Gastronomy Students Lend Aid Through Quarantine Cookbook

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted the way we eat. With less options for dining out, more and more people are taking the opportunity to learn to cook their favorite meals at home. To lend their qualified expertise—not only to good eating, but also to worthy causes—BU MET’s Gastronomy Students Association (GSA) published Cooking During COVID, a new, 78-page, digital-only community cookbook.

An effort to stay connected during quarantine, the GSA invited BU Gastronomy & Culinary Arts/Food and Wine alumni, faculty, and staff to pitch in suggested recipes for comfort foods, pantry staples, and the dishes that have helped people fill their bellies with satisfaction during quarantine.

Members of the GSA learn about the rich cultural traditions and practices around food through their studies as students in the Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy. Given the ongoing global pandemic, and subsequent vulnerabilities it has revealed, they were inspired to find a way to help. The GSA opted for a downloadable PDF cookbook, free to essential workers, and available to the general public in exchange for evidence of a $5 donation to a select list of nonprofits and food charities providing COVID relief.

“We wanted to focus on the food system, not only because we are part of a food studies program, but because the food system has been so drastically affected by this global health crisis and the subsequent economic effects,” GSA Copresident Sarah Hartwig (MET’20) told BU Today. “More and more people are facing food insecurity, especially Black and indigenous communities of color, farms and restaurants are struggling, and supply chains are in disarray.”

Those who can are encouraged to make a donation to the Greater Boston Food Bank, World Central Kitchen #ChefsforAmerica, or WhyHunger’s Rapid Response Fund, and inquire with bugastronauts@gmail.com for their copy of Cooking During COVID.

In the short weeks since its release, the MET Gastronomy Students Association’s cookbook has raised over $1,700 for those in need.