Week THREE, you kidding me!?

This week went by SO quickly. I can't believe I'm already moving into my fourth week of my internship here at UND! This week was structured differently than usual, so instead of going day-by-day, I'll just go over some of the highlights.

A group of us taking inventory of some staple food products

I got to participate in the year-end warehouse inventory! Once a year, staff from the dining department come together and form three teams to tackle the inventory in the main warehouse. They do it in the summer since inventory is much lower and easier to count than throughout the school year. Teams of 3 tackled different areas of the warehouse. One team was responsible for supplies -- paper products, cleaners, utensils, etc. One team was responsible for staples -- all the dry food products. And one team was responsible for the coolers and freezers (brrrr). I was able to work with each team (my thick Minnesota skin betrayed me in the freezer though, I only lasted about 10 minutes with those guys) to see how the process flowed. With everyone working together, we were able to finish in under 2 hours!

I left a little early that day to get some rest for my night shift at the bakery! I was so excited to work in the bakery -- I love baking but rarely bake since cooking comes so much easier to me and doesn't require as much precision (in my home kitchen, at least!). Tracy, the head baker, and I had a great time chatting all night about food, fermentations, restaurants, donuts, cupcakes, life, and all things wonderful like that. I got to the bakery at 9:30 pm and before I knew it, it was 1:30 and we were taking "lunch". The other guys that worked there were obviously used to working overnight and had packed real lunches -- I opted for a slice of  homemade chipotle bread (YUM). After chugging down some coffee to keep my yawns at bay, we went to work frying donuts, making new donut dough, shaping new donuts, making bread dough, even decorating cakes! My favorite part was watching the transformation of just-risen bread go from small and pale to HUGE and brown (hello, Maillard browning) when they came out of the oven just a handful of minutes later. The chemistry nerd in me took a good appreciation for all of the science that goes on in baking, turning these mundane staple ingredients into delicious creations - it's seriously an art! Of course, I walked out of there (at 5:30 am) with more baked goods than I can handle. I definitely brought some to work to share, otherwise I'd still be riding a major sugar high. I spent the rest of the day sleeping and enjoying the sunshine -- it was a nice day off and made the week go by super quick.

The bakery! I took this photo at about 3am so a lot of our work had already been done.

My attempt at making rosebuds (blue) vs. Tracy's gorgeous yellow flowers

I left the catering cake decorating up to Tracy -- I did get to decorate my own little mini cake, though!

Cranberry Pumpernickel Bread

Some of the bakery treats we made that would get sent to Wilkerson later in the morning

My breakfast the morning after my night at the bakery -- a delicious, freshly baked pistachio muffin. Mmmm carbs.

I got started on another big project in Foodpro this week -- entering all of the changes we made during the menu planning meetings for Wilkerson's fall menu into Foodpro. Most of them were easy switches, and once I got the hang of manipulating the menu on the computer it was a pretty simple task -- the hardest part was making sure I got to every change we made on the menu spreadsheet! The staff at Wilkerson was challenged by Chef Greg to get entrees with Guiding Star ratings at every meal, every day -- if they accomplished this, he'll take them out to dinner! The menu is well on its way to including healthy choices -- the biggest problem with a lot of the items is sodium and fat (especially if the dish contains cheese). The late night menu especially struggles to include starred entrees because they are typically things students won't go for later in the evening, when most of them are taking the food back to their dorm. I think it would be a challenging but fun task to come up with some new ways to incorporate healthier entrees into a student-friendly late-night menu -- I think it definitely could be done.

Eating the stromboli dough I helped make at the bakery for dinner!

One thing that surprised me was that a lot of the changes we ended up making to the menu were to switch back some of the more creative flavors back to simple ones. Apparently, pizzas like bacon cheeseburger and chicken bacon ranch didn't go over as well as plan cheese and pepperoni pizza. Is anyone else shocked by this? HELLO college students, live a little! ;)

Let's cut the yogurt

I experienced my first food "cutting" this week, too. A food cutting, I learned, is where a sales rep from a company will come and do a taste test of their product with you, demonstrating why their product would be a smarter purchase for your foodservice operation. In our case, a rep from Dannon came to "cut" their Oikos greek yogurt product along side of the current product UND sells, Chobani. I could definitely tell a difference between the two products. I'm a huge Chobani fan, but the Oikos yogurt was a lot thicker and creamier, almost like pudding. It was sweeter, too. Dannon adds thickeners and sweeteners to their products that Chobani doesn't, so even though it's a cheaper product, it's less natural. Also, the regular yogurt made by Dannon contains gelatin, an animal product that makes the yogurt non-vegetarian. UND only wants to stock yogurt that does not contain gelatin, so these are all things the managers will need to consider before choosing whether or not to go with the product.

Tasting Tasting Tasting

So far, I've really been loving the business side of foodservice. Making decisions and working behind-the-scenes to keep the operation up and running and being the best it can be is hard work, but important work. I'm really looking forward to next week -- I already know it's going to fly by, too!

Grand Forks has some of the most beautiful sunsets.