Week 4

Week 4
On Monday and Tuesday, I attended the 2017 American Society for Nutrition (ASN)’s Scientific Sessions at the McCormick Convention Center in Chicago. After my registration, I made my first stop to the exhibition area where over 300 company booths were located, as well as over 1000 posters. Many latest experimental supplies and devices were showed in here. Then I started to go to different conference rooms for presentations. Generally speaking, I enjoyed all the speakers that I attended. The speakers were very diverse, there were food scientists, college professors, international nutrition organization representatives, and college students. My favorite presentation “Public Health and a Bag ‘O Tricks” was led by Guy H Johnson, who is the executive director of McCormick Science Institute. He used many scientific studies in his slices to illustrate the relationship between public health and food scientists, which was very informative.

              

When I got back to work on Wednesday, I started to finalize my displays and pack my supplies for the Health Fair on Thursday. I was worried about my 100 copies of pamphlets weren’t print out yet on my way to work, but fortunately, Dot has me covered and they were ready to pick up when I got to the office. Everything was ready to roll on Thursday morning, included the foods from Couch. We served my recipe, the Moroccan Salad at the Health Fair, which is a sweet salad. The ingredients are spinach, quinoa, dates, white beans, orange slices with cilantro and orange juice dressing. The event started at 10 AM, there were much more people attended than I thought would be. And we had a constant line in front of our tables. Most people stopped by to play the nutrition question game and to get free food samples. At the end, we handed out about 400 sample servings of salad, 60 copies of pamphlets, one case of bananas, one case of oranges, and a half case of apples. Overall, I think this event went very well with all the help I got from our team members. Something I would do to make it better is to rearrange the nutrition information displays in between the food and the game wheel, therefore people would be able to read the displays after they get the food samples and before they go play the game. And always remember to bring boxes of vinyl gloves when foods will be served. I enjoyed this event very much!

Week 3

This week is a short week for me to be at work. I will be attending two conferences from Thursday to Tuesday. On this Monday, I joined Kevin Barker in a sanitation inspection of Couch from 11 AM to 1 PM. We inspected three stations in Couch, which are Casa, Stir-fry, and Smokehouse. Kevin did a great job of leading an efficient sanitation inspection in all aspects. I have learned so much from him. We mainly checked on food holding temperatures, sanitation condition of surface areas, and staff personal hygiene. We caught several problems during the inspection, but the manager and staff responded quickly and took corrective actions proactively. Overall, the staff at Couch did a good job in keeping the workstations clean and serving food safely.

In the afternoon, I retested my salad recipe in a 25 serving portion at Couch for my business plan, which is the OU Staff Week on April 27. I learned from Dot that in order to make a new recipe, the original recipe should be tested first, and then retest it in a bigger portion to check if the food turns out in the right quality and quantity. Here is a picture of my salad. 

In the last two days, I also worked on writing my recipe on CBord and made my displays for this event. I am glad that I have most of the things done and ready to go for the event. And I am looking forward to carrying it out on the event day.

On Thursday and Friday, I attended the 2017 Oklahoma Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (okAND) annual conference. This is a 2 days conference includes 16 presentation sessions. I got to listen to nutrition experts from the different scope of nutrition practices and looked at some interesting posters. One presentation I enjoyed the most is the one led by Elizabeth Strickland. Her expertise includes Autism Spectrum Disorder, PDD-NOS, Asperger', ADD and ADHD. She is also the author of "Eating for Autism". In her presentation, she talked about the use of nutraceuticals in the treatment of ASD. One most interesting poster I looked at is that a student from UCO used edible crickets to make cookies to improve the protein content. I am not sure I would eat those cookies, but she did a good job on making a creative food science experiment. 

This is a picture of the okAND conference

Week 2

Hi, week 2 was a busy week! During this week, I worked on putting information together for the Health Fair of 2017 OU Staff Week, which includes making nutrition information displays, information pamphlets, and identify a recipe that will go along with the information. I also assisted the Green Week event at South Oval on Thursday and tested my recipe on Friday.  

The Green Week Event was a success, and I enjoyed this experience very much. We had much positive feedback on the food, and the quantity of the food was almost perfect. We run out the Feijoada in the middle of the event, but we made it just to service other dishes to the rest of the students. From this event, I learned that it is important to adapt yourself to different situations and make quick decisions during an event, as well as always keep good communication with your team members.  On Friday, I had a chance to test my original recipe, Moroccan Salad, for the Health Fair. A big thank to Chef Gary, he helped me getting all of my ingredients and cookware, and gave me a quick tour of the kitchen at the beginning. I’m also grateful for everyone there on Friday, I got very constructive feedback for my recipe and I was able to make some adjustments on it. I’m excited that I will test it again in this week.

Week 1

Hello, my name is Yushan Han, I’m Dot’s new intern. I am originally from Xi’an, China where you can find the Terracotta Warriors (look it up if you never heard about it, it’s cool). I came to OU in 2011 to pursue my bachelor degree in Health and Exercise Science. During my undergrad, I figured out that I want to become a Registered Dietitian one day because I love food and helping others. And then I was fortunate enough to get into the M.A in Dietetics program at OUHSC. It is great to be back on this campus! I have deep feelings for this campus because this is where I lived and met many amazing people when I first came to the US. Many people helped me when I first moved into Couch and a lot of them are H&F staff. Today, I am so glad that I can be part of the H&F and serve others.

In this first week, I have already learned so much. On the first day, I helped with the Presidential catering in the Union. It was fully staffed (the whole department was there, I guess) and very organized from my point of view. I would like to learn more about catering running and planning in the future. Then I spend the rest of the afternoon with Fran. Fran taught me how to calculate the quantity of a recipe. The next couple days I worked on making display boards for “Meatless Monday”, which will be put on display in Cate and Couch on Monday, April 9. Thursday was the BEST day of the week, I am grateful for the opportunity to attend the manager’s meeting. And thank you all for introducing yourself one by one, I felt very welcomed to this team. I’m very excited that I will be working on recipe development for Health Fair (Staff Week) this week, and I am thinking something refreshing for people to try! And I’m open to any suggestions and ideas, you can leave a comment or come find me in the office next to Dot’s.