Festive inaugural picnic brings community together

inauguration cake
Jason Koski/University Photography
A Wegmans employee cuts the enormous cake made by store, which was decorated with a waterfall drawn in icing, and photos with scenes of Cornell, Ithaca and Cayuga Lake specially printed in edible ink on fondant sheets. The cake was big enough for 900 servings.
inauguration box lunch
Krishna Ramanujan
A box lunch catered by Cornell Dining containing a piece of fried chicken, cole slaw, chips and an apple. The wood composite box was compostable.
inauguration ice cream
Robert Barker/University Photography
Volunteers serve 24 Garrett Swirl, a variety created by Cornell Dairy based on Elizabeth Garrett's favorite flavors.
inauguration bean bag
Krishna Ramanujan
Guests play a bean bag game at the picnic created and hosted by the College of Human Ecology's sustainability group. The game tested people's knowledge about proper composting and recycling.
inauguration woman and child
Jason Koski/University Photography
Picnic-goers enjoying the afternoon on the Ag Quad.

As the elegant installation ceremony of President Elizabeth Garrett was taking place on the Arts Quad, the Ag Quad offered a more pastoral scene. There, caterers set up for the droves of guests who would soon arrive from the ceremony. The grounds already were dotted with picnickers, replete with box lunches and red-and-white-checkered blankets.

Nearby, Steven Miller, senior executive chef for Cornell Dining, dressed in a chefs jacket and toque, chatted with colleagues in the calm before the storm. He had started working at 4 a.m., setting up box lunches, which were served in compostable wooden boxes emblazoned with the inauguration insignia.

“Serving fried chicken to 5,000 is not an easy task,” Miller said. In addition to the chicken or a portabella mushroom wrap, Cornell Dining offered cole slaw, chips and an apple, along with a wet wipe, “as that fried chicken can make a mess,” he quipped.

One entire tent was devoted to an enormous cake decorated with a waterfall drawn in icing and photos of Cornell, Ithaca and Cayuga Lake printed in edible ink. The entire cake was made of 24 half sheets of cake – each two by one-and-a-half feet – big enough for 900 servings. It took the bakers at Wegmans 25 hours to make.

Along the perimeter of the Ag Quad were more tents with desserts made by local companies, including Wide Awake Bakery, Ba-Li Cravings, Kendra’s Culinary Creations, Panera and Wegmans.

Wide Awake Bakery caterer Rachel Ostlund busily opened bins filled with 40 dozen coconut macaroons she had spent the entire previous day making. “We were excited to be part of this event,” she said, adding it was a credit to Cornell that “they sought out local businesses to feature.”

Confectioners from Life’s So Sweet Chocolate worked nonstop for a week to hand-make more than 5,000 red-and-white sprinkled fair-trade milk and dark chocolate nonpareils.

As the community picnic was readied, the Big Red Marching Band led the procession of faculty, students, staff, alumni, local residents and guests to the Ag Quad.

Also entertaining the picnickers were the Cornell Klezmer Ensemble, a cappella groups The Touchtones, Chosen Generation Gospel Choir, Cayuga’s Waiters, the Chai Notes, Baraka Kwa Wimbo gospel ensemble, and the Ithaca Gay Men’s Choir, and Latin band Palonegro.

At a picnic table, engineer Odohi Ettah ’11, M.Eng. ’12, sat with his mother, Ida, and father, Ernest, eating fried chicken. Ettah and his family, including sister Eteng ’15, traveled from New Jersey to Ithaca to attend inauguration and homecoming.

“She looks like she is ready for the task,” Ettah said of Garrett. Of the meal, he added, “the ice cream is awesome,” referring to Cornell Dairy’s 24 Garrett Swirl, based on Garrett’s favorite flavors.

Deanna Simons, Cornell dairy quality manager, said they blind taste-tested two versions of the ice cream with Garrett, her sister and niece to arrive at the final edition: chocolate with Kahlua flavoring, caramel swirl and fudge truffle. Four hundred and fifty gallons were made Sept. 16 and trucked to the picnic in a freezer truck before being scooped into cups.

Yinan Sun, a second-year graduate student in the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA), talked about how Cornell branching into New York City with the Cornell Tech campus shows Cornell’s leadership in evolving education and said the expansion would enhance Cornell’s name.

Sun’s friend, Yushi Wang, also a second-year CIPA graduate student, said, “One of the great things of the inauguration is we have the first female president; it will make the university more diverse.”

“The cake is cute,” Sun said, pointing to a half-eaten slice heavy with blue-green icing on a plate in front of her. “We got a little bit of Cayuga Lake there.”

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Melissa Osgood