University of Kansas week 4

Raw Blackberry Cheesecake Bars

Wow, did this week fly right by. This week started with recipe development and testing for Nature’s Finest, the vegan friendly station that Alison and I are helping create. Bandon Volz helped us test several recipes that were absolutely amazing. They were all so delicious it’s hard to pick my favorite; top two favorites would be the raw energy bars and the blackberry cheesecake.  

Tuesday, Alison and I spend the day with the catering department. Whitney Fox elaborated on the ins and outs of the scheduling procedures for a carting operation of this size. It’s amazing that they cater about 4,000 events per year. These events range from departmental meetings, ceremonies, sporting event, weddings, and of course the lovely Impromptu restaurant.

Then Robert Pierrelee, walked us through a new student orientation banquet. We helped his catering staff serve about 350 student and their families and buffet style lunch in under 15mins. Talk about seeing a well-organized system. The students and their families we so satisfied with the beautiful set up and spinach lasagna I even received hugs of joy from strangers. 

We finished up our day working with Chef Janna in the roof top garden harvesting basil. Chef Jana explained some of the lesson learned through their garden and how much it has developed over the last few years. I definitely learned some things I will apply to my own garden next year. After harvesting the basil, we worked with Chris to made 17.5 cups of pesto. Some of the pesto that was made will be used during the special event “Opa!” at the Mrs. E’s dining hall on July 23, 2014. When you attend make sure to try the Roman pizza.

Janna hard at work!

Fresh basil from the Roof Top Garden

Chris making magic!

The end result of 17.5 cups pesto

Mary with her freshly picked cabbage

Wednesday was a field trip day!!! A group of about 20 KU dining staff went on an adventure to a local Mennonite farm in Missouri.   This farm depended literal on horsepower. The entire farm and manufacturing process is driving by power they create without electricity. All of the members of this community were very nice and welcoming to us. As we went from farm location-to-location we were able to walk through the fields and pick our own produce and they even sent us home with our choice of any of their wide variety of canned products.  I went with their chunky hot salsa and have almost finished the jar. J The farm tour was a great experience to get a real understanding of farm to table. Also, on the tour I learned more about GAP certificated and the importance of purchasing local. Sysco really seems to be taking the necessary step to meet their clients desire for a more sustainable system. 

 

The true horse power

Rainbow swiss chard

Alison & Nate pretending to pick produce

Thursday, Lisa Kreie worked with Alison and I to understand the importance of proper recipe development. Lisa handles entering recipes into the Cborad database, among many other tasks. While working with her I realized how important it is to clarify the details of a recipe before submitting it to be entered.  This gave me a true understanding of how one person can read something and someone else can get a completely different meaning.   

We had a nice wrap up session with Alicia to review our observations of the different retail units. She has several projects on her hands that are changing the future of the retail side of KU dining.  Very exciting things to come!

 

For our Mrs. E’s special event Mike worked with us to develop diagrams for the layout at each station. These will defiantly help things go smoothly the day of our event. 

Later that day, Alison and I were off to the Allen Fieldhouse to help cater the KU draft party. I’m normally not the biggest basketball fan, but I did really enjoy myself at this event. The attendees were so excited when the 1^st and 3^rd NBA draft picks were KU freshmen. Go Jayhawks!!

Alison @ Allen Field House 

Before I knew it Friday was here. This morning Alison and I worked with Sergio and Travis to iron out some more details for our special event.  It’s coming along nicely. I hope to see you all there. 

Nona and Lisa went through some budgeting exercises with us. We have some mini budgeting project to practice our new skills. The numbers truly tell the bottom line.

We finished up our work week meeting with Jim to work on the new vegan friendly station, Nature’s Finest. It’s coming along great.

 

This weekend was the 1^st ever Free State Festival. Downtown Lawrence was filled with a variety of events including films, street performers, concerts, and art exhibits. If you missed this year’s celebrations mark you calendar for next year. 

Week 4 at UGA!

Welcome back for week 4 here at UGA!

Monday:

Today we focused on learning the retail side of food service. We went our day working in Red Clay Café. Red Clay Café is made up of multiple areas which different food options, there a coffee shop, sandwich shop, and a salad bar. Customers can order food from any of the three stations and check out at one station. The orders are sent electronically to the appropriate area, and then prepared. The customer is simple just instructed where to pick up their order, depending on their purchase.

I spent a lot of time working with Andrew in the Sweet Java Browns where they sell Jittery Joe’s Coffee, a local company’s coffee.  Andrew taught me how to use the computer software, check customers out, and of course make lots of differently types of coffee!  This area of service is definitely a different pace during the summer, we had a few small rushes that kept us on our toes, but I cannot even imagine how busy they are during the actual school year!

Tuesday:

Today we met with three different individuals to discus and ask questions regarding their jobs! We started the morning at Central Food Storage meeting with both Brooks Oliver and Stuart Hammond.

Brooks is the Materials Manager and is responsible for creating contracts and finding products for the best prices. UGA runs on a bidding system and Brooks is responsible for determining the quality, specs, and products needed. Once Brooks submits his wants people will bid and the best price wins. (It’s actually way more complicated than that, and his job sure keeps him busy!) Brooks also gave us a quick tour, and it’s absolutely amazing how many products and varieties they keep in storage.  

We then talked with Stuart. He is in charge of FoodPro, which is responsible for EVERYTHING behind the scenes. FoodPro is responsible for inventory, purchasing, orders, recipes, nutrient facts, allergy information, etc. (Like I said, FoodPro does it all!) The amount of information Stuart is responsible for is insane, and we just got out a general description of what his job entails.

When then had lunch with Jeanne Fry, Executive Director of Food Services, at summit and spent some more time getting to know her position. After lunch we sat down with her in her office and discussed some of the things she believes are essential to being a good manager. Her words of wisdom were not only awesome but inspiring.

Wednesday:

Today was our longest day of the week, we spent the day with Marcus. Marcus was the closing manager that day for Summit. We spent the day helping where we were needed, researching recipes, and also witnessed our first health inspection! Later on in the night Marcus showed up how he deals with student scheduling, discipline actions, and the closing task, such as checking out stations.

Thursday:

Today was our first encounter with orientation. We jumped into the middle of the orientation week and learned about day two (this coming week we are working day 1!). The orientation team on day two sets up a continental breakfast for the parents, and we were there to see what the set up looks like. After the breakfast was finished we were swooped off by Susan. Susan is in charge of the retail side of food service. She explained more the catering to us, showed us other eateries around campus, and answered all the questions we threw her way. Susan has a lot of task she’s responsible for, and luckily the energy needed to handle it all!

Friday:

We wrapped up the week with a few more meetings Friday. We met with the dietitian, Sr. Public Relations Coordinator, Assistant Director of Business Services for Food Services, and the Human Resources Manager for Food Services. All of these positions keep the operations running smoothly through many different tasks. Their responsibilities are countless, and learning all about the different positions was intriguing!

Weekend:

This weekend Demi and I decided to go hiking out at the Botanical State Garden! Our planned mile hike turned into about a three mile hike, because we obviously didn’t know the trails! But the hike was beautiful and relaxing. If you like being outdoors definitely check this area out!

Tips for Future Interns

-Carry an umbrella, I got stuck in the rain this week and could have definitely used it ;)

-If you decided to go hiking, make sure you at least take a picture of the map! 

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!