University of Kansas - Week 4

June 30th

We started this week out with some heavy duty recipe testing at North College Cafe. Tonya and I spent most of Monday in the kitchen with Brandon Volz fiddling around with our recipes for our vegan station concept. We turned out some really great stuff as well as some things that still need a bit of tweaking to get just right. It was also the first time both Tonya and I worked with seitan, which is basically just gluten, the protein portion of wheat (a celiac's worst nightmare). It acts just as gluten does in breads and gravies as a binding element and when mixed with water, it forms very elastic strands. When cooked, it has a fairly meat-like consistency and is often used as a meat replacer for vegetarians and vegans.

Vegan Lemon Bar! Delicious, but needs adjustment

Tuesday was all about catering. Whitney Fox, the catering coordinator for all of KUDS, showed us the event management system they use to keep all of their dates, times and details straight. She is responsible for communicating with clients and trying to wrangle in all of their wildest dreams to something the catering team can realistically accomplish. Next stop was the sixth floor of the Union where we met Robert Pierrelee, the director of catering. We helped set up for a small event in the Union and then went to work helping out the serving of an orientation lunch in one of the banquet rooms.

Some golden oregano in the front

Afterwards, we met up with Janna Traver, executive chef, and got to know a little bit more about her responsibilities. Much of what she does has to do with checking the details needed for all of the events for which catering is supplying food, but she is also involved in some of the budgeting concerns and keeping an appropriate yet creative and option-laden menu to choose from. We also went to the rooftop garden and harvested  the basil as well as some other herbs. We then turned around and, with the help of sous chef Chris, made 18.5 cups of pesto! It was absolutely delicious and will hopefully be used in our Grecian dinner at the end of next month.

Tomato plants for days!

Mom would be proud!

Our harvest!

Stevia and peppers

Chris and Tonya doing some prep

Yummm garlic

This is how they pack them for freezing

Always label and date!

Our day started at 6:30 am on Wednesday where a bunch of us from KUDS met in one of the parking lots and started on our journey to a Mennonite farm! Sysco is the prime food vendor for KU and they get a lot of their produce from local Mennonite farms and also bring people to go on tours of these farms. The Mennonite farm was similar to how an Amish one would be where they don't use electricity, dress plainly and use horse and buggies to get around. However, they still utilize some modern technology such as plastic coverings for their crop beds or greenhouses or plastic hosing to help with irrigation and they work with the means Sysco uses to pick up their produce and process it. I was able to take a lot of pictures of the farm, but the Mennonites themselves do not believe in having pictures taken of them, so I had to leave them out of the shots.

Lucky butterfly

Met a little friend

Just some berry modeling

HUGE blackberry

Tomato greenhouse

The gang

Our tricked-out bus

Rainbow swiss chard

Best heirloom tomatoes in the region!

Horse Treadmill

Here they used horse treadmills to pump water from the ground

Produce aisle

They had so many canned items

Where we went to lunch afterwards-
their boiled cabbage was delicious!

Later in the week, Lisa Kreie, queen of FMS recipes, showed us the intricacies of entering recipes into the system. There is often a disconnect between the typical chef cooking style- adding a pinch of this, a dash of that, using volumetric measurements over weight, etc- and how the recipes most easily go into the system. Lisa has gotten fairly good at translating recipes so they work properly when entered into the computer. She helped us with some of the language and formatting of the recipes we have been testing- we're making progress!

We also stopped by E's for a lesson on meal diagrams from Mike. Each station at Mrs. E's has template diagrams that outline where each food item goes in each well and is usually specified right down to the serving utensil. These help the kitchen crew avoid confusion and make everything run smoothly- which is exactly what we want for our special event dinner!

Thursday night, we re-visited Robert Pierrelee and assisted with the catering of the KU NBA draft pick party. Since I am just shy of 21 and therefore cannot hand people alcohol, I acted as lead receptacle reclamation specialist (aka I walked around with a tray and picked up "orphaned" bottles and plates as Robert called them). It was pretty exciting when both of the players from KU in the lineup were picked as number one (Andrew Wiggins) and number three (Joel Embiid). The Jayhawk mascot was also quite a hoot- too bad I have no pockets in my dress pants or there would have been a few pretty funny pictures of him goofing around.

Our last scheduled event of the week found us working on some budget exercises with Nona and Lisa E. There is a lot to take into account when preparing a budget for such a large department as dining services- with those 22 locations there also comes plenty of labor and food considerations.

Midwest Adventures

On the last Friday of each month (Final Friday), shops along Mass street stay open later than usual and showcase local art, much of which is for sale.

 This piece was built into the ceiling

Homemade watermelon sherbeRt!
(yes, with an R!)

Found in Java Break, a 24 hour cafe

Really great feel-good movie-
I would totally recommend it

Some delicious ramen from Ramen Bowl

This week the Freestate Festival was going on as well- it showcased work from the performing arts and film school downtown. There were a bunch of acts on the public stage as well as some special ones at the school itself.

One of the art exhibits. People stood in front of a green screen 

with masks on and then artists illustrated the rest of it

I think this was one of the high school marching bands

This was part of Quixotic, the dance show they put on. There were also people doing aerial silk acrobatics, aerial bar acrobatics and fire spinning dances. It was amazing to see how much muscle control they all had.

(I know I went a little crazy with the videos this week, but I just realized I could do it on my phone and may have gotten too excited about it)

Until next week!