What’s orange and white and moUThwatering all over? A Tennessee Vols tailgate! We asked John Antun, director of the UT Culinary Institute and assistant professor in the hotel, restaurant, and tourism program at UT Knoxville, to help us assemble some distinctly “UT” tailgate recipes. To spice it up even more, Antun chose recipes from his already award-winning, soon-to-be-published multicultural cookbook.
Antun received a grant from UT Knoxville’s Ready for the World initiative to publish the cookbook. The book contains 180 recipes from the families of Antun’s students, including matzo ball soup, homemade egg noodles, Maryland crab dip, and pav bhaji, a vegetarian dish from India.
The book will be available to purchase through the UT Culinary Institute and retailers in Knoxville. Each student’s recipe also comes with a description of the food and its significance to his or her family. Though not yet published, the book is already an award-winner. Antun nabbed second-place honors for it from the Center for the Advancement of Foodservice Education (CAFE). In June Antun presented the project at the CAFE leadership conference in Chicago.
My grandfather lived in Chicago during the early 1900s and was probably one of the biggest Chicago Bears fans ever born. It was his passion to go to every Bears home game and have his “chili picnics.” They were a very early version of what we now call a tailgate party. He would make enough for 20 people, and they all showed up at every single home game. Then it became a Sunday ritual at home, watching the game on TV. Although to this day we still call it Bear Chili, it has evolved into what my dad now calls “GoVol Chili” and has become a Saturday ritual.
—Courtney Krich
Ground beef, premium grade 1 lb.
Tomato soup 2 (10.5 oz) cans
White rice, cooked 1 cup
Frozen corn 1 (10 oz.) bag
Chili seasoning packet 1
Chili beans 2 (16 oz.) cans
Cheese, shredded 1 bag
Onion 1 small
Tortilla chips 1 bag
My great grandparents met in an orphanage, so they had very little heritage to draw upon. This recipe was one that my grandmother started making every Christmas morning. Sometimes you have to make your own customs and traditions. My grandmother has since passed, and now my mother has taken over the egg-strada, which we have eaten every Christmas morning for the past 65 years. The dish doesn’t really tell you much about our culture, but it shows a will to create something of a family tradition.
—Nick Robinson
Eggs (or equivalent egg substitute) 6 to 8
Milk, 2% 1 c.
Salt 1 Tb.
Pork sausage, cooked, crumbled, and drained 1 lb.
Cheddar cheese, grated 1 c.
Ground mustard 1 tsp.
Worcestershire sauce 1 tsp.
White bread 6 slices
I was born in Baltimore and lived very close to the Chesapeake Bay, so I grew up around seafood. This recipe is a must for anyone with a hankering for seafood. It best represents where I am from and the types of food we like to eat. If you are from Maryland, you cannot live without crab.
—Brittany Ecalono
Jumbo lump crab meat 16 oz. (two 8 oz. containers)
Cream cheese 8 oz. (one 8 oz. container)
Mayonnaise 4 Tb.
Garlic powder 1 tsp.
Lemon juice 1 lemon (or 1 tsp. lemon juice)
Old Bay Seasoning 2 tsp.
French baguette 1 loaf
The M&M cookies recipe is special to my family. My father’s taste for M&M cookies began in his early childhood . . .. When he joined the military and was stationed at Fort Knox for his basic training, he refused to eat any of the food that was available to the soldiers. His mother would send him M&M cookies every week. My mother started fixing the cookies for him after they were married . . .. M&M cookies are not just a popular dessert for my family; they are part of my family history.
—Rachel Hutchison
Crisco shortening 1 c.
Light brown sugar 1 c.
White sugar ½ c.
Eggs 2
Vanilla extract 2 tsp.
All-purpose flour 2 ½ c.
Baking soda 1 tsp.
Salt 1 tsp.
M&Ms 1 lb.
My mother and her side of the family hail from New Orleans, so I grew up around all things Cajun. The first meal my grandmother would make when we visited was always étouffée. When we walked into grandma’s kitchen and could smell the Cajun spices simmering, we knew that something delicious was in our very near future, and the leftovers would feed us throughout our stay. Étouffée was always just the beginning of a big family gathering, and with it came other Cajun traditions like king cake, crawfish boils, and Mardi Gras. But it was always grandma’s crawfish étouffée that I looked forward to most.
—Lane Francis
Onion, chopped 1 c.
Celery, chopped 1 c.
Green onions with tops, chopped ½ c.
Shallots, chopped 4 Tb.
Garlic, minced 2 cloves
Butter 1 stick
Flour 2 Tb.
Chicken stock 2 c.
Ro-Tel tomatoes 1 can
Salt to taste
Black pepper 1 tsp.
Cayenne pepper dash
Worcestershire sauce 1 Tb.
Crawfish meat, rinsed and drained
(or shrimp, peeled and rinsed) 2 lb.
Cornstarch for thickening, if needed
An update on the Campaign for Tennessee, a new Warhol exhibit at UTC, A look at this year’s Haslam Scholars—these stories and more in the latest installment of UTopics.
The spider hung from a leafy tree branch. It was bright green, and it brandished a giant claw designed to attack the insects on which it fed. Staring at the creature through the glowing light of her headlamp, Rosemary Gillespie (Knoxville ’86) could hardly believe her eyes. There was only one spider in the world with a claw quite like that—the rarely encountered Doryonychus raptor, which had been scientifically collected only once, by an obscure British naturalist in 1901.
UT’s new supercomputer is one of the world’s fastest after just a few months in operation. In June, UT’s Kraken ranked 57th in the “Top500” list. Further upgrades that were to be made after the ranking was released were expected to power Kraken to a spot among the world’s top 10. Kraken has grown—quickly—out of a $65-million National Science Foundation grant to UT. At the time the grant was announced, President John Petersen called it “a major national win that places the university in the upper echelon of supercomputing capability.” How right he was.
You can count on finding a riot of color among the blooms and foliage at the UT Gardens in Knoxville. This year, though, you’ll see more silver among the beds of annuals, perennials, herbs, and trees that abound throughout the 5 acres along Neyland Drive. The UT Gardens is celebrating its 25th, or silver, anniversary. In honor of the occasion, curator James Newburn (Knoxville ’95, ’08), gardens interim director Dr. Sue Hamilton (Knoxville ’80, ’95), and students are growing such silver plants as artemisia, dusty miller, and silver sage on the agriculture campus. They are also joining with the Friends of the Gardens to dedicate a new Friendship Plaza, a sweeping entryway designed to welcome the 50,000-plus visitors the gardens host each year.
It was as simple as telling someone to put the bag of fingers where the patient didn’t have to look at them. That, and having someone like Nicole Perez to know what was causing the patient, a 7-year-old boy, to be inconsolable. Perez (Knoxville ’04, ’06) is pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at UT Knoxville and taking part in a program that’s putting the campus on the leading edge of clinical psychology training.
Anna Maria Horner is a homemaker in the oldest, and newest, sense of the word. She spends her days sewing, folding socks, and devising activities to occupy her brood of five children. But unlike homemakers of the past, she doesn’t hang over the fence sharing recipes and mending tips. Instead she invites friends in for a virtual cup of coffee and a chat through her blog, “Anna Maria,” at http://annamariahorner.blogspot.com.
From her home in Cary, North Carolina, Kelly Utt-Grubb runs a one-of-a-kind business. The UT psychology graduate (Knoxville ’05) is a family naming resource. That “huh?” that came to your mind is to be expected. She believes she’s the only person in the world in her chosen line of work. Utt-Grubb helps people with their last names, exploring, for instance, whether to keep them, change them, hyphenate them, or merge them with other names. She says those and other options should be explored to find a comfortable fit.
The Queen Elizabeth 2’s final round-the-world cruise was a hot ticket, and an expensive one. But two alumni actually made money aboard the storied ocean liner and did it with a song in their hearts. Stew Bystrzycki (Knoxville ’04) and Brad Martin (Knoxville ’91) were mainstays of the Queen’s Room Dance Band—Bystrzycki as the bandleader and Martin as drummer. Both studied in the studio music and jazz concentration in the School of Music in the College of Arts and Sciences.
It was an evening of orange at Thompson–Boling Arena, where 850 people from near and far brought enough passion and “Rocky Top” to pack Neyland Stadium on game day. With blinking future pendants circling their necks and colorful streamers and confetti falling at their feet, UT loyalists had no doubt that the university’s billion-dollar capital campaign goal would be reached, if not exceeded.
This year’s officers of the UT Alumni Association are an experienced lot, and two of them are second-generation alumni leaders.
Summertime is prime time at theme parks—a vacation to one of these magical destinations might well be in your plans. These UT alumni who work with Disney, Dollywood, and Sea World Orlando would love to welcome you.
Objects from long ago and far away promise a tantalizing museum experience this summer at UT Knoxville. The Frank H. McClung Museum is offering “Ancient Bronzes of the Asian Grasslands,” an exhibit from the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, through August 3.
The majority of students can succeed at math and science. “They just need to be taught how,” says Dr. Saundra McGuire, a UT alumna and recent winner of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.
McGuire is director of the Center for Academic Success at Louisiana State University. She says the earlier students learn how to learn, the better.
Ann Draughon’s career has included many firsts, but she says the most important thing she has done is prepare women and minorities for careers in food microbiology.
