Week 4

Here we are at week 4 already; time just flies when you’re having fun.  To start, Monday was the final day of recipe development for the Employee Health Fair next week, and I think it was one of my most successful recipes to date.  We tested some gluten free, Top 8 free, and vegan Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies and they actually taste like a normal cookie, with a little kick from some cayenne! I haven’t worked with vegan or gluten free ingredients too much before, so I was very pleased with how flavorful the cookies turned out.

Tuesday was the start of our Green Week with a panel on the OU Food Services sustainability efforts and environmental consciousness.  Even though I have been here for 4 weeks now, I’m constantly learning more about the operation and the key factors that play into it.  For example, we have our own hydroponic farm on campus! We also heard from Brad Burnett about how he became our exclusive cage-free egg vendor.  I think my favorite statement of the day was that the University actually has 7,000 free-range chickens that work for them.  I wish that I could give you an exact rundown of every point made, but we’d be here all day.  All in all, what a great way to kick off Earth Week! 

Wednesday and Thursday were event days, which meant a whole lot more running around than usual.  Wednesday was the bigger of the two events for us, as we helped organize the whole Food Safety and Sustainability Fair.  There were tons of our special recipes for people to try, informational games to play and win prizes, and booths from a variety of other vendors to provide students with even more information.  While the wind never really stopped blowing, it was nice to get out and interact more with the student body and educate them about our efforts to be more environmentally friendly. 

3 of our 6 carts for the fair... good thing Sam is an expert packer 

Our fun informational game booth with Sam's lovely wheel 

Thursday was event #2, however for this event we were just asked to provide some of our vegan, gluten-free, Top 8 free foods, so we didn’t organize this event.  If you remember the Nasi Lemak recipe from week one, this was the event it was developed for.  Nice to see a recipe come to fruition!  I heard nothing but good things from the students on the recipe, so definitely a success.  Both of these events offered me a trial run for the Health Fair next week and gave me a real look at everything I need to get done and prepped beforehand.  You never realize how much goes into events until you are on the planning side of things! 

A beautiful day for some Nasi Lemak 

Friday, I spent out of office at the Oklahoma Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Annual Conference in Tulsa with all of the other dietetic interns in my program.  Basically, it was just a little intern field trip where we heard speakers discuss the benefits of a plant-based diet, some sports nutrition basics, and a little history of the Heart Healthy Diet.  It's always fun to meet up with everyone and share experiences throughout this journey, but I'm pretty sure I ended up with the best rotation. 

Week 3

Another week has come and gone, but this week I accomplished a lifelong dream – going to Hogwarts! Just kidding, I went to the OU equivalent of Hogwarts, the Residential Colleges.  Monday and Tuesday I spent working with Chase and Doug, learning about how the res colleges food service production works.  They offer more personal food options, mainly cook to order meals.  This differs from other locations because their menu never really changes, so what they order is similar week to week.  Also, due to its smaller size and exclusivity to the students that live in the residential colleges, you get more one-on-one time with the students and studying their eating patterns.  For example, breakfast and lunch are pretty scarce because the students are running around campus for class, whereas dinner, when everyone finally comes home, is packed.  Learning these patterns and preparing for them, makes the operation run so much smoother; if you know that dinner is your busiest time, you can tailor your staffing needs to fit or do extra prep in the morning so you don’t fall behind.  It was fun to learn about a whole different side of food service, more like a restaurant than a traditional dining hall.  Plus, you can’t beat spending a couple days in basically a castle! 

Try to tell me this isn't Hogwarts

The pizza/pasta area 

The custom salad area

Wednesday they let me loose in the kitchen to start recipe development.  For the upcoming staff week, we are going to be having an allergy awareness booth, where we will be having some allergy friendly, gluten free, and vegan samples for passersby to try out.  I wanted to make Mexican themed samples because tacos are a staple in my own diet, and just because you have restrictions doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy some tacos.  So, we tested out a recipe that uses chickpeas or white beans as the base of the tacos with an array of colorful toppings.  Recipe development crucial, especially for me, the untalented cook, because there are so many unknowns in a recipe that you might not catch until you actually try it out.  We will be testing more next week, but it’s looking very promising.

Thursday I had a later start because I assisted catering with a President’s dinner.  Boy does preparing a meal for hundreds of people take a lot of work! Overall, no one ended up with their meal in their lap and there were only a few hiccups along the way.  Working catering, you definitely have to have a cool head and outstanding problem solving skills because generally, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong and in that moment you need to come up with a solution.  OU’s catering team are excellent at what they do and I think they put on a very good event.  Based on the clean plates we got back, the attendees must have thought so too.

The partial dining set up (there was a whole other room) and podium for speeches

Friday was another exciting day, as we helped with the Big Event prep.  The Big Event is basically a University wide day of service to give back to the community.  Lunch is provided to volunteers, so we assembled over 3,000 boxed lunches to go out to the various job sites.  How incredible that 3,000 people are willing to spend their Saturday volunteering!

The sandwich take over! Luckily, we had lots of student help and finished in record time. 

Next week is the start of our many events and booths the happen at the end of the school year.  Be sure to keep an eye out for us around campus and stop by to learn about our sustainability efforts (and maybe a free sample)! 

Week 2

Happy week 2 everyone!  Here’s a little look into my second week:

Monday was safety and sanitation check day at the Cate dining facility.  Kevin let me tag along and see how the facilities are inspected for proper safety and sanitation protocols.  This meant temping various items on the line to make sure they are at the correct holding temperatures, checking to see if everything was dated for freshness, and inspecting all the machines, just to name a few.  It’s reassuring to see how seriously they take food safety here, and the priority they put on their students’ health above all else.  That afternoon I spent with Lauren (yay another one!) in TOD, learning about the employment process and the steps taken to provide proper training and a positive working environment for all food service employees. 

Tuesday and Wednesday I headed back over to the Couch dining hall to help with the fun theme meals we had going on this week.  Tuesday was the second day with the Native American menu, which I helped prep for last week.  It was nice seeing a menu all the way through and the step-by-step process that goes into a themed meal – from conception, to preparation, to execution.  Wednesday was a Medieval dinner to promote the Medieval Fair happening on campus this weekend.  There were decorations, performers in period attire, a carving station, and a very realistic menu (not including turkey legs).  The King even graced us with his presence! 

Honey roasted multi-colored carrots for the Medieval dinner, my contribution to the meal... glad I didn't catch anything on fire

The carving station - look at the accent decorations made from onions, tomatoes, and kale. How creative! 

Thursday was another office day, in which I worked on creating a list of ingredients I need for my recipe development project next week.  We also had a managers meeting that afternoon, where I got to meet all of the managers of the various facilities around campus and hear the current events in the department.  It put into perspective exactly how large of an operation OU housing and food service is, and how many people need to be on the same page in order to have everything run smoothly.  When you are a student, you don’t really think about all the work that goes into your food, so I really enjoyed getting a behind the scenes look, and appreciation for, just exactly what it takes to run a collegiate food service operation on all levels. 

As usual, Fridays never go quite as planned.  After a series of unfortunate events, I ended up needing to assist catering at a President’s Lunch.  I got a quick lesson in proper waiting etiquette (i.e. always serve on the left, pick up from the right, don’t pour drinks on anyone), a fancy catering jacket, and was sent out to serve.  Luckily, I managed not to spill anything, so I’d call it a success.  This was a good chance to see how catering runs their operation and the challenges that come along with that side of the department.  Plus, the event was in the art museum on campus, so not a bad place to spend a rainy Friday. 

This week certainly reiterated the sense of community you feel working in this department; everyone has each other’s back when those unexpected surprises pop up.  As I’m sure I’ve said before, every single person I have met here has gone above and beyond to answer all of my questions and make me feel right at home, something I am so grateful for.  It also showed me all the different hats managers have to wear in order to accomplish a goal and get through the day; some days you may never leave your office, while others you might need to don a catering jacket and serves some lunch.  

Be sure to tune in next week to hear how our recipe trial run goes! After all, it’s never a dull time when I’m in charge of cooking anything...