UIUC Weeks Four & Five

Only three weeks left?!  I almost can’t believe I’ve been in Illinois for five weeks.  One part of me feels like I’ve been here forever, yet another part feels like I just got here yesterday.  It’s weird. 

Anyways, during week four I finished designing my themed meal which is inspired by The Beatles.  Each menu item incorporates one of their song titles, albums, etc.  I’m happy with some of the more clever menu items I thought up like “Stuffed St. Peppers” or “Lucy in the Sky High Ice Cream Pie,” but some were just utterly ridiculous like “I Want to Hold Your Yams…”  Yeah, that was the worst one.  Despite some of the dumb titles, I had a really fun time developing the menu and finding recipes for my themed meal. 

Also during week four I got the opportunity to work at Housing Food Stores.  That place reminded me of Costco, except there were no free samples.  At Housing Food Stores I was able to work with the computer program, CBORD.  I entered new, approved recipes into the system.  Some of them were the recipes that I had made during my week at Ikenberry!  Working with CBORD was a great learning experience.  There’s so much detail that goes into the recipes to make sure that they can be produced consistently by many different people over many years.  I also helped out with inventory while I was at HFS.  That was an interesting experience too.  Obviously it’s not the most exciting thing to do, but it is so important to keep up-to-date and honest inventory counts.  It can save the establishment a lot of money, and the staff a lot of stress.       

Also during week four I got the amazing opportunity to meet with UIUC’s official sports dietitian!!!  I am very interested in sports dietetics and it was so great to hear from someone who is living one of my dreams.  Chelsea was so helpful and informative, and gave me a lot of advice for the future.  It seems I have a lot to get started on when I get back to California… 

The last part of week four involved job shadowing the Catering Event Manager, Aaron.  I got to see what he does in a typical day; lots of phone calls and emails with clients, overseeing event sites, and entering information into their computer program, Event Master.  I also got to attend a meeting with a wedding client.  We met at the beautiful venue, The Arboretum and went over final details for her wedding, which took place yesterday!  We also stopped in at the Corvette Show that was going on that weekend that UIUC was catering.  There were supposedly over 3,000 Corvettes in Champaign that weekend!

I'm not a huge car person, but these cars were awesome!

 

Did week five even happen?  With Fourth of July landing on Thursday, last week seemed to have flown by in a blur!  During week five I worked at Clark Hall and completed some of my projects.  I finished writing my article for the NACUFS newsletter.  It’s about GMOs.  Even after all of my research I’m still not sure what to think of them.  I do have more negative thoughts than positive ones about them, though.  I also updated some of the bulletin boards in Clark Hall last week.  I also helped some of the staff with entering more recipes into CBORD.  All in all, week five was a very office themed week, but my projects were very interesting and thought provoking. Also, staying in one place was a nice change of pace. 

I have no pictures of pretty food to show, so take a look at this stormy, summer Illinois sky:

It was a really intense storm! I made it home just before it started
pouring.

Also, there are a ton of squirrels here...and bunnies.
I like it.

 

This week I’m all over the place again, which equals normalcy.  I’m excited to learn and experience more this week!  Hope everyone’s doing great!  Until next time…