Summer 2013... NACUFS Intern Style!: Week 3 at Oklahoma University! :)

Week 3

This weekend, we ventured out to Bricktown. Bricktown is an area in Oklahoma City that has tons of restaurants, bars, a live entertainment area, and a little boat tour. I thought it was neat just to walk around and see all the different places to eat. It is also the location of Sonic Headquarters. Nova had never eaten there before, so that was our dinner of choice! After eating dinner and getting a feel of the city, we made our way to Marble Slab Creamery. It was DELICIOUS; the best ice cream I've had in months! Sunday was back to the typical extreme-heat, so we resumed our post by the pool!

Monday

It’s Monday, and we’re back in business! Dot did not have much planned for us today, so Nova and I were able to do some research for the presentation we will do in July. We were also given instructions to look over the menu for the Vegetation Station in Couch. Stephanie is in charge of making sure that there are enough food options to meet the vegetarian/vegan needs, and her menu needs a few adjustments. Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to discuss some alternatives with her so that everything will be ready to go in the fall!

Tuesday

Office Day round 2! It was such a shame to be in the office today, because the weather was absolutely PERFECT! It is precisely this sort of weather that makes you want to be a kid and play outside all day long, but alas, we have big girl jobs and had to make due with our walk to and from lunch. Although, I was quite glad to have more time to work on our projects so there is not as much to do at home. Nova and I used some of our time to look exclusively at Stephanie’s menu and find a few vegan recipes that she could substitute for the ones that were not quite as popular last semester. Finding good looking vegan recipes is hard! The world seems so fixated on meat that no one knows what to do with a vegetable. The two best recipes I came across today were the zucchini, black bean & rice skillet (which I have made before and it is delicious) and a summer veggie casserole (which looks really good and simple). The tricky part about vegan recipes is maintaining a good balance between vegetables, grains, and beans in order for it to be filling but not taste super starchy. We were not able to meet with Stephanie, but hopefully when we do, she will be able to utilize the recipes that we found. I would absolutely love to pick out even 5 recipes from Stephanie’s list and have someone make them for us to try. It is difficult to come by a really good vegetarian recipe with all the hardcore meat eaters swarming the food market!

Wednesday

This morning we got to leave the office! Nova and I went to Crossroads with Kevin Barker to do a food safety & sanitation inspection. Kevin does surprise inspections various times throughout the year of all the food service operations that are run by the housing & food department so that when the health department comes, everything is in order. Usually this sort of thing completely grosses me out because the only thing you notice is all the grime in an operation, but Crossroads was a nice exception. Not only is Kevin looking at the food temperatures, storage, and procedures, but he also assesses the operation as a whole. This includes checking the amount of debris on shelves; checking temperature, sanitation, and ice machine cleaning logs; and looking for overall indicators of cleanliness. Indicators of cleanliness include things such as the employees washing their hands frequently, a clean microwave, and organized stock shelves. We were informed that Couch is the most time consuming inspection because there are so many different operations involved, so we will observe Kevin tackle that later in July. I found it very comforting that Crossroads was so clean since we eat there almost every day. Now, I can sleep well knowing that they are doing everything that they can to prevent my food from contamination. J

This is how we spent our break- climbing a tree & eating baby plumbs :)

Thursday

Today, the heat returned. 90+ degrees and climbing! This morning Nova and I did office work (which I’m sure you do not want to hear about). Nova is also preparing for her yearlong dietetic internship this fall, so we took a quick trip to Couch to ask a few questions and thoroughly confuse some of the office workers there. J In the afternoon, we had the privilege of meeting with Jennifer Doughty, the Director of Operations for Housing & Food. The housing & food office workers are pampered! They have a couch and comfy chairs in the front office, a coffee maker with THREE different creamer options, cookies, and popcorn! I definitely would have taken advantage of one or all of those offers, but it also happened to be ½ priced shake day at Sonic so I had to save my appetite. ;) Jennifer’s role is more on the housing side of things. She creates policies for housing assignments, and only interacts with food when it applies directly to a student, such as a gluten or peanut allergy. She also explained the meal plan and freshman housing rules to us, which are much stricter than I would have anticipated. Apparently the further south you travel, the stricter the housing rules.

Jennifer recruited Kala to give us a campus tour! Kala pretty much knows everything there is to know about the campus, and we have the same name which makes her instantly cool. She talked us through all the buildings on the South Oval, as well as this cool little pit-garden. It is literally a big dip in the ground with a garden in the middle that people sit in and do homework or just relax between classes. . We also explored the MASSIVE football stadium that seats thousands of people! Finally, the most exciting part of the day (other than our awesome tour) was that we got BIKES!! J No more 15 minute sweaty walk to work for us! And just to put the icing on the cake, the power went out in our entire building, so we go to go home early as well. It was just one heck of a great day!

24 hour quiet room.
looks like Hogwarts :)

The front of the library

The clock tower

Friday

Today, Dot trusted Nova and I in the kitchen (she is a brave soul) to work on recipe development. This is where I belong. J Personally, I think being a chef would be too much, but I do love to cook! First, we made a Summer Coleslaw full of zucchini, squash, carrots, onions, spinach, corn, red bell pepper, & radish; seasoned with parsley and basil leaves; and tossed in a lemon-garlic dressing. At first, we were a little nervous to try it because it did not look quite like the picture, and the dressing just seemed like it was wrong. Fortunately, in the end it was really good! I would totally eat it as a side dish because it tastes extremely light and refreshing. We also had some of the workers in Couch taste it, as well as Stephen the catering chef. They all gave us excellent feedback and enjoyed it! Collectively, we came up with a few adjustments such as tossing it in half of the dressing at first, decreasing the lemon juice, and adding more corn. If I ever make this again, I know exactly what to do to make it perfect.

Later on, we made Brownie Baked Oatmeal. When eaten plain, it is kind of like oatmeal disguised as a brownie, but if you pour milk over it (as the recipe suggests) it is more like really chocolaty and delicious oatmeal that should never actually be eaten for breakfast (the dietitian in me would never allow it). It was also fantastic. Nova and I are basically culinary pros. For this recipe we made one gluten free version and one vegan & gluten free version. The vegan version actually tasted better than the regular. It was more moist and spongy-like than the original, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Stephen said that it was great as well. I absolutely loved being in the kitchen today, not only because I like to eat (which we actually did not do a whole lot of) but also because it was so intriguing to make a recipe, have people taste it, and come up with alterations to make it even better. It was a wonderful way to wrap up our week!