Summer 2013... NACUFS Intern Style!: UGA week 5! Happy 4th of July!

Monday- Catering and Menus

On Monday morning Colleen and I got up bright and early and went to Brumby hall to work with catering. The Campus Catering team was hosting a breakfast buffet for the students and parents of Freshmen College. We worked with the Wayne Pahl and his catering team. Wayne actually had other events he had to check on at the same time as the Freshmen College breakfast. He was there to help us set up and tell us how the event should go, and then he put Colleen and I in charge for the remainder of the event. We got to help with the entire process of this even from set up all the way to breaking down the whole event. What was important to remember was to monitor how the food flow was going, to see what needed to be replaced. We needed to match replacing the food with how many more parents and students we would have coming through. When we got close to the end time we checked how many more students were supposed to register in order to see what foods we should replace and which foods to leave as they were. An important reason to monitor when to change the food is that you don’t want to change the food to early and have to waste most of it. Once the food is opened and put out on the buffet table any that is left has to be thrown out, it cannot be donated. In order to have less food waste, we need to monitor the food flow carefully.

After we finished the Breakfast for Freshmen College we went to The Summit, to finish menu planning with chef Sam and Bryan Haymans. We went through each item on our menu with them. We showed them the rough draft of the recipes we had found for each menu item we would have to prepare. They gave us great insight on a few things we should consider about our menu items, such as how we will be serving each item. How each item will be served and hold up in a chafing dish. One of the items we need to be concerned about was, the Chicago style deep dish pizza. We were originally going to do this dish in pie pans, however we need to make them in a rectangular pan that can fit in a chafer in order to make them hold up properly and easier to serve.

Tuesday - Training Tables and Inventory

On Tuesday morning Colleen and I went to Bolton at 8am, which means we only needed two cups of coffee to start our day off, instead of the 3-3 ½ we have to down for our 6am days. We went and worked in the stock with Brain Chelchowski and Lee Collins who are the Material Handlers for the stock room at Bolton. We spent our morning checking inventory with them. At 10 am we went to the flower shop with Bryan Haymans to try to pick out the flowers we wanted for our banquet, however the people we needed to work with were not in the shop that morning. Which gives colleen and I more time to sort through all our flower options before we order them. Going through flowers is helping us really have the vision for our banquet décor come together and it is a lot of fun.

We decided to go to Snelling for lunch on Tuesday, because we would get to visit Miss Sandra. Miss Sandra is the cashier at Snelling, she is one of the nicest and most positive people I have ever met. She is very excited to see every student that comes to eat each day and greets everyone with a hug. Seeing Miss Sandra will always brighten your day. Being at Snelling also gave us a great opportunity to show Gregg the temp charts we have been working on for him. He was able to give us feedback, that he wanted us to try to make sure one week was on each sheet rather than one day. He said it makes it easier to have one week on a clipboard so nothing is lost each day. I’m glad we got this feedback now so that we could adjust this as we work on the rest of the charts.

At 1:30 we went with Susan and Chef Paul to a training table meeting. Catering makes the food for the UGA “training table” for their athletes. Training table is from 11am-2pm Monday- Thursday every week during the school year. The sports dietitian Maria made the initial menu that she wanted done for the training table for this fall. The menu is a 4 week cycle that is repeated. Things that were considered by chef Paul, were the price of foods overall for the entire menu, the preparation of these items and if these items would hold up well in a chafer dish for hours. Chef Paul said they prepare all the food for training table at the commissary and then they bring it over to the training table location. One of the concerns Chef Paul had about the menu was the day at which it they wanted “smoked Boston Butt.” He said smoked Boston Butt takes 27 hrs. to prepare and they had it on the menu on a Monday. The problem here is he would not be in the commissary on a Sunday to prepare Boston Butt for Monday. The concern that Maria has in the menu is that she tries to plan any higher fat meals for earlier in the week. Then when it gets closer to when they would have their games at the end of the week. She would have leaner meals that are heavier in carbohydrates.

Wednesday - Prep day

On Wednesday we reported to the Summit to work on Preparations for the Freshmen College opening banquet. I was great for Colleen and I to see all the different aspects they have to prep for this banquet since we will be doing the Freshmen College Closing banquet. We did all sorts of things to prep on Wednesday from rolling silverware to making flower arrangements for each of the tables. We also got to spend time on Wednesday talking with Chef Sam about some of our menu items for the Freshmen college closing banquet. Sam helped advise us on how to cook a few of the items we were unsure about. He also decided we could test a few more menu items with him if we need to, but overall Sam was very confident about our menu and assured us that everything would work.

Flower arranging

Colleen and I arranging flowers for the banquet tables

Thursday - Happy 4th of July!!

no work today , just celebrating the 4th of July !

Friday - Freshman College opening banquet

On Friday we went to the Summit to help them prep all day up until the banquet, then we got to help with the banquet itself at 6pm. We helped set up all the tables, food preparations and more flower arranging. We also got to spend a while working with Bryan Haymans finalizing our recipes for the banquet and converting the amounts for food pro. Food pro is the computer system that we need to enter all of our recipes into and order all of our food through.

The banquet went very smoothly. We got to see how they set up the food most efficiently in order to change out the chafer dishes fast. Since there are hundreds of people that come through to get food in a small amount of time it is very important to get the food changed quickly. They didn't run back to the kitchen each time they needed food instead they had all the food made and in warmers need the buffet. This way Sam could just quickly garnish the top of the food and they could switch out the dishes.