NACUFS Internship - Summer 2014: University of Kansas

June 16th

This week really seems to have flown by! On Monday Tonya and I met with Sergio and Travis to iron out our rough starting menu for our special event dinner to be held at Mrs. E's. We're slowly working towards getting all of the recipes figured out and will soon be starting in the test kitchen to make sure they all work well, especially taking into account how much of the food has to be made at once. It's estimated that about 400 people will attend the dinner; I think the most I've ever had to worry about doing a meal for is 5!

I was able to meet with Janna Traver the executive chef for KU Dining who is also my mentor for my personal project. She brought me up to see the fabulous rooftop garden in the Union. Most of what is grown is various herbs (basil, parsley, chives etc) and tomatoes. These kinds of plants have shown to be the most resilient, useful in production and easy to process and store.

My main role with this project is to help spread awareness about the garden and how it is used in throughout KUDS as well as educate people about the growing cycle and what it really takes to get food from the ground onto the plate. Growing up in the rural countryside of Vermont and having two parents who always kept gardens has given me first hand knowledge of this process. Most people in the country get all of their food directly from grocery stores and may not have ever had the chance to even see any kind of food be grown from seed. There has been a massive movement of the public wanting to get more involved in the farm to table process and for them to see where their food really comes from. The concept of urban gardening is spreading, so hopefully this will help with community awareness and even contribute to the local food concept as well. In doing a little research, I found a couple websites that have some great information about urban gardening such as www.urbanfarming.org, www.urbanorganicgardener.com and even a local site for the Cultivate Kansas City movement.

Janna and I came up with a couple good ideas already, so hopefully we can create a successful promotion by the end of my time here.

At the Underground, I met with John Whittington, the general manager. I was interested to see how they handled having multiple franchise operations together in one location; it's actually much easier than I had originally thought. Pizza Hut, Chick-Fil-A, Cafe Spice and Sushi with Gusto all have their own rules and regulations, but most of them already fall under those mandated by KUDS anyway, so there isn't too much juggling for all the supervisors and managers to deal with.

Salad bar - always an option

The Crimson Cafe that we visited last week is also home to the Training Table during dinner hours. Athletes are given this time to eat with each other and refuel after their days of training. The preparation crew and menu is different and is designed to keep the athletes full and offer foods that will help keep them in top performance. Although it is summer, there were still members from the football team training over the break that we were able to meet. We talked to them about their typical training routines and it's no wonder they were getting two to three times the amount of

food I'd ever be able to eat in one sitting, or maybe

even an entire day!

Some information about fruits posted in the cafe

Cindy Faircloth, the manager of the Crimson Cafe, talked to us about the challenges of running two different dining concepts especially out of a fairly small kitchen. She also made a point to recognize how hard the athletes work and how dedicated they are to their sports; with all the funding athletics receives at KU, it really is the least the university can do to thank the athletes for giving it their all.

Nelson, the head chef of the Training Table, showed us around the football stadium and also took us to meet Aaron Carbuhn the sports nutritionist. This was especially exciting for me because I've toyed with the idea of going this route when I become a registered dietitian. Coming from a college that doesn't have much of a sports culture and seeing what the athletes at KU had available to them really blew my mind.
Aaron showed us all the different guides he designed over a three year period that contained nutrition and meal planning information for specific sports. His role is to make sure the athletes are meeting their health goals nutritionally and to help them get to a place where they can handle planning balanced meals for themselves on their own.

Sample of Training Table Menu posted in athletic gym

Aaron also showed us the new DEXA machine; it can scan an athletes body and accurately determine the bone, fat and muscle composition.This can be used to track progress and identify areas in need of improvement. I'm glad to say that meeting with Aaron has only peaked my interest of the sports nutrition field more than before.

The famous Allen Fieldhouse basketball court

On Wednesday I met with Chris Johnston, head of the satellite dining operations, at six in the morning- luckily it was just a quick coast down daisy hill on my bike to get there. We started the day by prepping some of the food from the Tempo line (recently converted from Grab n' Go) that we would be delivering. I took over the parfaits, Chris handled the fruit salad and Jeff, driver and prep cook extraordinaire, whipped up some chicken Caesar salads. We packed this all up and hit the road.

Handmade crimson and blue parfaits by yours truly

At the Mortar and Pestle

We delivered to the Market, the Pulse at the Union and the Underground. We then took a tour of many of the other locations. The Mortar and Pestle, one of the newest additions to the KU Dining locations, is sadly mostly shut down due to unforeseen limited traffic in West Campus as of now. I was still able to snap a picture of the open side and it's tasty treats.

Chris also told me about how dining services will soon be changing the 'Hawk Stops' (small convenience-type food operations around campus) to 'Jay Breaks'. The new name is supposed to differentiate it from Hawk Shops (not operated by KUDS) and to be more fitting of what they stand for.

Location in Anschutz Library also to be converted

Satellite operations are a whole different game in dining services. The food is mainly prepared in one central area and is then delivered, as we did that morning, to all the different locations. Many people don't realize that these operations are actually run by the same group that does all the other food service on campus.

The Market was the last retail location for me to do my shadowing. Keith Lake, the manager, showed me all the ins and outs of ordering and receiving. We played a rousing game of taking inventory of the 'big storeroom' (it's big), the 'small storeroom' (it's small) and of course the walk-in fridge and freezer. Keith explained that to know what to order, you must be fairly comfortable with and aware of the pace at which products are used. Since food is so time-sensitive, the order forms must be accurate in order to avoid unwanted spoiling of product. I put the orders into the CBord FMS (food management system) and only messed up once- super proud of myself.

Later that same day, Tonya and I met up with Karen Cross, the dining access administrator. She explained to us how the computer system works that reads all of the dining cards and also how the dining plans at KU work. There's actually a lot of information that can be gathered through this system about patterns of eating that can be used to increase efficiency and usefulness of the dining meal plans.

My first experience with the catering side of dining services was with Kim Nixon at the on-campus restaurant Impromptu. There is an interesting story behind the name of the restaurant that actually means 'done without previous preparation'. Dining services sensed the want and need for an on-campus restaurant and executive chef Janna Traver took on the task of designing a full menu and within six weeks the whole team had the restaurant up and ready to go. Kim had worked at the location before when it had

housed two other separate, non-affiliated restaurants. She playfully described Impromptu as the "chefs playground"; it's small enough to be able to play with recipes and use ingredients that would otherwise go to waste in the larger part of the catering department. Another thing about Impromptu is that it can be very difficult to estimate the number of customers on a given day in the summer. It happened to be fairly slow when I was shadowing Kim, which gave us plenty of time to talk about all the interesting facets of the restaurant. I was also lucky enough to be able to eat at the cafe as well!

Special of the day- Porkloin sandwiches with peach pepper chutney
Soup du jour- Beef tenderling and vegetable

After my delicious lunch, I met up with Tonya at North College Cafe to discuss the role of camps and conferences with Jim. KU hosts many different groups year round. It is beneficial to both parties; it can be convenient and comparatively inexpensive for the groups to stay, eat and use the facilities at the university, while often acting as recruitment advertisement to many of the younger people attending the events.

The last bit of work we did for the week consisted of re-visiting Oliver's dungeon and rifling through tons of boxes in search of decorations for our Athens/Mediterranean themed special event dinner. We found a whole cartload of stuff and stashed it away until further notice.

Midwest Adventures
I thought I'd create a section for me to showcase what we do outside of our work-related responsibilities. At first I thought I'd call it 'Kansan Adventures', but then I realized it's possible we might go beyond the borders!

On Friday we traveled to Clinton Lake hoping to multitask and get a little bit of work done before the weekend officially started, however we completely forgot about the lack of wifi needed to do our work! Unfortunately we just had to enjoy the view without sticking our heads into our laptops.