While the University of Maryland is a bustling campus, complete with a local restaurant and bar scene, students tend to miss out on many of the perks students of going to a school in the city.
One such perk of the city? The new food trucks popping up, which provide a mobile menagerie of meals that are almost always fresh and organic.
Maryland students, though, no longer have to be jealous of their counterparts in Washington, D.C. and NYC though, as a new food truck, Green Tidings Mobile Dining, has hit campus.
The truck, which circulates campus Monday through Friday, aims to promote healthy and local eating among students. The staff at Good Tidings Catering Company on campus launched Green Tidings over the summer, with a huge positive response.
“The idea for a food truck came from Chef Will Rogers. He was so excited about the idea,” Allison Lilly, the sustainability and wellness coordinator, said.
While the location of the truck changes every day, the menu stays the same for two weeks. The current menu features fancy and fresh fare like a Moroccan chicken salad, braised lamb shoulder sandwich and candied ginger ice cream.
Vegetarian or gluten free? The truck has you covered, too, with items like the strawberry salad and summer corn soup, and promises to always include both vegetarian and gluten free offerings.
While the food truck may appeal to students as a quick way to avoid the diner, its true aim is to make students think more about where their food comes from.
All of the food served up at Green Tidings is grown both sustainably and locally. The truck not only does this to educate students about the merits of these food choices, but also to help Dining Services meet its goal of being 20% sustainable by 2020.
“Our goal is to promote locally grown, sustainable foods,” Lilly said.
“I like that they bring local foods in and serve them to students,” Danielle Wentz, a senior dietetics major said. On her second visit to the truck, she repeat ordered a strawberry salad because she enjoyed so much.
The Green Tidings Food Truck not only promotes locally grown foods, but also promotes living sustainably.
“It’s also nice that they use sustainable containers that are compostable,” Wentz said.
In many of the places the truck sets up, like the Wednesday Farmer’s Market in front of Cole Fieldhouse, there are recycling bins nearby to promote less waste.
To find the food truck, or to see what they’re serving up next, check out their twitter @UMDGreenTidings.