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Throwing a Super Bowl Party – Vegan-Style

4 February, 2016 / Kat

Two years ago, the New England Patriots were not in the Super Bowl, and thus, I did not have to work on Super Bowl Sunday. So my husband invited a few of his friends over for a Super Bowl Party, and I was placed in charge of cooking. (I dislike cooking, so I don’t know why I was placed in charge of this. But I was.)

The challenge: two of the five attendees were vegan.

That meant I had to cut my standby football food recipes of Hasenauer family pizza and taco salad (both of which I shared with SBNation a few years back) out of the lineup real quick. Instead, I turned to Pinterest and tried to find vegan football food. I had to MacGyver* a few recipes and cross my fingers that they would work, but wouldn’t you know – they did!

After a brief post last Super Bowl season about the vegan cupcakes from that party, I figured I would share all of my vegan Super Bowl party recipes this year. Below is the Pinterest board where I have collected all of the recipes and added my notes. These all taste good enough to please non-vegans, so no need to make two sets of food.

If anything, make the cupcakes. They are now my go-to cupcake in any situation, vegan attendees or not.

Follow Kat’s board Super Bowl Sunday – Vegan Style on Pinterest.

*I use MacGyver as a verb often, and find myself needing to explain it because the 20-somethings and college students I work among aren’t familiar with the show. In my eyes, “to MacGyver” something is to fix a major problem with something as small as a paper clip, making you look like a genius. In reality, you’re just doing something instead of nothing and crossing your fingers.

A letter to Student Affairs

13 October, 2015 / Kat

Dear Student Affairs:

We need to talk.

11 years ago, I attended my first ACPA conference. A college senior at the time, I was excited to meet up with my friends already in graduate school for student affairs administration and network for graduate assistantships.

Everyone I wanted to meet up with asked me to meet them at the bar.

My first trip to the bar, I saw a hall director from my college so tipsy he or she couldn’t walk straight. They were not alone. I wasn’t a big drinker at the time, and was so worried about making a good impression, so I stuck to pop or water. But every time I went to that bar, there were conference attendees, adorned with the requisite lanyard, getting absolutely trashed.

When I returned to campus and my roommate asked me what the conference was like, I answered honestly. “It’s a place where everyone who tells us not to drink goes to drink.”

I’ve now been in the field eleven years, and alcohol use and abuse that proliferates the field is concerning, especially because we are the ones looking to teach young adults healthy drinking habits.

Those of us in the field of student affairs need to look at our relationships with alcohol and what messages it sends. Currently, some of us can’t have brainstorming sessions outside of a bar setting. We can’t have farewell parties without an open bar. Our senior farewell dinners have a larger alcohol bill than food bill. Our conferences always start and end with socials that end with nights at the hotel bar and then glassy-eyed looks the next morning. If someone attends an event and doesn’t drink, we start asking questions why that person isn’t drinking (even though it’s none of our business.)

The results: Emails encouraged and fueled by several drinks with colleagues wreck cross-department relationships. Students hit up tipsy administrators for favors that the administrators can’t remember the next day. Staff members who don’t attend events at bars or don’t drink at them are looked at differently and get left out of future invitations.

After a day where I received another invite to a work brainstorming session that read, “We’ll imbibe and brainstorm,” and got another directive to read a project proposal and then “talk about it over beverages with colleagues,” I snapped.

What message are we sending to our students? We tell them not to drink, and then go binge drink ourselves? We have policies that forbid them from having alcohol at their events, but then we can’t hold our own events without a bar?

What type of environment are we creating for those staff in student affairs who choose not to drink or cannot drink? Five years ago, I had two director-level colleagues pregnant at once. They were expected to attend events where everyone was getting sloshed around them. I imagine it had to be extremely uncomfortable, especially before they had told everyone their status yet. We once had two staff members who always asked us to hold some (not all) social events outside of bars because neither drank alcohol and wanted to see us offer other options. Their colleagues laughed and refused to attend the two events we didn’t have at a bar. We had to go back to having all staff social events at a bar just to get people to show up.

Granted, the issue is not just in student affairs and higher education. Tech companies and start-ups brag about “Craft Beer Wednesdays” and “Beer Cart Fridays.” And what’s any office holiday party without a spiked egg nog offering?

I don’t want to deny anyone their choice to drink. I appreciate the fun of a margarita, I enjoy trying new white wines, and despite how “basic” it makes me, I do love pumpkin beer season. But I do want workplaces, particularly in higher education, to examine the volume that they do and the correlation that it may force between productivity, belonging and drinking.

I want to be a good colleague. I shouldn’t have to drink in order to be one. Especially in a field where we expect our students to be responsible with alcohol, we ought to be responsible ourselves.

2016 Worlds Watch: Hockey player turned figure skater is the future for the U.S.

4 September, 2015 / Kat

We are 205 days out from the 2016 World Figure Skating Championships coming to Boston. In the lead up, I’ll point out some figure skaters to keep an eye on leading up to the event.

The Boston Bruins will take a brief hiatus from the TD Garden this March when the 2016 World Figure Skating Championships come to town, but a hockey player may still take the ice.

One of the most promising men’s skaters the United States has produced in some time, hockey forward and figure skater Nathan Chen delivered a phenomenal short program Thursday at the Junior Grand Prix stop in Colorado Springs. His 77.13 score put him in first after the first leg of competition, a total that U.S. Figure Skating reported as being the highest ever at a Junior Grand Prix event.

If you haven’t been watching figure skating in a few years (and I know there are quite a few of you out there), U.S. men have been struggling. Quad jumps, once revolutionary, are now commonplace, but the U.S. doesn’t boast much power in that department. The reigning national champion, Jason Brown, is known more for the overall composition of his programs and precise skating skills (which deserve kudos, don’t get me wrong), than his jumping ability. A quad jump isn’t currently in Brown’s repertoire.

Nathan Chen, on the other hand, can jump. When he lifts up for his opening triple Axel, it is as secure as the dominant U.S. men in days of old. He has enough confidence and strength to place the rest of his short program jump requirements in the second half of his program, which gives him a score boost. (While watching Chen’s program on YouTube, I may have physically slapped my desk in excitement when he landed the triple Lutz-triple toe loop in the second half of his program.)

While Chen doesn’t have the program composition of reigning national champion Brown, he still can sell a program, as he does with his Michael Jackson short program medley. He can hold his own artistry-wise among the top U.S. men at the moment, an important point in a quadrennium where U.S. judging panels have shown they might hold it in higher importance than those internationally.

Chen’s first senior performances for those particular judges were less than ideal. After winning the novice and junior men’s titles twice each, his first year on the senior men’s level at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships was marred by a heel injury. He finished eighth. Given reports of his blistering performances at summer competitions and as shown in Thursday’s short program, Chen probably won’t see himself in eighth place nationally again.

Given his age, Chen could compete on the junior or senior level internationally. To the dismay and confusion of some skating fans, he was placed on the junior circuit this fall, but has the goods to compete — and do well — on the Senior Grand Prix. If he shows up in Minneapolis in January for the U.S. Championships and places in the top three there, he could represent the United States at the TD Garden, the venue where he won his second junior national title in 2014.

His last junior title was won while he was spending his evenings playing hockey for a Midget A team in California. A forward, Chen detailed his dual career for Icenetwork’s Amy Rosewater last winter, and how his family talked him out of tending the net:

“At first, I wanted to be a goalie,” said Chen, who got interested in hockey because his two older brothers played. “I thought being a goalie would be the most fun. I really liked the goalie gear. I thought it was cool. But my family said being a goalie would be boring, just standing there in front of the net, not skating. So I decided to play up [at forward] instead.”

So while the Bruins may be on the road for an extended road trip next March, it’s quite possible that a forward might still take the ice.

Bostonians have a chance to see Chen for themselves at Harvard’s Evening With Champions, September 18th and 19th.

At halftime, Daggett is ready to get the job done

14 August, 2015 / Kat

The Junior Men’s competition at the 2015 P&G Gymnastics Championships at the Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

INDIANAPOLIS – Last year, a great first day of competition saw Peter Daggett in striking distance of a stellar P&G U.S. Gymnastics Championships debut.

Then the East Longmeadow, Mass. native let himself look too far ahead to a Junior National Team berth and fell on floor exercise and vault on day two, dropping him from fifth to tenth in the standings. That coveted national team status would have to wait another year.

“Last year, I had a really good first day,” said the 18 year old. “But in the off period, I let myself get a little too high and let myself think that I was all set for making the national team, when it was really only halftime.”

It’s now halftime of Daggett’s second P&G Championships, and to continue the football analogy, he will start the second half with possession. Hitting all six routines, he finished the first day of competition at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in second place with an overall score of 84.050, putting him on quality ground for that elusive Junior National Team spot.

“I’ve learned now to pace myself,” said Daggett. “There’s six more events to do, six more routines to hit, and I’ll go from there.”

Maturity hasn’t been Daggett’s only growth area since last August. His recent move to start school at the University of Oklahoma has pushed his gymnastics in an entirely new direction. He now rooms with two other competitors in this weekend’s junior men’s division, current leader Yul Moldauer and Levi Anderson, who sits in sixth.

Daggett hasn’t added tremendous difficulty (though he insists he has upgrades he should be able to show off next year), but every move is that much more exact. Spending time in a college gym with some of the nation’s best senior gymnasts stresses those details.

“It’s a lot different training with guys like Jake Dalton and Steven Legendre, senior national team guys I’ve looked up to my entire life,” said Daggett. “Watching everything, watching those little tiny details, those things they do a little bit better than anyone else that get them to that level.”

One of those details Daggett improved upon the most were his dismounts, and those lifted him above all but Moldauer on Friday afternoon.

“My landings have gotten a lot better,” said Daggett. “I’m not typically one to do very well on the sticking portion of it. But I’d say that went pretty well today. I’d say I stuck my routines today that I don’t usually stick.”

If he can stick his landings again in Sunday night’s finals, he might clinch the National Team spot that has served as motivation since last year. But membership in another team, Oklahoma, may now spark his efforts even more. Now he wants success now just not for himself, but for his two other Sooner teammates who are competing alongside him.

“I had teammates back at home, but it was nothing like a college team,” said Daggett. “These two guys are my roommates. We live together. We’ve only been together for a month and a half and we’re already best friends. It’s great.”

Jersey Girls: Gymnastics’ future might have Garden State roots

13 August, 2015 / Kat

INDIANAPOLIS – The 47th largest state in land mass in the United States might have cornered the market on the future of women’s gymnastics.

When the junior division, gymnasts between the ages of 11–15, took the floor at Indianapolis’ Bankers Life Fieldhouse for the first day of their competition at the 2015 P&G U.S. Gymnastics Championships on Thursday afternoon, five of the 28 competitors hailed from the Garden State. The only other state to equal that amount? The traditional gymnastics powerhouse that is the nation’s second largest state — Texas.

And when the first day of competition ended? Three of those five Jersey girls had spots in the top ten, with two — Jazmyn Foburg and Lauren Hernandez, who train at Morganville, N.J.’s Monmouth Gymnastics — in first and second.

Foburg is the reigning national champion in junior women, and her consistency won the day. Although she stepped out of bounds on her final tumbling pass on floor exercise to open the afternoon, she put that behind her quickly. On her next event, she scored her first career 15.000 — a giant score for a senior gymnast in this decade’s Code of Points, let alone a junior one — on vault with a high-flying Yurchenko double twist.

“It was amazing,” said Foburg. “I’ve always wanted (a 15), and I finally got it. And it’s awesome because I got it at P&Gs.”

Foburg’s uneven bars routine finished with a flourish, a full-twisting double tuck dismount, and she slid up to first place. On her last rotation, she calmly moved through a balance beam routine with fewer bobbles than most of her competitors, earning her a 14.35 and putting her in a good spot heading into Saturday afternoon’s finals.

Clad in a yellow, white and hot pink leotard, the spunky Hernandez held her own in her first national championships back after wrist and knee injuries kept her sidelined for most of 2014. With choreography details so sharp that you could easily see them if you were hanging from the Indiana Pacers’ Divisional Championship banners in the rafters, she started the afternoon off with a huge ovation and score (14.35) on floor exercise. Vault shook her a bit, but she recovered on uneven bars to move from third place to second.

Nerves struck Hernandez as she waited for her last event, balance beam. To help, she turned to advice she learned online.

“Sometimes I blow on my thumbs. Somewhere I read that your thumb has a pulse, so if I blow on my thumb it helps,” said Hernandez. “Or I talk to my coach about shoes, so I don’t overthink.”

It worked. She had a balance check here and there, but she held her own to remain in second just behind her teammate, something Foburg was pleased about.

“I’m glad we’re together,” said Foburg. “I am so happy that I get to compete with her.”

Next year, the New Jersey contingent will be down two gymnasts in the junior ranks. Both now 15 years old, Hernandez and Foburg will move up to the senior division for 2016, making them age-eligible to make runs for the team headed to the Olympics in Rio. But for this weekend, the focus is on one of them winning a national title at the end of Saturday’s finals, proving that New Jersey is as tough in gymnastics as it is in its stereotype.

“I’m just so happy to be here, especially with her,” said Hernandez. “She pushes me to be the best and she always has my back.”

Kat Cornetta