Eagle Dining Services will regularly show how students can get creative using their dining plans to cook their own meals with ingredients from the Pickle Barrel.

Beginning in March, chefs from Eagle Dining Services will hold Fresh and Tasty Spotlight cooking demos each Wednesday outside the Pickle Barrel.

Eagle Dining Services has had a few successful cooking demos before and look forward to hosting them weekly, Brittany Parham, Eagle Dining Services nutrition coordinator, said.

“These dishes are options you can cook so you don’t have to eat raw fruits and vegetables all the time,” Parham said.

Fresh and Tasty Spotlight demonstrates how students can cook healthy side dishes that may not cost a lot to buy the ingredients.

“Sometimes we throw in something special like Gorgonzola, but we try to keep it versatile with ingredients you can easily find,” Michael Price, Eagle Dining Services chef, said.

The dishes are versatile so that students can incorporate every single ingredient found in the Pickle Barrel.

For instance, in the last spotlight on Feb. 20,the creamy bacon and corn sauté dish called for soymilk but the Pickle Barrel only had vanilla soymilk.

Adjusting the recipe to include vanilla soymilk was not an inconvenience but an opportunity to experiment with different flavor pairings, Price said.

The spotlight on Feb. 18 featured Portobello mushrooms and sweet potato hash with Gorgonzola cheese and Price gave students cooking tips during the demo, one of which was to have all ingredients out in front of you before you start cooking.

Students should be curious to see how the chefs include ingredients from the Pickle Barrel into the dish. They might even pick up on some cooking techniques as well, Josh Gebhardt, junior finance major, said.

All recipes will be posted to Eagle Dining Services’ Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook sites, Parham said.