’07

DIRECTOR, ALUMNI OUTREACH

ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS

Hanna Peterson, ’16 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT

Amber Pietenpol, ’18

Hilary Winter Butler, ’11, ’18 SENIOR DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS

VENUES AND EVENTS COORDINATOR

N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

The official Medicare supplement insurance provider of the Nebraska Alumni Association

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Choose the Medicare supplement insurance plan that fits your lifestyle. wpshealth.com/ne 1-800-221-7056

This is an advertisement for insurance. Contact will be made by the insurer or an agent. Neither Wisconsin Physicians Service Insurance Corporation, nor The EPIC Life Insurance Company, nor their products, nor agents are connected with or endorsed by the United States government or the federal Medicare program. In Nebraska, WPS Health Insurance plans are underwritten by The EPIC Life Insurance Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wisconsin Physicians Service Insurance Corporation. The Nebraska Alumni Association support is a paid endorsement.

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BREAKFAST DISHING IT WITH UP WITH THESARAH EDITOR

Q:

What is the future of

food in Nebraska?

Sarah Baker Hansen prepares to share a combo basket she created in her Omaha kitchen.

In spite of the pandemic, Michael is still serving what I think looks a lot like the future of food in Nebraska. The most recent iteration of his menu does not include the combo basket. But there’s still an affordable daily lunch special, available for takeout. (Recent examples: ground beef, potato and vegetable casserole; a barbecued chicken thigh; and various Mexican inspired dishes.) Michael juxtaposes those down-home, affordable meals against his dinner menu: A duck breast served with spinach, goat cheese, cherries, nuts, beets and onions under and orange vinaigrette; or a wild caught Alaskan sockeye salmon served with pineapple, basil, shrimp, farro and

local zucchini.

All this happens on the brick main street of Dodge, a town of just 600 an hour northwest of Omaha. Eat proves that the small-town cafe and the high-end dining experience can coexist.

That memorable combo basket illustrates perfectly, I think, what might be the future of Nebraska food. The kind of food that smartly and deliciously bridges rural and urban, past and future.

And if a basket of fried stuff is to be our legacy, I will gladly take the one I ate at Eat. —Sarah Baker Hansen (’01) FOOD BLOGGER AT SARAHBAKERHANSEN.COM FORMER FOOD CRITIC, OMAHA WORLD-HERALD

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quentin lueninghoener

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A: I remember the first time I had a combo basket. I was in Red Cloud, Nebraska, with my future husband (Matthew Hansen), who I actually met, appropriately enough, in the hallowed halls of The Daily Nebraskan offices.

The Hansen-Yost families had gathered for dinner at one of the town’s mainstay cafes, the Palace Lounge. My future mother-in-law ordered several red plastic baskets for the table, which came full of shimmering fried cauliflower, mushrooms, onion rings, French fries, cheese balls and, as a second side, a plate of fried pickle spears.

I’m sure there were combo baskets somewhere in West Omaha where I grew up. But I’d never seen such a thing. Now I’ve seen (and eaten) too many to count.

My favorite of all the combo baskets by far is the one I found with Matthew in 2016 while we were traveling around the state writing a book together, The Better Half, which tells the untold stories of our state, food and otherwise.

At Eat, a restaurant in Dodge, the combo basket chef Michael Glissman created was called the “country inspired, city influenced” basket. He made it with in-season vegetables that he hand breaded in various batters and served with homemade dipping sauces. We had tempura fried green beans and portobello mushrooms and locally raised onions breaded in a thicker, seasoned batter. All of it came with a tangy homemade buttermilk ranch.

COMMUNITY

Brew Crew

Young Alumni Academy Earlier this year, the 2019-20 Young Alumni Academy explored one of Nebraska’s signature breweries — Zipline Brewing Co. in Lincoln and learned from Marcus Powers, a two-time Husker graduate and chief of operations for Zipline, about the growing Nebraska brewery industry and Zipline’s success story. The academy is a professional and personal development program devoted to connecting young alumni back to their university.

Food Fair

Rwandan Night Rwandan-inspired cuisine, dancing and traditional music filled Nebraska Union’s Centennial Ballroom in February. Polly Musayidizi, who helped organize the event, is being served capati, an unleavened flatbread common in East Africa Other traditional foods served were isombe (cassava leaves cooked with palm oil and ground peanuts), kadai (spicy chicken), fried plantains and kidney beans mixed with peas, carrots, green pepper and onions.

Puppet Brigade

Tailgate Cinema Cars filled the Champions Club parking lot in July for a drive-in movie experience celebrating love, hope, unity and friendship. University and local sponsors came together to create the two-night event which featured food trucks, live music and giant puppets designed by Andy Park of Nebraska Repertory Theatre.

Volunteer puppeteers included Kari Swanson Neth (’93) and Major David Neth (’04), above, and student Jack Buchanan, left. More than $1,000 was raised for Matt Talbot Kitchen, a local organization that provides relief to the homeless.

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Morrill Hall’s Archie is hiding somewhere in the magazine, like only a 20,000-year-old mammoth can.

Find him, email us with his location at alumni@huskeralum.org and you’ll be entered into a drawing for a Husker prize. Congratulations to Ken Petersen (’85) who found Archie outside of Love Library on page 41 of the summer edition. Ken is a teacher who lives in Omaha with his wife, Denise.

The couple have four children and three grandchildren.

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hannah segura, ange agasaro, david wilder jr. (2)

Find Archie!

Today is the day to stop saying “someday.”

Jamie Ristow Engineering Management, MEM University of Nebraska–Lincoln My today started when I took the step to strengthen my engineering career. I had a strong technical background but knew I wanted more in-depth knowledge on business and operations concepts. The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s online MEM program offered the perfect opportunity to customize my learning experience and broaden my perspective, all with the flexibility I needed as a working professional. I appreciated the accelerated 8-week class format, the responsiveness of professors and the opportunity to learn and interact with other working professionals. I was able to directly apply what I learned from the courses into my work. As a result, I have become a more well-rounded engineer.

150+ online programs. online.nebraska.edu

13 14 16 25 PASTA

PORK

PAINTING

POPCORN

Architecture students build pasta bridges.

Local farmer donates hogs to those in need.

Student perfects her food painting craft.

Nuts on Clark feeds fans inside Ryan Field.

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“Allowing children to feed themselves is one part of responsive feeding. What’s really critical is creating a mealtime environment that helps build long-term healthy eating habits.”

—DIPTI DEV

EDUCATION AND HUMAN SCIENCES

Food for Thought PROFESSOR AIMS TO STOP KIDS FROM DECLARING, ‘I DON’T LIKE THAT!’

BY TIFFANY LEE (’07, ’10) OFFICE OF RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

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alyssa amen

A

s the COVID-19 pandemic intensified, child care facilities across the U.S. shut their doors to curb the virus’ spread.

For researcher Dipti Dev, the closures set off alarm bells. An expert in early childhood nutrition, she knows that for many children, the meals provided at daycare and preschool — required by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to meet certain nutritional standards — are the healthiest fare they eat all day. Without that safety net, millions of children would lose access to healthy foods — or worse, lose access to food, period.

“I was overwhelmed,” said Dev, associate professor of Child, Youth and Family Studies and a Nebraska Extension specialist. “There was this feeling of ‘How should I help?’ There was an urgency to do something relevant and impactful.”

Past research shows that even a few missed meals can have immediate impacts, such as fatigue and reduced immune response in children, in addition to long-term physical and emotional effects, Dev said.

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FALL <<

BIG BRAG Chris Calkins, professor of animal science, led a research team’s efforts in muscle profiling leading to the development of the flat-iron steak, the petite tender, and other beef products that came from parts of the animal previously underutilized and undervalued.

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School closures are also likely to exacerbate the childhood obesity epidemic. During the summer, many children gain more unhealthy weight than they do during the school year. The weight doesn’t come off when school resumes: It accrues every year, often setting the stage for adulthood obesity, which is linked to heart disease, cancer and Type 2 diabetes.

Concerned that COVID closures could magnify these patterns, Dev took action. Her hallmark research program, Ecological Approach to Family Style Dining, known as EAT Family Style, trains child care workers, through videos and personal coaching, to meet national standards for feeding 2- to 5-year-olds. The program, funded by the USDA and Nebraska Extension, has reached 300 child care providers and 700 children in Nebraska since its 2017 launch. In 2018, Dev received the prestigious Early Career Achievement Award from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture for her work on the initiative.

As COVID spread, one of the program’s central tenets — family style dining, where children select their own portions and serve themselves — seemed like a pathway to dangerous germ-sharing. And for many children, attending child care wasn’t an option at all: The Midwest Child Care Association reported that a third of Nebraska child care facilities closed at least temporarily because of COVID-19. Nationally, estimates indicate the pandemic may lead to the permanent loss of 4.5 million child care slots.

To adjust to this new reality, Dev is developing a home-based version of EAT Family Style and training child care providers on how to use the program’s other principles — role and peer modeling, sensory exploration, self-regulation, praise and rewards, and family engagement — during pre-plated meal service.

“Allowing children to feed themselves is one part of responsive feeding,” she said. “What’s really critical is creating a mealtime environment that helps build long-term healthy eating habits.”

Dev secured a $10,000 grant from Nebraska Extension to launch Create Memorable Mealtimes, a home-based program focused on responsive feeding, the practice of reading and responding to a child’s cues of hunger and fullness. Dev said it’s common for the dinner table to become a site of nagging and bribing, with parents promising candy in exchange for eating vegetables, for example. Though well-intended, these practices thwart self-regulation and can lead to dislike of certain foods and food fussiness.

To dodge these traps, the program features videos, recipes, strategies for engaging children during meal preparation, conversation starters and tips for making mealtimes pleasant, which is correlated with stron-

ger family relationships and reduced obesity risk.

Nebraska Extension aims to reach rural, low-income and racial and ethnic minority families.

Dev is also forging ahead with helping child care providers. She is co-chair of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation National Early Childhood Learning Collaborative, which is identifying policy-focused research areas that can help child care programs safely promote good nutrition as they reopen. For Dev, this means translating the core principles of EAT Family Style to a COVID-shaped world.

Noah’s Ark Christian Daycare and Preschool, a Lincoln child care facility, launched EAT in January, pre-COVID restrictions. The teachers watched videos, filmed mealtimes and received coaching from Dev’s team, who encouraged providers to think of mealtime as a highlight. The concept initially was met with skepticism.

“I thought, ‘Yeah right, these people have obviously never worked with children,’ ” said preschool teacher Sheri Moss. “Mealtime had always been one of the most stressful times.”

But under the program, Moss and her colleagues saw progress. The teachers ditched takeout for lunch, instead eating the same food as the children. They encouraged conversation about sensory aspects of the food, commenting on a carrot’s crunchiness or a banana’s sweetness, for example. They nixed tactics involving coercion or pressure, instead teaching kids phrases like “No thank you” or “My tummy isn’t hungry for that” to decline food. And they relied on peer modeling — pointing out to a vegetable-resistant child that her classmate was enjoying the broccoli, for example — to promote healthy eating.

Mealtime pressures dissipated as teachers transformed eating into an adventure. Moss recalled a day when a boy was refusing all food except a glass of milk. She worried, recalling that it went against her instincts to let him skip the meal. But she stayed the course, watching as one of the boy’s classmates requested a second serving of the taco casserole.

Seeing his friend enjoying her food, the boy decided that he, too, was going to eat lunch.

Even after pandemic health directives halted family style dining, Moss saw the new techniques working. Teachers gave children control over portion size, asking them if they wanted “a lot or a little.”

They stopped gathering in a communal lunchroom, but still sat and ate with students in individual classrooms. And they continued to have positive mealtime conversations. For Moss, the take-home message remained the same.

“It’s not about getting them to clean their plate; it’s

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FALL about getting them to have a positive experience with food,” she said.

Spurred on by the pandemic, Dev is also eyeing an expanded research scope. Most of her work has centered around boosting children’s intake of nutritious foods. But healthy eating requires access to healthy foods, something that is never guaranteed. Though school districts have worked hard to deliver food to children during the COVID closures using school bus drop-offs and community pick-ups, Dev worried that younger children in child care were slipping through the cracks.

To address this, she forged a partnership with Husker researchers Lisa Franzen-Castle and Vanessa Wielenga, who run Double Up Food Bucks, a program enabling Nebraskans who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to purchase more fresh produce.

The three researchers see huge potential for collaborating. For Dev, it’s an opportunity to ensure that more young children have healthy food at home. For Wielenga and Franzen-Castle, it’s a chance to tap into child care center populations to reach more SNAPeligible families. The three are exploring ways to unite their programs.

Ashlynn Engelhard, above, shows off her design. Kinley McGowan tests her bridge while Brittney Bosak looks on.

OVERHEARD

“I went in before the lab closed, grabbed the nearly 2,000 ears (of corn) from last season and we built the scanner as part of a family project over a weekend.”

jonny ruzzo

—BRANDI SIGMON, assistant professor of practice in plant pathology, explaining how she helped a multi-season maize study move forward despite the COVID19-related limitations.

The weekend project was used to record detailed, 360-degree videos of individual ears, which can be converted to 3D and 2D images for study.

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ARCHITECTURE

Pasta Brava BRIDGING THE GAP Students in Professor Sharon Kuska’s Structural Fundamentals class put their bridge/riverwalk building skills to the test each semester. Teams of students design and construct riverwalks made of pasta. Their aim is to create a lightweight, 18-inch span that could sustain a load, in this case a 14.3-ounce can of tomato soup. A bonus prize is awarded to the team that designs the lightest weight riverwalk within the provided criteria.

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FALL AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AND NATURAL RESOURCES

Pork Partners BILL LUCKEY BRAINSTORMS IDEA TO PUT PORK ON THE TABLE

Gary Sullivan, associate professor in animal science, moves pork picnic roasts into the shrinkwrapping machine in the university’s Loeffel Meat Laboratory.

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Campaign, which allows pork producers to donate pigs to Nebraska food banks, with the university taking care of the processing, was born.

“The Pork Cares Campaign is the epitome of the Nebraska spirit,” said Mote. “Producers are trying to help those in need regardless of how much help they might need themselves. Those of us at the university that are helping with the harvest are humbled to be part of this campaign.”

Next came the logistics. Loeffel Meat Lab employees had to get special permission to operate when most campus buildings were closed due to COVID19. The lab was able to obtain hand sanitizer made by the Food Processing Center. They coordinated with Luckey to schedule the drop-off, and with the Food Bank of Lincoln to schedule a pick-up.

Through a combination of hard work, perseverance and luck, everything fell into place.

The same day the Food Bank of Lincoln picked up the first 1,500 pounds of donated pork, Luckey dropped off another 12 pigs for processing. This time, the pork was donated to Food Bank of the Heartland in Omaha. The Nebraska Pork Producers Association set up an online donation platform to help cover the costs associated with processing, and they raised enough money to keep the program going for a third week.

By early August, over 9,000 pounds of pork were donated through the Pork Cares Program. The Meat Science Club will be joining the efforts this fall to process the pork bellies into bacon which will be donated to the food banks and other organizations serving those in need.

—Cara Pesek

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craig chandler

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On a rainy afternoon in late May, the Food Bank of Lincoln paid a visit to the Animal Science Complex and loaded up 1,500 pounds of fresh pork onto a truck for distribution to Nebraskans in need across the southeastern part of the state.

The pork, donated by pig farmer and animal science alumnus Bill Luckey (’77), was the result of generosity, ingenuity, collaboration and a spirit of Nebraskans helping Nebraskans among the state’s pork producers, the Food Bank of Lincoln and the university.

A week prior, Luckey delivered 12 pigs to the Loeffel Meat Lab. Luckey’s operation near Columbus, like many swine operations throughout Nebraska and across the country, was hit hard by the coronavirus.

Outbreaks of COVID-19 among workers at some large processing plants diminished processing capacity at some facilities and temporarily closed others. With large plants’ capacity reduced, small, locally-owned meat processors saw demand spike and their schedules filled into fall and even beyond. With so much stress on processors, pork producers like Luckey found it difficult to sell their pigs; some farmers made the excruciating decision to euthanize animals.

Luckey did not want to do that. He had worked at the Loeffel Meat Lab in the Animal Science Department as an undergrad in the 1970s, and he wondered if perhaps his old employer would be able to process some pigs so they wouldn’t go to waste.

Luckey knew many Nebraskans were struggling to put food on the table. Surely, they would appreciate fresh, Nebraska-grown pork.

Luckey made some phone calls to people he knew at the university to see if there was some way to make use of his pigs. Unbeknownst to Luckey, a group of faculty and staff, including Swine Extension Specialist Benny Mote and associate professor of meat science Gary Sullivan, were wondering the same thing. Soon, the Nebraska Pork Producers Association joined the conversation, too. Within a few days, the Pork Cares

LAW

Grab and Go

zeke williams/daily nebraskan

ALUMNI COME TOGETHER TO CREATE HEALTHY OPTIONS IN THE STUDENT UNION A new vendor in the Nebraska Union offers students an alternative way to eat healthy while on the go.

Eat Fit Go Healthy Foods, a food service focused on providing healthy meals to busy people, partnered with the union to introduce a new smart fridge that allows students to buy meals with the swipe of a card.

According to Ryan Lahne, interim director of the Nebraska Unions, the Nebraska Union Board was looking to add an option for students that could cater to more restrictive diets, such as gluten-free and vegan.

“Eat Fit Go is locally produced in a kitchen in Omaha, never frozen and brought straight to campus,” Lahne said. “It provides fresh food outside of normal vendor hours because (the fridge) is open whenever the building is open, regardless of vendor operating hours.”

The fridge is automated, and to purchase one of the vacuum-packed, microwavable meals all a student has to do is to swipe a credit card, open the fridge and take out an item. According to Lahne, the fridge knows automatically what is being taken out and charges the purchaser for that item.

Brock Hubert, CEO of Eat Fit Go, said the company tries to cater to many different diets, and the automated fridge makes it easy for students to search for certain ingredients. The touchscreen allows patrons to filter out items like meat, gluten and other dietary restrictions.

Hubert gradu a t e d f ro m Nebraska Law in 2015 and credited his and Matthew Travers’ connections to the university for the

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BIG BRAG

company’s expansion to the union. Travers is the managing director for business development of Eat Fit Go. Travers graduated with a finance degree in 2005, and said he is familiar with the struggle college students can face when trying to eat healthy.

“I know some students are left without food on weekends, and in a pinch the easiest thing to do is get food that’s usually not that healthy,” Travers said. “To have a healthy, quick option like Eat Fit Go is to not have to think about what you’re going to eat and to feel good about what you’re eating.”

—Becca Holladay, The Daily Nebraskan

The obesity epidemic recently spurred the National Institutes of Health to invest a second $11-million round of funding in the university’s Nebraska Center for Prevention of Obesity Diseases.

Fajita steak bowl

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FALL FINE AND PERFORMING ARTS

Nourishing Her Soul ‘I THINK A GOOD LIFE IS INSEPARABLE FROM ART’

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Tian (Summer) Xia

Home tastes like pork belly, braised Chinese cabbage and crawfish to May graduate Tian (Summer) Xia. That’s why as she began her undergraduate study of finance five years ago — far from the comfort foods of her home in China — she fought off homesickness by learning to cook. Still, she craved something.

Then, after two years of studying business, Xia made the leap to a studio art major, despite her parents’ initial disagreement. “I was lost for a long time, until taking an art class made me regain the joy of studying,” Xia said. “I gradually fell in love with the atmosphere of art classes, the kind of freedom that allows me to create works without being confined in a small space.”

Her culinary creations now pro- Tian (Summer) Xia vide a spiritual comfort to her roots and an unexpected muse for her paintings. Through observation, oil paint, and 40 to 190 hours crafting individual canvases of all sizes, Xia brings her meals to life, sharing her feelings of home with her audience.

“The purposes behind my paintings are to show real Chinese food, help a viewer learn more about Chinese culture, think about times with people around food, and warm your heart,” Xia said in her artist statement.

Xia’s art has the emotional core and technique to boot. Matthew Sontheimer, associate professor of painting and drawing, is most impressed with how Xia’s images are tightly rendered and void of texture.

At first glance, the surfaces look like they could be commercially printed.

“They are not keyed-up and romanticized images

of Chinese food, but rather read as the type one might find on backlit plexiglass in a restaurant showing menu items. These Chinese food paintings were a complete standout in the spring semester Juried Student Show,” Sontheimer said.

Her paint descriptive abilities along with a strong sensitivity to color and form put her at the top of her painting courses, according to Aaron Holz, professor of painting and drawing. He worked with Xia in her beginning painting class and several advanced courses.

“She is dedicated to longer, more sustained rendering that often fatigues young artists,” Holz said. “She is willing to put in the time to achieve good form, and her paint mixing ability is wonderful.”

Xia’s hometown is geographically and culturally far from Lincoln. Suzhou’s population of more than 10 million is just the start. Even so, Xia found a new sense of place and connection to her craft in a painting studio on the Nebraska campus.

“I started to become a permanent resident in Richards Hall and always stayed up pretty late to create, but I never felt tired,” Xia said. “I know I love it, so I want it, and I will have power for it.”

With a sense of place comes friends and faculty who support an artist’s ambitions — something that Xia made sure to cultivate.

“Beyond her high skill level as an artist, (Xia) is a community builder at UNL,” Sontheimer said. “She singlehandedly started the Painting Club in the School of Art, History and Design. It was wonderful seeing her walking into classes to get signatures to create the club.”

The Painting Club that Xia founded resumes this fall and will host group shows and painting sales of

student work. Meanwhile, as Xia continues to build her portfolio, she is planning for graduate school in 2021, and after, a life full of visual art. And she has options: she might become a teacher to pass on a love of the medium as she says her professors have done for her, or maybe a freelance artist, traveling and pulling inspiration from the beauty of the world.

Either way, home for Xia not only feels like tea and sesame tapioca bread, but now, also canvas, brushes and oil paint in scarlet and cream.

“I think a good life is inseparable from art,” Xia’s artist bio reads. “The spiritual, artistic pursuit is just as important as basic material needs.”

—Grace Fitzgibbon

Tian Xia’s food paintings include Budweiser & Crawfish, above, and Tea Time II, far left.

BIG BRAG The Nebraska Environmental Trust has awarded 21 grants totaling more than $1.9 million to university projects.

jonny ruzzo, gregory nathan

OVERHEARD

—JENNIFER AUCHTUNG, one of the main investigators on a new research project led by the Nebraska Center for the Prevention of Obesity-Related Diseases

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“We know that different parts of a person’s diet can have potential impacts on their microbiome, and this may influence susceptibility to infections with different gastrointestinal pathogens. One of the questions we asked was whether the molecules that are found in dairy products, especially milk, can change the microbiome and influence this susceptibility to infections.”

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FALL Cary Savage, director of the Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior, is studying the brain’s role in health behaviors.

ARTS AND SCIENCES

Obese Mind Games BRAIN SCANS SHOW SUSCEPTIBILITY TO OBESITY AND WEIGHT LOSS SUCCESS

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craig chandler

As the root of many Americans’ health problems, obesity gets a lot of attention. And many factors are blamed for its prevalence: the easy availability of fast food; the growing income gap that makes it difficult for many to consume a healthy diet; the shift to jobs that require little physical exertion.

Two university researchers are looking at something that may touch on all those factors and lead to potential changes: What is the relationship between obesity and brain function? And how can that relationship be put to use improving people’s health?

Cary Savage and Tim Nelson, both faculty in the Psychology Department, have been doing related research throughout much of their careers. Both Savage, director of the Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior — known as CB3 — and Nelson have studied the brain’s role in health behaviors, particularly the brain’s executive function, a set of cognitive abilities that direct attention and behavior.

Now they are using the CB3 magnetic resonance

imaging (MRI) equipment to apply neuroscience to the problem of obesity. A functional MRI, Savage said, can show how blood flow changes in the brain as people look at certain images.

“If we show people pictures of appetizing food, we observe increased activity in the parts of the brain that process and regulate reward. We can look at how brains respond depending on a person’s weight, and now we can also look at predictors of weight loss,” he said.

In a recently published study that Savage was part of, research subjects whose brains showed the most activity in the prefrontal cortex, parts of the brain that help regulate behavior, were most likely to lose weight. “We could predict weight loss knowing nothing about the person other than their baseline brain function,” he said.

Savage also led a research study that scanned people’s brains while they chose between small, immediate rewards or larger, delayed rewards. Participants then embarked on a nine-month exercise intervention.

Data are still being analyzed, but Savage predicts that those who chose delayed rewards will show more activity in the prefrontal cortex — a key area for executive function — and will be more likely to be successful in the exercise intervention.

Nelson’s research has been primarily focused on what he calls “high impact health behaviors” that affect the development and management of decisions about things like diet, sleep and physical activity.

Executive function, which determines how well a person can direct their attentions or actions, is an important factor in all those individual health behav-

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jonny ruzzo

—CHANCELLOR RONNIE GREEN, who testified to the Nebraska Legislature’s appropriations committee is considering LB 1026, a bill that (as proposed) would provide $2.5 million annually through 2022 to support water and agriculture-based research led by the Daugherty Institute.

iors, Nelson said. “Like what we choose to eat. We know what’s healthy. But doing it is another matter.”

Obesity, Savage said, is not a disease, nor is it a sign of weakness. “It’s a common human vulnerability,” one that has become ever more prevalent in the past 50 or 60 years as a result of a complete change in the environment.

Human brains were honed through thousands of years to survive, Savage said. That meant “eat whenever you could get food, the more calories the better.” Survival required hard physical work, and people needed those calories.

Today, though, “food is plentiful; exercise is optional,” Savage said. “The environment has changed completely, but our brains have not.” Our brains now face the challenge of making decisions based on longterm consequences, not immediate reward.

Savage and Nelson want to understand the biology and the predictors of obesity. “That’s going in the direction of personalized medicine,” Savage said.

Combining the results of genetic testing, functional MRIs and hormone testing, doctors will be able to put their patients into treatments most likely to be successful in their specific situation.

To this point, an individual’s level of executive function has not generally been part of designing obesity prevention programs. “Executive function is recognized for its role in mental health and in learning but has not been looked at as much in the context of physical health,” Nelson said. “If we find executive function plays a meaningful role in obesity risk,” he said, “that might provide a target for intervention and prevention.”

That’s important, said Bob Wilhelm, vice chancellor for research and economic development. He said Savage and Nelson’s work is an example of how research being done at the university has a “real, tangible impact on Nebraskans’ lives and well-being.”

Now the two psychologists are planning to embark on a study that uses a treasure trove of data to examine the brain’s effects on childhood obesity. Kimberly

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“The Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute is vital to building, supporting and growing the water and agricultural research partnerships we need to continue this life-changing work.”

Espy, associate vice chancellor for research from 2005 until 2011, began testing more than 300 preschoolers in 2005 to try to describe the development of executive function.

As the children entered adolescence, Nelson and his wife, Jennifer Nelson, began directing research with the sample. Jennifer Nelson is an associate professor of research in the Psychology Department and is director of research strategy and infrastructure in the Office of Research and Economic Development.

The participants have completed computer-based cognitive tests annually from preschool through adolescence, measuring their executive function abilities.

The Nelsons also measured the young people’s physical activity, weight and other factors.

Thanks to the MRI now available at the CB3, Savage and Nelson can look at more specific measures of brain activity. “We’ll look at neural vulnerability factors, neural processes that might put someone at risk for obesity,” Nelson said.

Via the MRI, researchers will observe what happens in the young people’s brains when they look at pictures of food and consume milkshakes. They’ll link those findings with how the adolescents performed on cognitive games and other tests when they were 4 years old and see how that early data relates to the young people’s brain responses to food today.

They’ll be looking to see whether executive function exhibited by the preschoolers predicts neural responses to food many years later. “Are kids born with a vulnerability to being obese?” Savage asks.

“Or is it the result of poor diet over time,” which can damage the brain and make executive function even harder?

Wilhelm applauded the research that is addressing those questions. “We know obesity can affect our children even through adulthood, and understanding when and how to intervene is crucial” he said. “This Nebraska research team is influencing the national conversation about children’s health.”

—Charlyne Berens

BIG BRAG The Nebraska Governance and Technology Center has received a $250,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The grant, made to the University of Nebraska Foundation, will support research and programming at the interdisciplinary center based in the College of Law.

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FALL

HOLIDAY M EAL Journalism and Mass Communications Professor Bruce Thorson traveled with his photojournalism students to Mongolia in December 2019 to film mini-documentaries and photograph local culture, tradition and reform.

WHATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S HAPPENING HERE? The Lamp of the Path soup kitchen is located in one of the poorest districts in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. During the harsh winter months, the soup that is served Monday through Saturday is one of the only hot meals these residents receive. On Dec. 25, around 130 people came to the soup kitchen for a hot meal and a holiday celebration.

IS THERE MORE? Why, yes. The students compiled a multimedia package which won second place in the Hearst Collegiate Journalism Competition.

To view the entire content visit globaleyewitness.org

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BIG BRAG P. Stephen Baenziger, professor and Wheat Growers Presidential Chair in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, received a $650,000 threeyear grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

peyton stoike

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FALL ENGINEERING

Flushing Out Coronavirus WASTEWATER TESTING COULD HELP PREDICT SURGES A sample is collected at the Elkhorn Wastewater Treatment plant.

BIG BRAG Buy Fresh Buy Local Nebraska, a program run by the Department of Agricultural Economics, has developed an online directory to connect consumers with locally produced foods for home delivery or pickup.

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Researchers in the Netherlands, Australia and now the United States have demonstrated that testing can pick up on the virus about a week before the first clinical case.

Wastewater analysis long has been used to monitor for other diseases, such as polio, and some researchers have used it to estimate the prevalence of drugs of abuse, such as opioids, in communities.

Bartelt-Hunt previously has tested Nebraska waters — before and after treatment — for the presence of both therapeutic and illicit drugs. She’s currently trying to do the same kind of testing for methamphetamine with a researcher at the University of South Dakota.

Wastewater testing for the novel coronavirus got started after research earlier in the pandemic indicated that people shed particles of the virus in stool and other bodily fluids. Whether the particles contain live virus capable of infecting people, however, still isn’t clear.

Bartelt-Hunt said she began thinking about testing in Nebraska after seeing reports from the Netherlands and Australia in early March. As an environmental engineer, however, her work is more focused on chemical contaminants in water than on biological ones. So she reached out to UNMC. The researchers contacted Omaha, Lincoln and Grand Island officials in late March. Confirmed cases began to mount in the Grand Island area in early April. It soon became a hot spot.

Bartelt-Hunt said the researchers are trying several sampling strategies. In Lincoln, they’re sampling at the wastewater plant, catching wastewater coming in.

—Julie Anderson, Omaha World-Herald

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Jeremiah Birdsall lowered a rope with a container on the end into a manhole near the Elkhorn Wastewater Treatment Plant and reeled in a batch of untreated wastewater.

As wastewater goes, it was relatively clear. Birdsall, an engineering technician with the City of Omaha, poured a portion into a bottle and handed it off to Shannon Bartelt-Hunt, professor and chair of civil and environmental engineering.

Bartelt-Hunt tucked the sample into a cooler with those she’d picked up earlier that morning in Grand Island and Lincoln and drove east to hand them off to a group of collaborators at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Bartelt-Hunt has been collecting weekly samples of wastewater in the three cities since early April. The researchers’ goal is to see whether they can develop a method to detect signs of the novel coronavirus in the wastewater and use that data to learn about and help track the virus, potentially giving public health officials a needed leg up on plotting and responding to its course.

“This might be able to help predict what’s coming and direct where to put testing centers or where to put (other) resources,” Bartelt-Hunt said.

Getting ahead of the virus has been complicated by its long incubation period, the time it takes sick people to get in and get tested, and even the limitations of the tests themselves.

The nasal swab test, which like the wastewater testing looks for the virus’s genetic material, can miss infections if it’s done too early or too late in the course of the illness. Some people with the virus never develop symptoms, and some with symptoms don’t get tested.

For those reasons, some researchers also are eyeing wastewater testing as a means of determining the virus’s true prevalence in communities.

Wastewater monitoring is catching on in other countries and in parts of the United States.

BUSINESS

Hot Topic SALSA-MAKING EXPERIENCE

shutterstock

OFFERS INSIGHT TO TEAMWORK Slicing, dicing and stirring their way through class, students in Managing Behavior in Organizations learn the process of teamwork by making salsa.

Through the creative exercise, students discovered firsthand the different aspects of working together in a more memorable way.

Separated into small teams, students compete for the best-made salsa with only six ingredients. The ingredients are in limited supply so once they are gone, supplies are not replaced. This leads to creative substitutions, such as mangoes in lieu of tomatoes.

Dr. Amy Bartels, assistant professor of management, who teaches the course, adapted the activity from an exercise found in the Management Teaching Review textbook. Wanting the students to have a greater understanding of team processes demonstrated in the literature, she knew a hands-on experience was the best way to accomplish that.

“Cooking is a great way to simulate team dynamics and processes in the classroom because it requires so much decision-making, communication and conflict management — all key aspects of team processes and dynamics. Salsa is particularly well-suited for this type of activity because it can be made from a variety of ingredients and still taste great — plus it doesn’t require a lot of cooking tools,” Bartels said.

Kamran Araghi, a management major from Scottsdale, Ariz., questioned why he would make salsa in a management class. After completing the team activity, he understood the key management aspects learned through the experience. “The activity made this different than other classes. Instead of taking notes on a lecture over the topic, we got to experience it through this real-life example. I enjoyed learning about management while making salsa and I learned more than I would have in lecture,” he said.

In a key decision-making moment, students were told they could add one additional ingredient. They then had to determine whether their salsa was good enough or if they should consider taking a risk and adding something new. In addition, once the selected team member approached the ingredient table, they

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could no longer talk to one another, which forced teammates to make the decision alone when an ingredient was not available. This obstacle represented a challenge comparable to those they might face in their future careers.

Bartels believes students often look at their peers and evaluate them without understanding the processes connecting them. She shared that the inputs and outputs of teams are key factors in determining what composes a great team. “Research suggests engaging in interactions and observing others engaging in such behaviors can enhance the student’s learning, so I wanted to give them a chance to engage in a project that has them practice team processes to enhance their knowledge in this area,” Bartels said.

“The greater understanding they have of teams and how they can be most effective as they enter the workplace, the easier it will be for them to adapt to a team-based structure in their organization.”

This semester, due to COVID-19, the management course will be online, so teams will create a video while making their salsa and submit their recipes.

Then Bartels will follow their recipes to recreate their salsa and a guest judge will select the winner.

“The students will have to work together as a team and overcome challenges to simulate the teamwork environment. Having never done it online, I am looking forward to trying it out,” Bartels said.

—Garrett Stolz, Sheri Irwin-Gish

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FALL EXTENSION

Farmto-School Funding BIG BRAG Tyler White, professor of composition and conducting in the Glenn Korff School of Music, has been awarded the 201920 American Prize in Composition for his orchestra work A Brand-New Summer.

The Nebraska Department of Education and Burwell Public Schools have both received grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture which will allow them to partner with Nebraska Extension to bring fresh, local foods into schools.

The Nebraska Department of Education and Burwell Public schools received $99,070 and $38,725, respectively through the grant program, which aims to increase the amount of local foods served in child nutrition programs, teach children about food and agriculture and foster economic opportunity for farmers and ranchers in surrounding communities.

Each grant will be distributed over two years.

Nebraska Extension educators will work directly with the state department of education in order to identify interested school districts, build relationships between school administrators and producers and develop resources for both extension educators and local schools interested in serving more locally grown foods.

“Nebraska Extension has a really unique role to play in farm-to-school efforts because of our statewide network of educators who have great connections and relationships in the communities that they work in, said extension educator Ben McShane-

Jewell, who is part of the Nebraska Regional Food Systems Initiative.

McShane-Jewell and other extension educators have been working with the Nebraska Department of Education for the past year and half on farm-toschool programs and building resources to support them. The first year of grant funds will be spent primarily on planning and building capacity within extension to carry out farm-to-school programs, said extension educator Natalie Sehi.

During the second year of the grant, Nebraska Extension will select eight communities to attend the Nebraska Farm-to-School Institute, which will be held next summer.

The institute will bring together community stakeholders with Nebraska Extension educators to develop a project plan for each participating school.

Each community can then apply for a small, mini grant out of the Nebraska Department of Education’s $99,070 to effectively implement their project.

McShane-Jewell and Sehi are hopeful that over the next two years, they will be able to develop a replicable farm-to-school model that additional Nebraska schools and communities can implement years into the future.

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—BYRON D. CHAVES, Ph.D., assistant professor and food safety specialist, talking with Women’s Health.

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craig chandler; jonny ruzzo

“Deciding whether to remove animal products from your diet is an extremely personal decision, but the safety of meat during the COVID-19 pandemic should definitely not be one of your reasons because COVID-19 is not a foodborne illness. There is no reason to be concerned about getting the disease after consuming meat potentially contaminated with the virus.”

Editor’s note: Memorial Stadium e’s boasts Runza and Valentino’s. Her of e som s food l loca t wha a look at r our Big Ten opponents tout in thei n’t has stadiums when a pandemic altered the course of everything.

DEVOUR IN ENEMY TERRITORY

RUTGERS

Pork Roll, Egg and Cheese Visit the Jersey Eats stand at SHI Stadium and order up the Pork Roll, Egg and Cheese. Pork roll is a product unique to New Jersey and since Rutgers is officially the state university of New Jersey this is a match made in food heaven. Wash it down with one of many local brews available in the stadium: NJ Beer Co., Asbury Brewery, Jersey Girl, Flying Fish Brewery or Ship Bottom Brewery.

OHIO STATE

Pretzel and Beer Land Grant Brewing’s Stiff-Arm IPA is sold in Ohio Stadium and is a local favorite. Land Grant was co-founded

by Adam Benner and Walt Keys, 2006 Ohio State grads, and takes its name from the land grant origins that Ohio State and the University of Nebraska share. So in that way, Buckeyes want Cornhuskers to feel at home in Ohio Stadium and enjoy a great craft brew.

Pair it with a Block O pretzel.

IOWA

WISCONSIN

Bratwurst The quintessential Badger game day food is bratwurst. Johnsonville is the University of Wisconsin’s supplier, and the stadium sells more than 6,500 of the sausages every home game. To do it right, you should add sauerkraut and yellow mustard. Johnsonville is based in Sheboygan Falls, Wis. For tasty treats outside of the dry Camp Randall Stadium pair a Spotted Cow lager with deep-fried cheese curds. Cheddar curds are the cheese of choice, and they’re best served fresh and squeaky, not fried, with a side of ranch dressing.

Pork Tenderloin Sandwich Iowa regularly ranks among the top tailgating schools, so before entering Kinnick Stadium check out the food vendors along Melrose Avenue. You can’t go wrong with the quintessential Iowa favorite: the breaded, fried pork tenderloin sandwich. Iowa alumnus Jon Yates even wrote about them in a book published by the University of Nebraska Press: “You’ve heard of the freshman fifteen? Over the years I’ve packed on the tenderloin twenty, but it’s been worth it. Each bite has been like a little taste of heaven (and undoubtedly brought me a little bit closer to actually visiting there).”

NORTHWESTERN shutterstock, 123rf and courtesy

Gyro and Popcorn Inside Ryan Field on the Evanston campus you’ll find gyros by Illinoisbased Kronos Foods, the largest manufacturer of gyros in the world. Pair it with popcorn by Nuts on Clark, a Chicago institution — its caramel popcorn was voted best caramel corn in the U.S. in Saveur magazine.

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“OUR ADVICE:

LIVE YOUR LEGACY

BEFORE YOU

LEAVE ONE.” — Lisa & Steve Todd

Like so many University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni, the Todds were looking for a way to maintain a connection to the university. They were also passionate about doing whatever they could to help the students of today have the best possible tomorrow. To accomplish this, they established two funds — one for men’s gymnastics and the other for special education, the impact of which will significantly increase for decades to come through their estate plans.

“Impacting someone’s life is an incredible feeling.”

- Lisa Todd

Visit nufoundation.org/toddsgiving to learn more about Steve and Lisa’s story.

For more information about how you can include the University of Nebraska in your estate plans, visit plannedgiving.nufoundation.org or contact a gift planning officer at 800-432-3216.

When food is a passion, remarkable adventures await. To wit, J.J. Harder has traveled the world as a culinary diplomat for the U.S. State Department, while Dr. Michael Shambaugh-Miller found a way to get leftover produce into the hands of those who were hungry.

photo © sheldon museum of art

SHARING THE VIEWPOINTS OF OUR ALUMNI, FACULTY AND STUDENTS

ROBERT COTTINGHAM CANDY (DETAIL) Pochoir, 1984, 20 1/2 × 20 5/8 inches SHELDON MUSEUM OF ART, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA–LINCOLN, JAMES E.M. AND HELEN THOMSON ACQUISITION TRUST, U-3769.1985

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Gastrodiplomacy

Women of the Timdoukal Cooperative in Taroudant, Morocco show Alaskan chefs Kirsten Dixon and Mandy Dixon how to make couscous in 2016.

It’s a Gourmet World After All Culinary diplomat elevates American food around the globe

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j.j. harder

B Y J . J . HARDER ( ’ 00, ’ 06) U.S. Foreign Service Officer (The views expressed here are his own.)

I

s there a nation prouder than the U.S.? We’re proud of our national parks, our sports teams, our road trips. We’re proud of our hard-to-sing anthem, our scavenger national bird, and our moon landing. Our dollar notes that confound blind people, our coins that don’t include numbers indicating their worth, our pennies that cost more than a penny to make. We are proud of just about everything that is American — except, I’ll argue, of our food.

For the past 14 years I’ve been on a personal mission to spread the Gospel of American Food. And I’ve had the perfect bully pulpit: as a U.S. diplomat.

VOICES Diplomacy — one of the federal government’s few jobs actually mentioned in the Constitution — usually conjures up images of old white dudes in suits shaking hands in front of flags, probably after just having quietly carved up a far-flung country. And that’s partially true: We are still struggling to eliminate systemic racism from our ranks. But today’s Foreign Service is not the 20th century relic in which female diplomats were forced to resign after getting married. Today we’re a group of diverse Americans showcasing the best the U.S. has to offer: we take American musicians abroad, we help recruit students to come study at our universities, we lobby on behalf of U.S. businesses, and we help our experts share their knowledge with the world.

But even we struggle with some things, including this big question: What is American cuisine? Some readers are already bristling at the dissonance of the phrase. Our food is fried Oreos, it’s corn dogs, it’s grilled cheese sandwiches. Workhouse, quotidian, blue-collar: sloppy joes, snack packs, Lunchables. High-fructose corn syrup molded into wannabe-umami sustenance, obligatory carbonated sugar water sluicing down our necks. Cuisine — itself an imported word — is from other countries, mostly the ones whose languages have a lot of accent marks. Sure, being a “foodie” is zeitgeisty, we’re the home of competitive eating, and we’ll debate whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich, but we aren’t real gourmands.

I respectfully dissent. We are more than babysitter food. We are the home of the milkshake, fudge, cheesecake, doughnuts, brownies, s’mores, cotton candy, chocolate chip cookies and the ice cream cone — and that’s just a few of the desserts. Tomatoes, wild rice, squash, almost every variety of bean, cranberries, corn, avocado, cacao, maple trees and the turkey are indigenous to the U.S. or Mesoamerica.

Thanks to our insanely diverse geography and climate, we can grow just about anything: bananas in Hawaii, potatoes in Maine, wheat in Kansas, herbs in Colorado. But our real treasure — as a low-rent company’s HR rep would glibly say — is our people.

Our cuisine is what it is thanks to Native Americans, European colonizers, enslaved Africans, and the waves of tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to make their grandmas’ food. Thus we are the home of chili, pecan pie, pulled pork, toasted ravioli, sourdough, crabcakes, gumbo, po’ boys, General Tso’s, and fortune cookies. We have some of the best damn food in the world.

I have served as press attaché (Syria), human rights officer (South Africa), visa adjudicator (Peru) and conflict diamonds expert (D.C.). But my favorite gigs have been in the cultural section, where I engaged in what’s called gastrodiplomacy: creating

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and strengthening relationships with people, governments and organizations abroad through food, agriculture and the culinary arts.

Also known as culinary diplomacy or food diplomacy, gastrodiplomacy uses foodways as a tool to — sorry for the government-speak — achieve strategic priorities. It’s not just food porn to get clicks for our embassies (although it should be that, too); it’s a way to increase exports of U.S. food products, encourage people abroad to enroll in American culinary schools, and lure foreign visitors to dine in our marvelous restaurants (those that will weather the COVID storm). In 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set up the Diplomatic Culinary Partnership to deputize our top chefs as American culinary ambassadors: top cover for food-loving diplomats to let loose.

The goal of gastrodiplomacy doesn’t have to even have anything to do with food. In Morocco we were trying to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, so I brought Lincolnite Erik Hustad to share his story of starting with a food truck (that he opened during a Nebraska November!) and building a mini-empire of award-winning Honest Abe’s burger joints, the fine-dining Sebastian’s Table, and cocktail bar Eleanora. Hustad taught Moroccan cooks how to make chicken and dumplings, showed culinary students how to concoct (halal) biscuits & gravy, and competed head-to-head with the reigning Moroccan Master Chef champion. The next year we wanted to highlight sustainability, so I brought chefs Kirsten and Mandy Dixon to showcase their Alaskan sea-to-table approach to environmentally-conscious dining. In Peru we were trying to increase sales of beef, so James Beard-winning Chicago chef Debbie Gold introduced Peruvians (and me) to the glories of braised beef cheek. I’ve also gotten into the action myself. I taught a culinary club how to make chili.

For our Election 2016 reception I designed a menu featuring U.S. Presidents’ favorite foods. I’ve been a judge in a cooking competition at a U.S.-funded English language school. During Black History Month I led a discussion about the racially-charged debate over “southern cooking” vs. “soul food,” and I taught the participants how to make cornbread.

But the best part of gastrodiplomacy is that it must be an anti-solipsistic two-way street. My guest chefs toured local markets, learned from local celebrity chefs, broke bread with national food heroes and literally sat down with frontline ag workers. After each U.S. Food Week, the American chef went away humbled and better educated. And fatter.

I should note that I don’t come from some sort of culinary pedigree. My granddad was a smalltown grocer from Hebron, but I grew up across the bridge from Omaha, a latchkey kid subsisting on

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J.J. Harder put himself through grad school selling Yutan bicolored supersweet corn out of a truck in a Lincoln parking lot.

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ably the world leader in using its indigenous crops and delicious dishes to get people interested in traveling or doing business there. Experts have laid out how gastrodiplomacy can do its humble part as a “dynamic new tactic” to break down barriers and lead to fewer armed conflicts. It works so well because it subverts the traditional, stuffy government-to-government diplomacy in favor of a person-to-person gemeinschaft direct approach.

Next year I’ll be reassigned somewhere else, and I’m already thinking about the food-related issues we can discuss in diplomacy. And I don’t mean sweeping under the rug America’s problems either. I think the U.S. shines when we put smack dab in the middle of the table our unresolved issues: xenophobia, race relations, health, inequality, and what word we can use instead of ethnic, just to name a handful I’ve been thinking about lately.

Wherever I’m posted, I’ll be educating people on the highs and lows of food of Nebraska: the Reuben sandwich, the TV dinner, the McRib, Kool-Aid, the Germans-from-Russia-inspired meat pie, and the Gödelesque perfect equation of cinnamon with chili. Food is home. And that’s just why gastrodiplomacy has so much untapped potential. We all eat.

When the topic is food, we pay attention.

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courtesy of j.j. harder

Pizza Rolls, Bagel Bites and other processed foods with ™s appended to their names. While a broadcasting major at UNL, also working at television station 10/11, I got sick of my colleagues eating at Fazoli’s and Boston Market every night, so I went on a mission to eat at every restaurant in Lincoln.

During my bildungsroman in the Peace Corps in rural Bolivia, I taught myself to make everything I missed — pizza, tortillas, eggs Benedict — from scratch. When I returned to UNL for grad school, I enjoyed halcyon days as The Daily Nebraskan food critic, championing The Mill as the greatest coffee shop in the world, drinking all the beers at Yia Yia’s and getting threatened after a so-so review. I legit once vomited after losing a moon pie-eating contest in Alabama to a guy named Bubba wearing overalls but no shirt. I am not Michael Pollan’s kid.

Gastrodiplomacy isn’t just my personal obsession. Academics and professionals have proven its effectiveness: four out of five people say that eating a country’s food has changed their opinion of the country. Nations as diverse as Ethiopia, Turkey, South Korea and Thailand have benefited from this proven food-and-favorable-opinion flipping. Peru — the tocayo of our own Nebraskan town — is prob-

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Fiction FINAL IN A SERIES

RAIN IN ITS SEASON B Y CARSON VAUG HAN ( ’ 10) ILLUST RATION BY J ONATHAN BARTL ETT

R

ainmaker Elijah To u h e y g a g g e d on the stench, forehead pressed between the iron bars as the floodwaters continued to climb. The minutes eddied on the surface, the hours, circulating around his cell like gobbets of river foam, hope dithering in the darkness. Amos, the sheriff, would come back. He was brash and stubborn — hardly a civic lodestar — but he wasn’t sinister. He’d saved Elijah once, if begrudgingly. He’d do it again, Elijah was certain. The sheriff would come back. He yelled: “The sheriff will come back!” He whispered: “The sheriff will come back.” The sheriff was a bastard, a godless drunk who had likely turned a blind eye to worse. “He’ll come back!” Elijah swallowed his panic. Surely the sheriff would come back.

At some point the distant gurgling ceased, and when Elijah quit mumbling a sort of reverse synesthesia settled in, the total absence of noise and light burgling his wits. A crowd mingled down the hall, and later, the rumble of wooden wheels down a cobblestone alley, the whine of a rusty hand pump,

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a barking dog, a clap of thunder. The walls shook again and he saw a pale orb, just a pinprick, swaying pendulum-like in the distance. Elijah rubbed his sore eyes, squinted again. The silence returned, but the orb took two steps forward, and behind the glow he could barely discern the white nest of a beard, familiar somehow, the whisper of a collar, a bowtie, the white knuckles of a clinched fist at the light’s retreat.

The lips moved slowly, the coarse, jittery filaments of his mustache, but nothing came out, or Elijah couldn’t hear him.

“Hello?”

The glow snuffed out, and he felt embarrassed, a sudden shameful heat behind his ears, and he realized now the beard belonged to that old professor in Lincoln, the same whose tiresome lectures he’d so righteously dismissed, whose lab he’d robbed to bedeck his rainmaking wagon, whose name he’d long forgotten. The glow was gone but Elijah could still feel his presence, as if the professor were now peering over his shoulder, quietly grading his final hours.

Elijah prayed but felt instead the slick blade of guilt sluicing his innards. God had taken many forms in his life, but never the cool eyes of his professor, and as he splashed about, yearning in vain to extinguish the unholy visage, to rouse his true maker, he realized with a sudden violent shiver he could no longer touch bottom. The waters were rising yet.

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Fiction FINAL IN A SERIES

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34

*** From the sheriff’s dizzy perspective at the parapet of Quick’s Saloon, Hall County was knee-deep in Armageddon, spidery veins of lightning cracking the night sky, women and children and pets crowding the rooftops, the barren hill in the park, the springy rafts of debris, their husbands and fathers making heroic and stupid efforts to save something while flames danced atop the shifting slurs of kerosene in the water. But only Elijah, the goddamn rainmaker, was barred from the epic, stripped of the opportunity to save himself — and that didn’t sit well with the sheriff. He was many things; he was brash and stubborn.

But he wasn’t a cheater, nor had Elijah broken any laws. The truth curdled in his gut. He downed the last ounce of whiskey and watched his squishing boots scuttle back to the hatch, down the ladder and out again into the flowing rubbish of Hall County.

The water had climbed considerably since he first crossed over. He shivered beneath the weight of his soaking clothes, hugging a pole outside the saloon.

His left eye betrayed his right. His focus forked. He slicked the rain from his face, strained to settle the brawny angles of the courthouse across the way. The current — already lifting his feet from the mud below — was too swift to cut straight through; instead, he crashed from one island of refuse to the next, failing each time to slow his landing. Invisible branches chewed his legs, and the ragged edge of a ceiling tile nipped his forehead, drawing blood.

Arms spread wide, he now clung to a bookcase trapped upright halfway across the river. Before he could drift again, a hand grasped his shoulder and two bare legs shot through past him. Amos found two wild eyes staring right back.

“Sheriff?”

“Chrissake, Abel!” he stuttered. “How …”

Abel’s feet bobbed in front of him, chin perched on the top shelf, elbows flayed. He didn’t answer, just laughed a little, contorted his face, laughed again. The two drunks, one sour, one screw loose, caught their breath, garbage coursing between them. A yellow moon peeked between the clouds, and for a surreal minute, the storm relented; the wind retired and the rain let up, a horse whinnied in the offing, and finally the bookcase groaned and bucked forward and both were flushed downstream.

Amos was alone again when he finally coughed ashore. His knees trembled and his right eye had swollen shut, but he was on the right side of Main Street, and the courthouse — though well behind him now — was more or less accessible on foot. No one spoke as he staggered forward. Bystanders, victims: they clutched their children, their rifles, the bags they’d frantically stuffed with pictures, heirlooms, the rainyday cash they’d hidden from their spouses, should the

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And yet the sun rose every morning behind the growing mountain of wreckage, hot and dry as ever before, as if the drought hadn’t noticed the flood, and within weeks, the citizens of Hall County were sweeping dust from their porches once again.

opportunity ever allow. They met his eye and watched him pass, ambivalent to his mission; less than 24 hours ago they’d nearly hosed the rainmaker to death. Now they were swimming in regret, unsure if the stranger was the devil or a ham-fisted saint, or whether coincidence could truly account for such a biblical flood.

When he finally reached the courthouse steps, Amos found one door missing, the other shattered and hanging stiff from a single hinge. The sudden calm inside unsteadied him. He could hear the leaking roof, like a prairie brook, echoing in the rotunda, a loose window rattling in its frame, and the acrid smell — trapped in all that marble and wood — clung to him like southern heat. Six inches of water now rode across the floors, moving slowly toward the staircase that descended into the small jail below.

Amos stood at the top step, watching the water cascade into the darkness, spilling out just a foot from the ceiling below.

“Elijah!” ...

“Elijah!” ...

Amos took two steps forward, strangling the handrail, and disappeared. *** Nearly a week passed before the floodwaters receded. Some vowed, against their better judgment, to rebuild. Others walked away, nothing and no one to hold them back. Entire homes were missing — entire families. The surrounding cropland sprouted foreign objects: mattresses and silverware, crazy quilts and porcelain dolls, handwritten letters from the homeland. And yet the sun rose every morning behind the growing mountain of wreckage, hot and dry as ever before, as if the drought hadn’t noticed the flood, and within weeks, the citizens of Hall County were sweeping dust from their porches once again.

Rev. Sickler directed a funeral nearly every day through the end of July, quietly buoyed by his sudden demand. The cemetery filled up. Survivors carved wooden crosses for the deceased, as Amos did — in their absence — for Abel. His body was never found, nor had anyone gone looking. Amos wasn’t particu-

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VOICES larly fond of the old sot, but every time he passed his missus’ grave he could hear Abel’s raspy laugh, see those wild eyes in the raging floodwaters, and he supposed, without quite knowing why, that a man’s last witness on this earth owed him something.

Amos never mentioned the rainmaker. Nobody asked. But the sheriff’s hand-built coffin, a neighbor confirmed, was missing from his porch, and someone — they couldn’t remember just who — said they’d seen him the next day a few miles outside of town, just standing out there in the scrub with a shovel in his hand, and it didn’t take a genius, they quietly agreed, to put two and two together, and perhaps it was for the best. Yes, they decided with little more than a stir of their drinks, perhaps so. Best leave well enough alone. *** The first snow fell overnight in late October, obscuring their fruitless gardens and naked front yards, and for a few hours the next morning, Hall County glistened like a fresh Monet. Dawn spilled across the horizon in ribbons of pink and orange. The air was crisp and smelled of woodsmoke, and a pleasant sensation, something long forgotten, seemed to infect those who woke early to clear their stoops and

open shop. They scooped a little faster, walked a little lighter. Winter had arrived, and would stay too long, they knew, but it felt like progress nonetheless.

Amos retired after the flood with little fanfare, replaced by an earnest 25-year-old with energy enough to find trouble, a leftover from the band of Catholic volunteers sent up from Hastings after the flood. The vote was unanimous. Amos now sat in a chair by the window, poured a splash of whiskey in his coffee and watched the snow melt from the eaves.

By some miracle his house had been mostly spared, but he could still see the waterline three feet up the walls, the dark mold advancTo read the three-part fiction in full, ing across the ceiling, and the wooden visit huskeralum.org/nebraskaquarterly floors now buckled like a washboard.

No matter. It would trap the heat of his fires through one more winter, and after that, he’d leave it to the crows holding congress out back. He would spend his last years back home in Germany, in a cradle of green, speaking his mother tongue.

When he finally moved outside to begin clearing snow, he found a package had been delivered, a small box with no return address. Inside: a bottle of whiskey and a note scribbled in black ink.

God Bless. — ET

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Passion Fruit Geography lecturer takes his time to find what speaks to his heart

I

BY DR. MICHAEL SHAMBAUGH-MILLER (’93, ’97, ’04) Executive Director, Produce From the Heart

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Lincoln/Lancaster County Interfaith Council I met a man who had been trying to start a gleaning operation in Nebraska. Once I realized he was talking about feeding hungry people while also reducing the environmental impact of wasted food I was intrigued.

I had grown up using food stamps to buy groceries at the store next to our government housing project in Kansas. I knew what it meant to be hungry. I knew the physical and psychological impacts of not having enough to eat. As a geographer I also knew the impact that wasted food was having on our environment. As produce is grown, transported, processed, sold, and finally stored in our refrigerators, more than 40% of the produce in America gets thrown away. Why is that? It is a combination of overproduction, the geographic nature of our distribution networks, the desire for “perfect looking” and abundant produce in our grocery stores, and the fact that we overbuy when we shop.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, in 2019 we wasted more than 40 mil-

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nikki carlson/nebraska city news-press

t took me a while, but after 40 years and multiple career pivots I finally found my passion: putting excess food into the hands of the hungry.

I started at UNL in 1980 as a geography and history major. I changed my major seven times, but 13 years later I finally earned my bachelor degrees in, you guessed it, geography and history. I spent the next ten years traveling the country working on state and federal rural health care policy for the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

But I was restless and unhappy, and decided to leave UNMC in 2011. I knew I needed to do something that kept me in touch with people and communities in need — the part of the job at the medical center that I loved the most. I needed something that would allow me to educate people on topics of interest to me that would also help to “change” my little corner of the world. As I searched for a purpose and direction, I did contract work for the State Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Veteran’s Health Administration.

Then, while working as executive director of the

VOICES In Nebraska alone, we throw away enough produce to fill up Memorial Stadium seven times. Actually, that’s a conservative estimate, it could be as high as 12 times. lion tons of food in the United States. That is about 220 pounds per person. That equates to roughly $161 billion and 30-40% of the U.S. food supply. Most of this food is sent to landfills where it becomes the single largest component at about 22% of community solid waste. As that food decays it becomes methane gas, one of the most potent greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.

In Nebraska alone, we throw away enough produce to fill up Memorial Stadium seven times.

Actually, that’s a conservative estimate, it could be as high as 12 times. The concept of intercepting that flow to the landfill and redirecting the food to those in need was my “aha” moment.

Three weeks after leaving my UNMC job I was under contract with Society of St. Andrew, a Virginia-based organization with over 35 years’ experience with gleaning, or what I would end up calling produce rescue. My contract was for one year with the goal of figuring out why such an organization could not maintain a successful operation in Nebraska. After six months it was obvious that the problem was geography (as I tell my students at UNL, everything is geography).

The model of operations that St. Andrew’s used was one predicated on farm size and travel distances found in the eastern U.S. It was not designed with the large farm sizes and extreme distances between farms and at-risk populations that are found in the Great Plains. St. Andrew’s acknowledged the mismatch between their operational policies and the situation in Nebraska but was not able to change their model for the sake of one satellite office.

I was at the point in my involvement that I could not simply walk away, so in the winter of 2004-05 I formed the non-profit Produce From the Heart.

We would tackle the problems of getting volunteers across distances to far-flung farms and get the donated produce back to the population centers where it was needed. If need be, we would find ways to store it until a food agency could pick it up.

During the last five years the non-profit organization has rescued over 750,000 pounds of fresh produce for the 400,000+ hungry people in Nebraska

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and southwest Iowa. We have helped children perform better in school because they are not hungry.

We have relieved family pressures by getting food into refrigerators and on tables. We have extended the lifespan of local landfills, thus saving taxpayer money. We have kept 750,000 pounds of methane gas out of our atmosphere. Ever so slightly slowing down global climate change.

Our volunteers come from across the spectrum.

I have returned to teaching as a lecturer at UNL and every fall we take students from my Physical Geography course to O’Neill, Neb., to help in the potato harvest.

Our connection back to UNL is also exemplified in the relationship we have with the master gardener program on East Campus. We receive produce donations twice weekly during the summer and fall from the Backyard Farmers Garden on East Campus. That food then goes to the Husker Pantry (which offers food assistance to students) and to hunger relief groups in the East Campus neighborhood.

When did I know I had made the right decision regarding pursuing my passion? That was thanks to a 6-year-old girl I encountered at the People’s City Mission in Lincoln. I was delivering fresh pears we had helped harvest in Missouri. As the Mission residents helped us carry in boxes of pears, the girl asked me what her mommy was helping carry.

Telling her they were pears and getting a questioning look, I asked her mom if her daughter could have one. With stem and leaves still on, I handed the pear to the bright-eyed girl. She asked me what it was. I repeated that it was a pear. She looked at me quizzically. She looked at her mom. Then she looked back at me and said, “No, it’s not a pear.

Pears come in cans.”

Once I convinced her that it really was a pear, just a pear fresh from a tree, she took a bite. She looked like she had eaten cotton candy for the first time. Her eyes became big. She giggled as the juice ran out of her bite. She gushed at her mom about how good it was and could they please have more with supper that night. With tears in my eyes, it was then I knew that I had truly found my passion.

Mike ShambaughMiller collects apples from Kimmel Orchard & Vineyard in Nebraska City which were used to make lunches for 5,000 people.

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THE

CALL OF THE DINING

HALL On campus eateries move away from the days when casseroles were king

STORY BY

Sarah Baker Hansen (’01) ILLUSTRATION BY

Quentin Lueninghoener (’06)

I

have a distinct memory of my weekday lunches at Selleck Dining Center.

This was around 1998, and I was a sophomore, often heading to Selleck after an English class in the basement of Andrews Hall ended.

I remember my two regular dining companions well: A print copy of The Daily Nebraskan and a slice (ok, maybe two) of hot Valentino’s pepperoni pizza.

Sometimes I’d read the DN — sometimes even the story I’d written for that day’s paper — with a pile of mediocre cashew chicken I’d scooped off the buffet. Sometimes I’d read it with a square of whatever mystery casserole I’d sniffed out that day.

Almost always, the date ended with a cup of the icy soft serve vanilla ice cream. Sometimes two.

Sometimes with sprinkles.

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Cather Dining Center offers handmade vegetarian egg rolls based on a recipe provided

by Thom (Emily) Tran, third from left. On this day Tran and others rolled nearly 5,000 of the crispy pockets stuffed with veggies, rice and spices.

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pus to find something they want to eat, we’re not doing our job,” said Dave Annis, associate director of University Housing and director of Dining Services.

It’s debatable whether students today come to college with more developed palates (As far as I know, Sandy’s is still doing a mighty trade in pitchers of a Tang-hued cocktail over on O Street known as Elk Creeks.) But what is clear is that they’re interested in eating on the go, often late at night, and they like variety.

In the Willa Cather Dining Center (which opened in 2017), students can find a “world’s fare” line that features a rotating selection of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai food. (A bowl of hot pho after a day walking around a wintery campus sounds pretty great, actually.)

Cather also has a dessert case with no less than 60 different choices. At the Abel Dining Center there’s a case full of a dozen flavors of hand-dipped gelato, and this fall there is a line devoted to vegan and vegetarian choices. Special lines in all the dining halls already offer a slate of food free of gluten and other common allergens. Other more old-fashioned foods are being phased out, slowly.

“One thing we are working on is too many casseroles,” he said. “You don’t go to a quick-service spot or a drive-thru and get a casserole.”

Traditional comfort foods — think meatloaf — aren’t on their radar, either.

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Troy Fedderson

It was the first time as an adult that I regularly ate alone. It was when I learned that sometimes eating alone with reading material can be wonderful. And though I made some questionable dining choices (to this day, I only eat Val’s at a Nebraska game, and even then it’s out of sheer nostalgia) those lunches were when I started to grow up.

Maybe not surprisingly, I grew up in a restaurant, or as close as I could get to a restaurant while paying the tab with my student ID. It turns out I’m far from the only graduate who carries those kinds of dining hall memories. Though university dining in general is going through a lot of changes — the COVID-19 pandemic being the most recent harbinger — students still rely on the dining hall to find comfort and hot food the way I did in 1998.

On today’s campus, dining services look less like the massive 600-seat cafeterias I remember (there’s still a couple of those, but they’re changing) and much more like a grab-and-go sandwich shop, a coffee shop tucked in a corner of an academic building or a 24-hour restaurant.

In fact, Selleck, the dining hall of yore, is being converted into what sounds like the modern day food hall, where students will soon be able to eat from one of seven dining “concepts.” This fall, a Qdoba will open in Selleck, too.

“If a student has to get in their car and go off cam-

“WE WANT HIGH-QUALITY, HOMEMADE FOODS, BUT WE ALSO HAVE TO BE ABLE TO PROVIDE WHAT STUDENTS LIKE TO EAT.”

craig chandler

HERBIE’S MARKET @ SELLECK “We want high-quality, homemade foods, but we also have to be able to provide what students like to eat,” he said.

The university-branded sandwich shops, called Husker Heroes (some used to be known as Husker Hoagies,) now operate late night hours, serving sandwiches until midnight. Annis said it’s the first time in many years the university has offered latenight dining. The shops continue to be incredibly popular.

The old cafeteria mainstay, slices of hot Valentino’s, aren’t served in the dining halls any more, but Annis said they’re still available at Herbie’s Market, the campus convenience store.

“We sell a lot of it late night in the market,” he said.

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When graduates remember their experiences in the dining halls, several common threads come to the surface. Alumni come out of the woodwork with memories of Nebraska’s beloved Runza.

Jay Saunders, who graduated in 2000 with a broadcast journalism degree, remembers stuffing at least one or two extra Runzas in his backpack on the way out of the dining hall. Quinten Lyon, who got his secondary education degree in 2006, remembers doing something similar, and hoarding enough Runzas for several days in his dorm room minifridge.

Annis said the dining halls still serve “Nebraska buns,” and they’re still popular.

Those memories dovetail with another common thread: stealing extra food from the cafete-

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41

“I SWEAR

I SAW

PEOPLE

ON DATES EATING AT THE EAST CAMPUS

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ria, a move Annis said is, technically, against the rules, but is going to become more common (and allowed) this year.

Justin Kemerling (’02), has a distinct memory of a case of vanilla-frosted cake doughnuts and his last day dining in Abel.

“I made a big play. I grabbed a to-go container and threw in 12 of them and bolted up to my room on floor nine. I feasted on all 12 in one sitting. I was 20 at the time, so I could do that.”

Rob Czaplewski, who graduated in 1993 with a bachelor of arts, remembers during the holiday season, elaborately decorated full cakes would sit on stands — fancier than normal.

“I remember two guys from our floor decided to steal one,” he said. “One day they got stopped at the door, but they actually got away with it another day.”

And the final common thread in graduates’ memories: Weird or otherwise memorable dining hall food.

Colby Cochran (’77) fondly remembers a dish called turkey Americana, which he described this way: “two round pieces of white meat turkey with a slice of American cheese between them, encased and coated with Japanese bread crumbs and fried golden brown.”

Bill Roeder (’73) remembers an unforgettable

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craig chandler

CAFETERIA”

EAST CAMPUS DINING CENTER

craig chandler

selection: “green Jell-O with green beans and carrots suspended in it. I will never forget it,” he said.

Joy Anderson, who graduated with an international business degree and a minor in Spanish in 2005, said she remembers discovering the East Campus dining hall, where they served made-toorder omelets and cheesecake during the lunch hour.

“An actual chef stood there with a cast iron skillet like you’d see at a hotel,” she said. “I swear I saw people on dates eating at the East Campus cafeteria.”

Cafeteria dates, if they still happen, will be fewer this fall. Annis said the pandemic is helping the university advance its mobile ordering process, and students will be able to order dinner from their phones and pick it up to eat elsewhere, probably their dorm room. More dining halls will have to-go options this year, and many of the “buffet” style lines will go away.

“We can’t let students go through a salad bar, or make their own tacos, or go through a mac and cheese bar,” he said. “That kind of stuff will disappear until we can safely get back to self-service.”

A lot of the big changes will take place with staffing, he said. During the past 20 years, dining halls have phased out the old fashioned “lunch lady.” Now, Annis is looking to staff those lines with new workers to help ensure safety, while also employing the same number of workers making the food.

This fall’s menus will be simplified. Social distancing requirements along with lower occupancy rules mean the Cather Dining Center, which normally seats 620, will only seat around 250. Though students love takeout options, Annis said he looks forward to welcoming them back into the dining room when it’s safe.

“We have spent years creating spaces where students can stay and sit and build community,” he said. “You build it at a table with your friends.”

After my sophomore year in college, I spent way more time in the basement of the Nebraska Union at The Daily Nebraskan offices, which meant fewer and fewer lunches alone in Selleck and more and more takeout from Burger King (which has now been replaced by Chick-fil-A and Steak n’ Shake) or most often a bagel and cream cheese from the Union’s bakery. Today’s Union boasts a Starbucks with its own selection of baked goods.

My parents then decreased my meal plan to just one meal a day, and I used it periodically the way Annis described: meeting friends around a table.

And maybe I was ahead of my time. I’d just as often be found (maybe more often) not in the cafeteria and instead eating a slice of pizza downtown at Yia Yia’s or sitting on the patio at The Mill with a granita.

“Kids want to eat in a contemporary restaurant setting,” Annis said. “It’s really become sort of progressive. It’s destination dining.”

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HUSKER HEROES @ ABEL GUEST MEAL PRICES 1992-93 Breakfast: $3.10 Lunch: $4.05 Dinner: $5.70

2020-21 Breakfast: $8 Lunch: $11.50 Dinner: $12 LIVE SMART. LIVE CLOSER. LIVE CONNECTED.

huskers live on

2020-2021

COMMUNITY LIVING GUIDE

Source: University Housing handbooks

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ST

O

RY

&

PH

OT

AD OS B Y G RAC E B R

R FO

D

9 ('1

)

WHEN IT’S GAME DAY IN LINCOLN, HERE’S HOW THE RUNZA TEAM FEEDS ALL THOSE FANS

N

o matter the score or the weather, thousands of these flavorful and warm sandwiches are adored and consumed by Husker fans every season. When fans sink their teeth into the warm bun stuffed with beef, cooked cabbage and sautéed onions, the recognition is instant: This is a Runza. The ardu-

ous process of getting the famous sandwich into the stands of Memorial Stadium and into the hands of hungry fans begins at sunrise the day before the game.

F R I D AY

5 AM

The Runza making process begins with the bread dough. Shawn Marr, the 33rd Street and Highway 2 location manager, measures out the mixture. He has the measurements memorized and works quickly and quietly as the sound of the mixer beats in the corner. The amount of dough made varies. This morning, Marr is making 17 batches, which will make nearly 450 Runzas out of the 11,700 needed for the game. “It’s hard not to get hungry or eat Runza when you’re making them so early in the morning,” said Marr.

8 AM

Four more crew members join to help Marr assemble the sandwiches. While Marr rolls out a thin sheet of dough, crew members quickly cut it into rectangles with a Runzashaped cutter. Hannah Thibault, the 56th Street and Highway 2 location manager, grabs a “football,” the kitchen’s name for the palm-sized meat and cabbage mixture. It is gently wrapped in dough, making sure the edges are tightly pinched shut.

10 AM

12

140

Number of Lincoln stores that make the sandwiches for game day

Number of Runzas each oven in the stadium holds

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The Runzas, nestled together in pans of six before being put in freezers, await the arrival of the Lincoln Food Bank truck which arrives at the restaurant to pick up and distribute the sandwiches to Memorial Stadium.

While it varies week to week, the truck first stops at the 48th and O streets location before ending at the 27th Street and Superior store. Since 2014, the Lincoln Food Bank trucks have made the Friday morning journey to Memorial Stadium with the culinary cargo on board. Twelve Lincoln restaurants are tapped to make the game day Runzas.

“You’re constantly learning more about the business. People don’t know everything that goes behind the scenes,” said Thibault.

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S AT U R D AY Once game day hits, whiffs of the sandwich float throughout Memorial Stadium. “The smell is so unique,” said Becky Perrett (’99, ’04), a marketing coordinator for the Nebraska-based chain. “It’s a scent that you can’t find just anywhere.”

“I’VE SOLD RUNZAS TO FANS FROM THE OPPOSITE TEAM. THEY USUALLY DON’T KNOW

Travis Perdew rotates pans in the Memorial Stadium oven to ensure each sandwich bakes evenly.

WHAT’S IN IT, BUT I’VE HAD THEM KEEP COMING BACK TO ME FOR MORE.”

NOON

As Runza vendors, known as hawkers, prepare their coolers, organize their change and wait for salivating fans, Runza crews are preparing thousands of sandwiches in the stadium’s kitchen. The crew are all friends of the chain. Whether they work for the corporate office or they’re friends of employees, each crew member shares in the effort to make the game day tradition possible.

From baking to wrapping to finally stuffing the warm buns in coolers, every crew member has a part in making game day successful. Each pan of original Runzas are baked for 45 minutes in one of kitchen’s 10 double ovens. They’re carefully watched until they show their famous golden-brown color. From the 300-degree oven, they’re wrapped in either green or red paper. The first batch out of the oven are wrapped in green paper. Halfway through the wrapping process, they crew switches to red paper. This helps hawkers and the crew know which Runzas are the freshest, explained Perrett.

For a 2:30 p.m. game, 11,700 Runzas will be sold for $5 each. “We always hope to sell out. That’s our goal,” said Perrett. “I don’t remember the last time we had leftovers.”

1:30 PM

Standing by Section 38, 14-yearold Baylee Leiting yells “Runza, Runza” to the fans trickling into the stadium’s concourse. As a first-year hawker, she stands with two coolers of warm sandwiches beside her that she hopes to empty before the game begins. On average, she makes $115 per home game, but doesn’t get the perk of eating any free Runzas during the game. She has to buy one like everyone else.

“I’ve sold Runzas to fans from the opposite team.

They usually don’t know what’s in it, but I’ve had them keep coming back to me for more,” said Leiting.

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Baylee Leiting makes about $115 selling Runzas on game day.

2:30 PM

Right at kick-off, hawkers are allowed to start selling within the stadium. Before kickoff, Leiting has run out of Runzas. She runs back to grab more coolers before hitting the stands. While she said there’s no competition between other Runza hawkers, she tends to stick near Section 36 because few hawkers gravitate toward that area.

500 Number of coolers in the stadium filled with Runzas

1

/3

of game day sales are made from individual sellers hawking

6 hours before game time the Runza team starts working

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3 PM

By the end of the first quarter, Leiting has emptied her two coolers. With just a few sandwiches left, she walks through the aisles calling “Runza” to any hungry fan within earshot. In Section 35, a fan yells she wants two. The fan, Katie Pallesen, hands money to Leiting in exchange for the still-warm sandwiches.

Pallesen, a 2019 graduate, says being at Memorial Stadium with a Runza in hand feels like home. Now studying at Notre Dame Law School, Runza is one of the things she misses most about Nebraska.

“With my little Husker cheerleading outfit on, my dad and I would sit and eat Runzas during the game. Now, they’re still part of my Husker game experience,” said Pallesen.

4 PM

By the start of the second quarter, all 11,700 Runzas have been sold. Empty sandwich coolers are returned and hawkers head home, but the work doesn’t end for the Runza crew.

The next home game is at 11 a.m. the following week, the most popular game time for sales. The crew estimates 16,000 Runzas will be needed for the upcoming game. While a daunting number, they wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Runza is a staple of Nebraska. It’s born and bred here,” said Perrett. “We’re lucky to be a part of the tradition. Nothing beats it.”

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“WITH MY LITTLE HUSKER

Katie Pallesen with her favorite game day snack.

CHEERLEADING OUTFIT ON, MY DAD AND I WOULD SIT AND EAT RUNZAS DURING THE GAME. NOW, THEY’RE STILL PART OF MY HUSKER GAME EXPERIENCE.”

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When her bakery shut down, her books sales went up

BY SARAH BAKER HANSEN (’01)

audrey hertel

Treats, at least for Angela Garbacz (’09), won’t be stopped by a pandemic.

Garbacz is known around Lincoln for her sweet bakery Goldenrod Pastries, which offers classic, vegan and gluten-free goods. On March 9, she opened a second location, Goldenrod Pastries at The Bay, and on April 28, her first book, Perfectly Golden, went on sale.

Although the past few months haven’t been at all what she planned for — both locations of the bakery had to close temporarily, and she had to cancel her nationwide book tour — she’s finding a powerful message in it all: The carefully-made baked goods her career is built on bring comfort,

<<

Goldenrod Pastries is known for its selection of morning buns.

especially in challenging times.

Garbacz opened Goldenrod Pastries in 2013, after she found out she had a dairy allergy. She started exploring dairy-free baking and began journaling online about her experiments and posting her recipes.

“People came out of the woodwork,” she said.

“People who couldn’t have eggs, or who were vegan, or who were gluten-free and were 35 years old and hadn’t eaten a doughnut since they were 6.”

She had a realization: When it came to baked goods, a lot of people were left out. She set out to change that.

Goldenrod is known for many items, but perhaps most for its selection of morning buns: cinnamon and pecan rolls, lemon morning buns, fluffernut-

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ter buns and its signature “crumble bun,” which is a sweet roll dough rolled with swirls of granulated sugar, then filled with homemade jam, curd or preserves. They’re topped with a coconut oil crumble, then baked and drizzled with a vanilla glaze.

At Goldenrod, there isn’t a delicious-looking section of “regular” baked goods next to less-delicious looking gluten-free or vegan items. It’s an equal playing field of beautiful baked treats: sprinkle-covered cookie sandwiches, slices of layer cake, a rainbow of pastel French macarons, glazed sweet breads and crumble-topped pies.

“I don’t ever want to make something that’s only good because it’s gluten-free,” she said. “I want to make things that my Nebraska meat-and-potatoes dad is going to like. That everyone is going to like.”

Garbacz studied culinary and food sciences at the university while also running the pastry department at Le Quartier bakery in Lincoln. She took a break from the university in 2008 to study at the French Culinary Institute — now called the International Culinary Center — in New York City. She had a similar setup there: For six months, she spent her days in the Classic Pastry Arts program, then rushed to an uptown bakery where she’d often take on extra pastry projects after the other interns went home.

She thought she’d remain in New York but ultimately, knowing her goal was her own pastry shop, she returned to Lincoln. She earned her bachelor’s degree, met her husband (Russell Parde, ’12), and started making plans for the bakery, which eventually opened in a charming corner space on Prescott Avenue near Lincoln’s Union College.

Goldenrod has a loyal following, enough so that this spring, Garbacz opened her second location, inside The Bay, an indoor skate park, music venue and coffee shop that’s a popular hangout with teenagers.

Andrew Norman, co-executive director of The Bay and a 2003 alumnus, said Goldenrod felt like the perfect fit as a partner for The Bay. “I think we are mission-aligned,” he said. “She is working to be more than just a bakery, and she has really demonstrated during COVID and the recent social uprising that she is a community leader.”

Norman said the kids who hang out at the Bay will learn from her and her staff’s leadership.

“Plus, she just happens to make some of the best baked goods in the country,” he said.

The second bakery location had a busy first week, full of customers from the nearby university campus hanging out in the larger space.

“We opened with a lot of optimism and excitement,” she said.

As the news of COVID-19 grew, Garbacz started adding precautions: a hand sanitizer station, no dine-in service, new cleaning procedures. The bakery had an expensive seven gallons of local whole milk that Garbacz didn’t want to waste, so Goldenrod had a $2 latte sale. Customers were asked to order remotely and wait outside to get their drinks. Some did. Many didn’t.

“We couldn’t control the stream (of customers),” she said. “We got rid of the milk, and made a little money, but that was the day I realized everything was changing.”

Garbacz rethought her entire business plan virtually overnight, knowing in her gut the store might have to temporarily close, which both locations ultimately did at the end of March.

“It was the worst night of my life,” she said of the night she made the decision to close. “I felt like we were closing for good.”

The bakery pivoted to online only, offering baker’s choice flash sales twice a week and selling Goldenrod merchandise, like T-shirts and bandanas.

Garbacz said she never made a profit during that stretch, but that wasn’t her goal: The goal was to pay her remaining staff, which had already shrunk from 19 to 11 to six, and keep the business going.

“People were still spending money, we just had to give them something to spend it on,” she said.

The pandemic and temporary closure gave Garbacz something else she didn’t expect: Free Saturdays for the first time in five years.

She used those weekend days to promote Perfectly Golden through video segments from her home kitchen; Instagram live spots; and television interviews that aired in Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago, among other cities.

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Another happy and unexpected pandemic side effect: people got really, really into baking.

Her banana bread recipe in the book took off.

People started sending her pictures of their attempts at crumble buns and cookies.

“I had a captive audience,” she said.

Perfectly Golden, much like the physical bakery, offers vegan and gluten-free options for every recipe in the book, and is full of helpful tips from Garbacz.

Those tips and techniques are meant to arm would-be bakers with the confidence to experiment.

It turned out the book couldn’t have come at a better time.

“The more you do things in repetition, the better they’re going to be,” she said. “It’s been cool to turn people into home cooks because they have this time at home.”

As her bakeries both slowly started to reopen during summer, she said it’s been emotional welcoming long-time customers back through the doors. But it’s also been exciting.

“There was a chance we wouldn’t have a Goldenrod to come back to,” she said. “But Goldenrod is going to come out of this stronger. We’re going to continue.”

Angela Garbacz studied at the French Culinary Institute in New York City. Her recipe book, Perfectly Golden, was perfectly timed with its April publication date and a captive audience stuck at home during the pandemic who were anxious to hone their own baking skills.

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56 58 60 62 64 SCREAMERS

CAKE GOALS

SNACK ATTACK

OBITS

LOVE STORY

Show choir provides inspiration for cabaret-style dining.

This bride surprised her groom with a unique Memorial Stadium cake.

Late night campus snacking encompasses many fringe foods.

Ronald White served meals with a smile and a nod to New Orleans.

The Mill maintains its caffeinated grip on students.

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BULLETIN Tasty Treats N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

In 2019 Sehnert Bakery in McCook won Nebraskaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first ever James Beard Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Classic Award, the Oscar of the food world. Owner, Matt Sehnert, is using some of that clout to keep his eatery alive during the global pandemic and helping his fellow business owners along the way.

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BULLETIN

Alumni Profile

Matt Sehnert is passionate about lifting up all businesses in his hometown.

Magic in McCook Family bakery revels in James Beard Award as it pivots during the pandemic

BY SARAH BAKER HANSEN (’01)

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seasoned beef and sauerkraut, makes it through 2020. He’s been reinventing the bakery and music venue’s business plan on almost a weekly basis.

And in a move that feels very Small Town, USA, he’s using his prestigious food award to lift up McCook’s other businesses, starting with a collaborative holiday basket (available in November) that he’s selling through the bakery’s new website, which launched this summer.

If there was ever a time for small town ingenuity and small towners sticking together, it seems like that time is now.

Sehnert’s didn’t close because of the COVID-19

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A

lot of things have changed in McCook, Nebraska, since Matt Sehnert and his family bakery, Sehnert’s Bieroc Cafe, won the state’s first ever James Beard America’s Classic Award, the Oscar of the food world, in 2019.

But some other things, like the support he finds in community, especially in hard times, and the goodwill he has for his hometown, have stayed just the same.

Sehnert is working to make sure that his family’s cafe, which has been serving Bierocs (a version of a Runza) made with crusty baked bread,

pandemic. Instead, the bakery worked with other locally owned restaurants and businesses on creative ways to keep things going.

He created a walk-through at Sehnert’s so patrons could come in safely. The restaurant started curbside pickup and takeout.

“Most people had no clue what curbside service was,” he said, chuckling.

A local print shop made banners for the bakery to show patrons where they could pick up curbside, once they knew what it was. The city let cars park on the street, no problem.

The bakery continued selling its diverse lineup of rolls, doughnuts, pizza crust, pastries and lunch. It partnered with a local bank and sent more than 300 meals home to employees, their families and other people in need.

Sehnert’s cooked for first responders, health care workers who had shifts on Easter Sunday and locals participating in a Friday night “cruise night” up and down the town’s main street. The kitchen sent leftover cookies to schools and sent leftover food tasty enough to urge seniors to go to meals at the local nursing home.

“We were blessed with a community that just really stepped up,” he said. “It kept us going. We had our payroll for another week.

“We just said to our community, ‘consider supporting our business’ and the response was immediate,” he said.

Cynthia Huff, who serves with Sehnert on McCook’s community foundation fund board, said she sees McCook as a hub of southwest Nebraska.

His bakery is a hub for the locals, but also for visitors, she said.

“He understands that standing alone is not going to be enough to help McCook grow,” she said.

“It’s apparent with Matt. He thinks about all of McCook.”

When Sehnert met the other “America’s Classic” award winners in 2019 he said that even though many of them were immigrants and made food vastly different than Sehnert’s, their family stories and history were shockingly similar.

“It was surreal for sure,” he said.

Sehnert, who graduated in 1986 with a degree in business administration, met his wife, Shelley (’88) on campus — in a ballroom dance class, of all places, he said.

Both of his parents are Nebraska alumni, and his three kids studied in the NU system: Gretchen, who studied nursing; Becca, who is in pharmacy school at the University of Nebraska Medical Center;

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Comedian Andy Offutt Irwin performs at the annual Buffalo Commons Music and Storytelling opening reception in 2016 at Sehnert’s Cafe.

“He understands that standing alone is not going to be enough to help McCook grow. It’s apparent with Matt. He thinks about all of McCook.”

—Cynthia Huff and Gabe, a current UNL student finding his way through college during the pandemic.

Not much changed in McCook after the restaurant won its James Beard award, other than the bakery saw more out-of-town guests who dropped off the interstate to visit.

Now, he’s hoping those out-of-towners will remember their visit and support the businesses of McCook virtually.

“We are working hard and using the Beard award to promote our business,” he said.

They’re also supporting Wauneta Roller Mills, the local farmer making jam for the cafe, the local roaster making the cafe’s signature blend coffee and the local honey supplier, he said. Those businesses will be featured in its holiday gifts, along with the bakery’s stollen and Christmas breads, online later this year.

“Our entrepreneurial minds have been on overload,” he said, “and it’s been exhausting. We owe a lot to the community.”

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Alumni Profile

Scarlet Plus Cream Equal Screamer

BY AAKRITI AGRAWAL (’16)

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Kevin Witcher draws on his show choir days to open a cabaret-style restaurant

K

evin Witcher’s favorite college experience was performing in show choir. That is where Witcher (’93), who was a musical theater major, found his friends. And while it was officially known as the Scarlet and Cream Singers, the musical troupe referred to themselves as “Screamers.”

The co-ed group was founded by Ray Miller in 1972 in conjunction with the Nebraska Alumni Association and traveled nationally and internationally. However Witcher’s favorite moments were performing within the state when the Screamers visited western Nebraska. “You felt like a rock star going to those towns, the whole town came out and wanted to meet you,” he said.

Witcher’s signature song was Your Feet’s Too Big from Ain’t Misbehavin’. “Once I sang it,” Witcher said, “that’s the song everyone requested. I still sing it every once in a while, Ain’t Misbehavin’ has great music!”

Julie Baker (’95) first met Witcher more than 30

years ago in a music theory class. “All of the fun people sat at the back of the room, so I went to the back of the room too and sat with Kevin. We became fast friends and have been close ever since. Being in the Scarlet and Cream Singers changed the course of my life because of the friends I made.”

After graduating, Witcher worked in theme parks, on cruise ships and with national tours out of New York City. During this time, like many struggling performers, he frequently worked in the restaurant industry. But he had a bigger dream. He dreamed of a day when he would combine his love for restaurants and music.

Upon returning to Lincoln in 2015, Witcher’s creative juices started flowing. He was impressed with the revamp of the Haymarket from his college days in the 1990s. It seemed like the perfect location to finally realize his dream of opening a restaurant.

He envisioned a space where customers would come for delicious food, friendly service, and be entertained with their children, yet would be free from the restraints of showtimes or the formality of dinner theater. It was an easy decision to name his restaurant: Screamers Dining & Cabaret, particularly because the UNL show choir disbanded in 2008, and this would be a way to pay homage to the past.

Witcher’s restaurant is unique in Lincoln in that the wait staff also performs on a small stage inside the venue. Customers are entertained throughout their meal with music of all styles and from all eras.

Former classmate Baker occasionally performs at Screamers and describes it as walking into her past.

“On the walls, there’s all of this memorabilia from our years with the Screamers. One of the dresses that I wore is on display. On the back wall is a huge picture of (founder) Ray Miller. I look at him as I sing and think of all that I’ve learned from him.

Often, our audience has former Screamers or fans of the Screamers, so it truly feels like home.”

COVID-19 and the resulting restrictions caused Screamers to temporarily close in March. While it has been a difficult time for his employees, Witcher is proud of his crew and their dedication to the restaurant. Screamers reopened in June and adapted its business based on customer comfort offering a heavier carryout service. Additionally, Witcher is offering food delivery along with a song; think singing telegram and carryout delivery all in one.

While the restaurant was shuttered this spring, Witcher took his show on the road to parking lots of retirement homes. His advanced degrees and earlier career in nursing taught him that the elderly are

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at the highest risk of isolation and depression, risks that are only further heightened by the restrictions placed by the current pandemic. Witcher currently volunteers to sing at nursing homes in Lincoln for residents where he often performs music from the 1950s and 1960s. He enjoys seeing the smiles on residents’ faces, and some even dance, clap or sing along.

Witcher has experienced numerous heartfelt moments while operating Screamers. He compares this to his previous career of working in a Baltimore emergency room where he was literally saving lives, but would not be hugged as often as he was pre-pandemic. “Whether we realize it or not, we all have a soundtrack to our lives. Songs and music that stir emotion and bring back memories — some good, some bad, some touching and some heartfelt.”

Witcher recalls a frequent restaurant guest who would always request Chances Are since it was the song of her and her deceased husband. When she became ill, she wished to visit Screamers but was unable. “I will bring Screamers to her,” Witcher told her daughter. And he did. He sang at her bedside, she hugged him and thanked him, and then passed away the next day. “No matter what happens, I consider us successful because you rarely feel like your heart is moved by a moment at a restaurant,” Witcher said.

Kevin Witcher, owner of Screamers, with a photo of Ray Miller on the wall of his Haymarket-based restaurant. Miller was the founder of the Scarlet and Cream Singers in 1972. The cabaret-style dining venue is filled with memorabilia from his show choir days.

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BULLETIN ALL IN

GROOM’S DESSERT TAKES THE CAKE

Cake designer Linda Galindo with her creation.

Lincoln native Mike Schneider attended his first Husker football game when he was six and has been an avid fan ever since. “My family has season tickets, so I attended all the home games for several years,” Mike said. “My favorite memory at Nebraska was watching Nebraska beat Northwestern on a Hail Mary pass to end the game.”

That 2013 recollection and his Husker passion is what inspired alumna Jaclyn (Norum) Schneider (’15) to surprise Mike with the ultimate gridiron groom’s cake at their wedding two years ago.

Cake designer Linda Galindo said this was her first stadium cake, which took her a couple of months to wrap her head around on how to create the famed athletic field. “If you count the research, looking at and downloading photos, the 2D drawings and 3D modeling, calculating and everything, probably 30 to 40 hours” went into the actual creation of this spectacular confection.

WHAT WAS THE MOTIVATION BEHIND THE MEMORIAL STADIUM CAKE? MIKE: Since the wedding was in Illinois, Jaclyn wanted to surprise me with a groom’s cake that was a taste of Nebraska since I am such a huge Husker fan. I was most definitely surprised.

W H AT WA S Y O U R FAVORITE ASPECT? J A C LY N : I loved the scoreboard with our picture on it and all the sprinkle “fans.”

Mike Schneider was flabbergasted when he saw the groom’s cake his bride Jaclyn surprised him with at their wedding reception.

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W H AT S T O O D O U T MOST? M I K E : We were surprised by how big and realistic it looked.

WHAT REACTIONS DID YOU GET? MIKE: All of the Nebraska guests were

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in awe, with a lot of people taking pictures with it when our reception started.

EXPLAIN THE DESIGN PROCESS. LINDA: The buildings were marshmallow/crisp rice treats, covered in modeling chocolate and fondant.

For the cake itself, I made the stadium five separate cakes: one per end, one per side, and one for the field. The footprint of each section was cut from a 9x13-inch cake (I used 11 cakes)! I also 3D modeled a few of the cupolas for the tops of the buildings. I 3D printed several N cookie cutters to cut out modeling chocolate Nebraska logos for the cake.

WHAT FLAVORS WERE USED? LINDA: It was a moist, dark chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream filling and iced in chocolate and vanilla buttercream with homemade marshmallow fondant. Everything was edible except the lights and the flags.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, HOW DID IT TASTE? MIKE: It was the most amazing cake we ever had!

WERE THERE ANY LEFTOVERS? MIKE: None.

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The Dairy Store food truck makes rounds throughout Lincoln selling its creamy concoctions.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO?

DAIRY STORE SALES BEYOND EAST CAMPUS

greg nathan

T

he UNL Dairy Store has proudly offered ice cream on East Campus since 1917, but fans of the frozen confection may fondly remember the days of picking up their favorite flavor elsewhere — whether at a sweltering hot Husker game or the Nebraska Union after a study session.

City Campus sales in the Nebraska Union have come and gone. The ice cream institution featured a second location there from 1987 to 1990 and picked up selling frozen cups at the Information Desk in 2006, according to stories in The Daily Nebra skan a rch ive. Soon a f ter, a f u l l store returned. Memorial Stadium sales started about the same time, available in three concession stands

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and even outside of the venue on the east side.

But expansion efforts did not last. After struggling to make a profit from inception and losing around $25,000 in 2010, the Union location called it quits again in 2011. Stadium sales similarly vanished.

While the current Dairy Store management does not know the exact circumstances of the loss of ice cream at the stadium, there has been renewed interest in bringing it back to sporting events of all kinds, assuming there is enough fan support for it.

“The UNL Dairy Store and plant would be thrilled to be selling in Memorial Stadium — and PBA (Pinnacle Bank Arena) and Haymarket Park — in the future,” said Terry Howell Jr., director of the Food Processing Center.

Brain freeze patrons can frequent the Dairy Store in its newest location on the north side of the Food Industry Complex. Beyond East Campus, the pre-packaged ice cream can also be found in Herbie’s Market convenience stores located inside of the campus residence halls and at special events such as the State Fair and Farmers Market.

— Grace Fitzgibbon

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BULLETIN

Class Quotes

QUESTION

ice cream at the snack bar.”

What was your favorite late night snack?

Van Schroeder is an attorney with the Bellevue law firm of Bertolini, Schroeder & Blount.

1964

1975

“Valentino’s sausage pizza because it was right across the street.”

Russ Hahn is a retired weed scientist from the faculty of Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“An occasional glass of beer with a bowl of Mary’s homemade stew at Duffy’s. A welcoming relief to close out the challenges of an education.”

Gary Tesar lives in Omaha.

1965

Robert Pattison is

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1974

“On Friday nights during Lent, my girlfriend and I would purchase a hamburger pizza from the original Valentino’s and, as practicing Catholics, wait until midnight!”

Bob Arp retired in 2009 after 35

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years in education; for the next eight years he co-coordinated the TeamMates program in Columbus. For enjoyment these days you can find him directing the church choir, collecting cast iron still banks, playing tennis/ pickleball or visiting his seven grandkids.

“Ice cream.

Growing up in the 1950s we did not have a freezer and ice cream was a treat that occurred only in the summer.

Walking to the

B&R grocery store in Lincoln was a favorite pastime to get ice cream anytime — not just summer.”

Deborah Gilg retired as the U.S. Attorney for Nebraska in 2017 and has since established Gilg Law Office and Fearless, Fierce and Forward.

She taught as an adjunct law professor at the Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

“When I lived in Abel Hall my go-to snack was cherry nut

Greg Haessler retired early from the Principal Financial Group in 2007 after 30 years heading the medical department as vice president and chief medical director. The Urbandale, Iowa, resident and his wife have filled the ensuing years with travel, Broadway, bicycling, swimming and home Husker football games (He’s been a season ticket holder since 1965).

“Taco Inn at 13th and R kept us going late night. I once sent my sister for an order of frijoles but she asked for ‘free holes.’

That story still makes us both laugh.

The employee at Taco Inn didn’t have a clue what she wanted, so I didn’t get anything for that part of the order.”

Julie Hagemeier has been the general manager of the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film and Nebraska Repertory Theatre at UNL since 1995. She was a recent recipient of the Outstanding Staff Award from the Hixon-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts.

1983

“I was first turned on to taco salads in the Student Union. Greasy goodness in a big ole taco bowl! Putting away one of those carried me through

many a deadline at The Daily Nebraskan, my home away from home for all of my UNL days.”

Patricia Gallagher Newberry is the area coordinator and senior lecturer in the department of media, journalism and film at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

1985

“My roommate and I loved to split a shrimp pizza from the original Valentino’s on Holdrege Street late at night before they closed!”

Bryan Olson serves as a range technician for the USDA Forest Service in the Missoula, Mont., area.

1988

“Popcorn, which as a freshman I often combined with plain M&Ms.” Lise Olsen, Pearland, Texas, began work as senior reporter and editor at the Texas Observer magazine after 21

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“That is a pretty easy answer; pizza from Valentino’s and a milkshake from the Dairy Store.

Both establishments were prominent locations for students back in my day!”

the retired commissioner of the Canton (Ohio) Board of Health and enjoys traveling and spending time with family.

Earlier this year he cruised the Panama Canal.

“My girlfriend, now my wife, and I used to go to the East Campus library to study and afterward would go across the street to Valentino’s for their garlic rolls and a salad. She lived near Val’s and that’s why we ended up studying there as opposed to Love Library.”

1977

out. Years later, living in Texas, I learned that other restaurants call it a flauta or a taquito.

But nothing compares to the memory of Amigos.”

combo on a sourdough bun!”

William Keyse Rudolph is the deputy director for curatorial affairs at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

2002

1992 years as an investigative reporter for Hearst newspapers, including stints at the Houston Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Her first book, the saga of a corrupt federal judge and of brave women whistleblowers, will be published by Beacon Press in 2021.

1990

“Popcorn! I was broke in college and couldn’t afford anything else. Besides, popcorn can

be nutritious.

I still have (and use) the air popcorn machine from my days in the dorm.”

Anthony Young, executive director of Southern Arizona Legal Aid, has been reappointed to serve on the Arizona Commission on Access to Justice.

1991

“A crisp meat burrito from Amigos. It was the perfect combination of crisp and greasy that capped a night

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“Grilled cheese from The Pub in the basement of Neihardt Hall.

Great food, great price and the best atmosphere. It was the perfect place to escape the books and stress for a little while.”

Josh White has joined Metonic Real Estate Solutions in Omaha as the vice president of business development.

“Burritos as big as your head from a place that is now closed. I miss those burritos.

Craig Dick was recently hired

by Minneapolis-based Axiom Marketing to lead their newest office in Lincoln.

“My friends and I enjoyed getting chips and queso from Fuzzy’s Taco Shop after Husker games or a night downtown.”

Erica Lewis is a data analyst at Neogen Corporation in Lincoln.

2020

“Popcorn because I could reward myself with one piece

after each task I accomplished, forcing myself to keep studying until the popcorn was gone!”

Ashley Inbau, a 2020 graduate of the College of Law, represented her class in the online virtual commencement ceremony in May. She is an associate attorney with the Omaha office of law firm Husch Blackwell.

“A Taco Bell cheese quesadilla. Can’t go wrong with something warm, cheesy and a little spicy.”

Lauren Ziegenbein was one of the recipients of the 2020 College of Law student award for Outstanding Impact Through Pro Bono Service.

The Omaha resident is sitting for the Nebraska bar in February 2021.

2003 “I was too poor to afford them often, but occasionally the luxury of chocolate Pop Tarts.”

James Murray of Littleton, Mass., is vice president, clinical informatics and interoperability at CVS Health.

Kelli King was just named assistant vice chancellor for student affairs at UNL.

1995

Elise White, of Lincoln, founder of White Law Office was appointed to the Separate Juvenile Court of Lancaster County in April.

“The Frisco Burger (no tomato) at Hardee’s.

Couldn’t beat the burger, cheese, bacon

2018

“Chex mix and Diet Coke.”

SHARE YOUR MEMORIES

What was your favorite clothing item in college?

Do you want to be featured in the winter issue? Email your answer to this question to kwright@huskeralum.org.

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BULLETIN Obituaries

1942 Elizabeth Nichols Abel, Lincoln, April 17; John K. Wagers, Oakland, Calif., May 5

1943

Robert E. Taylor, Newnan, Ga., May 11

1944

Dorothy Hannah Dunning, Lincoln, May 20

1947

Raymond L. Janousek, Lincoln, June 4; Anna Aasen Sahs, Lincoln, April 7

1948

Georgia Lemon Duling, Lincoln, March 30; William R. Guiou, Speedway, Ind., April 28; Delphine Ayers Sanks, Kearney, June 4

1949 Karl R. Borkenhagen, Edmond, Okla., April 10; Frank L. Bruning,

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Bruning, June 1; Jacqueline Holm Voss, Lincoln, June 9; Pollyanne Hare Meyer, Grand Island, Feb. 28

1950 Freddie A. Drexler, Fairbury, May 12; Rex T. Hoffmeister, Yakima, Wash., April 10; Roland R. Schulz, Seward, March 20

1951

Douglas Barry, Palm Springs, Calif., March 7; Marion E. Childress, Lincoln, April 15; Cherrie Bengtson Koehn, Topeka, Kan., Oct. 16, 2019; Richard A. McElravy, Greenwood Village, Colo., March 25

1952

Gwendolyn Lof Gurnett, Arvin, Calif., April 12; Richard D. Hitz, Lincoln, May 19; Ronald F. Thomas, Omaha, June 10

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1953

20; Martha Morrison Gillespie, Bellevue; April 26; John T. McGreer, Lincoln, April 21; Ardath Young Pinkerton, Beatrice, April 4; Carol Johnson Reed, Lincoln, May 5; Marilyn Mitchell Ruzicka, Denver, March 25; Arthur A. Wiater, Lincoln, May 23

Schmoker, Lincoln, April 23; Roy E. Semin, Lincoln, April 12

Dale L. Filkins, Fremont, April 24; Duncan B. McGregor, Gibbon, April 16; Harry C. Stokely, Valentine, March 31; Weldon R. Vlasak, Clatonia, March 2

1957

Sidney R. Fix, Lincoln, April 10

1955

William W. Alexander, Norfolk, March 24; William J. Shields, Gladstone, Mo., April 29

Larry L. Bischof, Roseburg, Ore., April 18; Philip H. Breslin, Allentown, Penn., May 29; Lester C. Demmel, Omaha, April 29; Emanuel Dworkin, Denver, Colo., March 25; Dorothy Elliott Massey, Scottsbluff, March 15

1954

Jack C. Nelson, Sharptown, Md., April 2; Jay E. Schmidt, Lincoln, March 19; Don C. Secord, Aurora, Colo., April 13

1956 Sandra Stevens Feese, Hopkins, Minn., April

Robert J. Rohde, Gretna, May 29; Melvin C. Thornton, Lincoln, May 30; Kenneth C. Wilson, Sioux City, Iowa, March 27

1958

1959

Ivan E. Burr, Lincoln, April 17; Robert D. Higgs, Hayward, Wis., May 3; Sandra Phelps

1960 Howard F. Ach, Friend, June 6; Richard M. Basoco, Baltimore, April 3; Lawrence J. Miller, Sioux Falls, S.D., April 14

1961

1962

Margaret Timm Elder, Edina, Minn., May 3; William T. Tallon, Lincoln, March 18

1963

Joann Miller Curtiss, Fremont, June 6; Judith Zadina Hansen, Lincoln, April 21; Robert A. Rademacher, Firestone, Colo., April 9; Jean T. Russell, Carson City, Nev., April 11; James H. Stalker, Bellevue, March 17

1964

Thomas G. Folmer, Lincoln, March 1; Richard D. Gibson, Sun City West, Ariz., April 26; Wayne W. Lang, Asheville, N.C., May 19; C. Edward McVaney, Littleton, Colo., June 4

Crofton, April 1; Ralph R. Garcia, Lincoln, June 7; Kenneth D. Glantz, Murdock, April 13; James C. Kropatsch, Columbus, April 15; Jean Johnson Osborn, Lakeville, Minn., May 9; Carl L. Rapp, Minneapolis, April 2

1966

1970

Roger A. Barry, Omaha, June 5; Marc M. Diehl, Loveland, Colo., May 3; Nancy Nelson Smith, Lincoln, April 6

1967

Patrick A. Butera, North Platte, May 1; Galen A. Plihal, DeWitt, June 9

1968 Cheryl Parks Butler, Millsboro, Del., May 21; Lanny N. Fauss, Gretna, April 19; Linda Frye Spencer, Sacramento, April 30

1969 Connie Fiscus Delvaux,

Sallie Elmshaeuser Alberts, Grand Island, April 23; Paul A. Bangura, Omaha, May 3; David L. Chambers, Lincoln, May 26

1971

Janet Wessel Behrens, Seymour, Ind., May 13; Keith K. Bolsen, Spicewood, Texas, May 29; Franklin D. Harris, Gravois Mills, Mo., May 5

1972

Douglas C. Ackles, St. Paul, May 1; Eugene N. Herbek, Omaha, June 4; Robert

N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

R. Higgins, Norfolk, May 6; Larry J. Lechtenberg, Oakland, May 10; Karl L. Linke, Syracuse, May 17

S. McConnell, Central City, April 2; Ronald J. Ripp, Broken Bow, May 9; Jackie Slepicka Wells, Lincoln, May 25

1973

1976

Charles F. Bisbee, Palo Alto, Calif., March 4; Steven D. Conley, Omaha, May 18; Susan Heckman Klemm, Lincoln, May 11; Jayne J. Novotny, Ann Arbor, Mich., April 10; James W. Pauley, Scottsbluff, March 29

1974

Donna Dobbs Benacka, Marquette, Kan., March 24; Ralph F. Grajeda, Lincoln, May 3

1975 Marjorie Steinmeyer Bergmeier, Portland, Ore., May 29; Rex J. Kolste, Janesville, Wis., April 21; Richard L. Kuzelka, Tucson, May 18; Raymond

Gary K. Healey, Lincoln, March 14; Teda Beran Jurgens, Endicott, April 15; Mark P. Scheidies, Longmont, Colo., April 30

1980 Thomas R. Peterson, Omaha, May 23; Dennis D. Thomas, Omaha, March 9

1981

Kathryn Gowing Judd, Fairbury, March 27; Bruce A. Olson, Omaha, May

17; Steven C. Schneider, Bennington, April 26

Lincoln, March 30

Kearney, March 24

1982

1984 S. Keith Chesterton, Freeport, Ill., Jan. 30

1986

Linda Tubman Butcher, Lincoln, April 24

1983 Douglas L. McMahan,

1985

Kevin K. Knake, Hastings, May 27; Diane Burke Pavel,

1978

Connie L. Boeka, Omaha, April 22; Stephen G. Brown, Georgetown, Texas, March 29; Janet L. Kurmel, Omaha, March 12

1979

Susan Duranski Lutton, Ashland, May 21

N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

Jane Skradski Spires, Bellevue, April 20

1987

William O. Hayes, Lincoln, May 25; Kathleen Diers Spohr, Sloan, Iowa, March 9

1988

Carol Jenkins Jackson, Omaha, April 6

1977

Colleen Epps Atwater, Englewood, Colo., May 1; Richard L. Bryan, Lincoln, April 15; David E. Cecil, Papillion, May 23; Kevin G. Duling, Lincoln, June 5

Omaha, April 9

1989 Steven R. Mortenson, Parker, Colo., May 5

1968-2020

Ronald White Ronald R. White, 52, assistant food service manager at the Massengale Hall Dining Services, died April 10 in a single-vehicle crash. The New Orleans native joined dining services in 2010 and became a favorite of students, renowned for his annual Mardi Gras meals that incorporated his family’s traditional recipes. In addition to the popular Fat Tuesday offerings, White was responsible for annual grill out menus presented during the lunch hour in the summer months. Charlie Francis, senior director of housing and dining services, said, “It was easy to see how much he cared for students, in fact, when we were designing the new East Campus Union dining facility, students asked for the cook to be visible to diners because they enjoyed interacting with Ron.”

1994

Eric N. Petersen, Dubuque, Iowa, May 15

1995 Nicole Rowe Fowler, Centennial, Colo., May 19

1997 Tad A. Wright, Maywood, March 10

2001

James A. Rose, Geneva, June 4

2009 Daniel R. Weins, Lincoln, May 3

1990

Lynn Lacoma Turner, Wichita, Kan., June 6

2010

Eugene J. LeDuc, Lincoln, April 19

2011

1991

Daniel E. Pullen, Dannebrog, May 17

1992 Nancy Huston Anderson, Omaha, April 30; Scott J. Buscher, Omaha, May 7; Todd A. Huff,

Diana C. Ramos, Omaha, May 7

2013

Michael S. Kutilek, Omaha, May 22

2015

Lauren M. Celesky, Omaha, April 21

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63

Love Story

25 Cent Refills Lincoln eateries come and go with regularity, but The Mill preserves its caffeinated grip B Y PAUL A LAV IGNE ( ’ 98) ESPN investigative reporter

64

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N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

mario zucca

B

etween the imploded residence halls and razed buildings and the swank new storefronts and parking garages, today’s Lincoln campus is a difficult place for a mid-’90s student to get her bearings.

Nebraska Union got a makeover.

Classic Broyhill Fountain was converted into a modern “water feature.” The journalism college I visit now is a streamlined multistory high-tech lab, far from the cramped but quaint quarters in Avery Hall where all those pesky journalists could monitor the goings on at Memorial Stadium.

And downtown is almost unrecognizable. Gone is the one-of-a-kind Rock ’n’ Roll Runza, the Valentino’s, Crane River, and the Spaghetti Works on 12th Street where I cashed in piles of those

$2.99 buffet coupons we published in The Daily Nebraskan. And today’s hipster Haymarket Railyard used to be just that — a railyard, where I once actually boarded a real train.

But there is one place — one “love” of mine from back then — that has remained true to my memory: The Mill coffee shop on 8th and P streets. When I walk in there today, it is almost like stepping back into 1993.

(Technically, I could say the same thing about a few O Street bars, but those were more of a love/ hate relationship, so I opted for the coffee shop paean instead.)

I was an incredibly misguided youth in college; I was a journalism major who attended AND actually studied for my classes.

I found The Mill my freshman year and settled in. It was far enough from campus but still an easy walk. Bright enough to keep me awake, but subdued and quiet enough for me to zone out with my Sony CD Walkman as I played through my collection of Pink Floyd albums, reading intently about media law, European political conflict, or the Fujita scale for a meteorology class that fulfilled my science requirement. I sketched out newspaper articles, sweated over story pitches and transcribed interviews between drinking cups and cups of amazing coffee.

My love story begins in the corner table closest to the windows on a bench up against the exposed brick wall, a giant cup of coffee (most likely snickerdoodle) — with two brown sugar cubes — steaming in front of me. Their coffee was like rocket fuel and it was amazing. Those 25 cent refills kept me holed up there for hours on end.

Sometimes I’d splurge on a scone. They had the best scones, dense but crumbly. But the relatively cheap coffee was my constant, and even a whiff of it as I walked in the door took me out of whatever mental whirlwind I was in that day and allowed me to step into a slightly more contented state of mind.

What also makes this is a good love story is that it has endured. When I walk into The Mill today — as I have on my occasional visits to Lincoln over the past two decades — it looks and smells almost exactly the same. And it’s lovely.

Yes, there are three newer locations elsewhere in Lincoln, and yes, they have almond milk and Wi-Fi, but the red awning, the rustic cabin-like décor, the wall of coffee beans, the logo and the nicked wooden tables all remain downtown.

Most of the time I’m there, I’m zipping in to grab a latte and a bag of snickerdoodle beans to take home. But sometime soon I hope to snag a spot on the wide concrete patio and spend a few hours back in the mid-’90s.

That’s my love story, one 25 cent refill at a time.

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