Summer 2013... NACUFS Intern Style!: Visitors to Vacation UGA week 7

Visitors

On Monday we had our wonderful friends at Kennesaw state come visit and tour the campus. While we waited for our visitors to arrive Colleen and I spent the morning working on our banquet project. Once our visitors arrived we started with a tour of the beautiful north campus. North campus is an older part of campus, with the original buildings from when UGA’s campus was first built. Then we took them to the Village summit, we gave them a brief tour of this dinning commons facility, known as the Joe Frank Harris Commons. Then we all ate lunch, allowing them to experience, first hand, the fantastic food UGA food services has to offer. After lunch we took them on a tour of Snelling dinning commons. Then it was off to see The Niche. We showed them the new dinning commons and Colleen and I got to hand off our completed project for the Niche to Gregg. Gregg was very pleased with our project, and Colleen and I couldn't be happier about that. Colleen and I were also both excited and pleased to see all the improvements made to the Niche since the last time we had gone to a construction walk through there.

Once we were done touring the Niche, we brought our Kennesaw friends back to the Tate Center. We took them on a tour of the Tate center, showing them our eateries Bulldog and Tate Café. Next we went and saw the Freshmen Orientation presentations about the meal plans. Then they got to see orientation leaders help the freshmen, cheer their first dog call, The UGA dog call is a fun site to see for anyone! We ended our day having a fabulous buffet at the freshmen orientation dinner.

Under the Arch with Kennesaw NACUFS interns (Adrian and Natalie)

Touring the beautiful north campus

Colleen and I were excited to see all the improvement made at The Niche

Gregg explaining new hearth oven at the Niche

Decorations and Dietitians

On Tuesday we went to the Summit and met with Adam to go over the decorations for our banquet. We are having the banquet in the Summit so it was good to be in the actual space and do a walk-through of all the decorations we wanted. When in the actual space we got to take measurements and discuss how certain decorations would be attached to hang from the wall or ceiling. We also were reminded of obstacles such as light decorations that come with cords, which need to be plugged in to either the side of the buffet line, leaving a tripping hazard.

I got to spend Tuesday afternoon with Katherine Ingerson, the dietitian for food services. She was great to spend the afternoon with. As I am a dietetics major it was great to get to pick her brain about her experiences as a dietetic student and now as a dietitian in the field. She took me with her to a cooking class for the “Peer Nutrition Educators” dietetic students on campus. This class was showing the group of Peer Nutrition educators, how to teach a cooking class, while adding in cooking techniques and nutrition.

Benjamin Gray, MS foods and nutrition, and culinary school graduate, teaches cooking classes at the UGA Health Services. He taught the class I was in with the Peer Nutrition Educators. He taught us to make sausage stuffed zucchini with mashed sweet potatoes. He showed us different chopping, preparing and cooking techniques. He had us get up there and test taste and try out techniques ourselves. While cooking he also discussed the nutrition of the meal. After he taught us to make the meal, he focused on how to teach a cooking class. He helped us with things like where you can add nutrition talking points when you are teaching. The food came out great and I learned a lot. Ben did a great job of keep everyone entertained and engaged. I really loved attending this class and getting to spend time with Katherine on Tuesday.

Making mashed sweet potatoes

Sausage stuffed zucchini and mashed sweet potato

Ben teaching a cooking technique

Got to spend the afternoon with the wonderful Katherine ( Food Services Dietitian)

Printing and Pizza

On Wednesday we went to see Alison at Snelling. We discussed our ideas for the banquet and what we need printed and how large. She helped us to visualize how all of our ideas would come together. She also knows all the sizes of paper and poster they can print on. So for one of our ideas or a very large banner she helped us think through how it would be hung up and if the Summit had the right equipment for such a project.
After this we went to the Summit to try to test our Chicago Style deep dish pizza recipe on a large scale. We backed the crust in a Hotel pan so we could try to serve it right out of the pan. Unfortunately this ended up being a lesson of trial and error. We tried another way to make the pizza crust and it didn't work. The crust was too doughy in the middle this time. Chef Sam helped us with this, and he has a few ideas of how he can try it another way. There will be more trial and error to this recipe, but I feel confident about this dish, because Sam is so determined to make it work.
We finished the day by printing, laminating and cutting all of our menu tags for each dish. The menu tags are supposed to look like post cards, and we are very pleased with how they turned out.

Our menu tags. We made them to resemble post cards.

Large poster of New Orleans for the banquet

Coffee and Ice Cream kinda day

On Thursday we started our day off with, of course, coffee! We went to the local coffee company Jittery Joe's roasting facility. We got to see the whole process of roasting the raw coffee beans all the way to sampling coffee. It was a very interesting process to get to see behind the scenes. I had no idea how much went into roasting coffee. I was also unaware of all of the varieties of coffees. Even the coffee beans themselves vary so much in weight and texture. I also learned more about what the names of different coffees meant. Such as a Kenyan roast is when the coffee beans are from Kenya. A french roast doesn't have to do with where the coffee beans are from but rather the way in which the coffee is roasted. A roast such as a " house blend" is actually a blend of many different coffee beans. There is a lot of science that goes in to the roasting process, in know how different proteins and carbohydrates break down.

Coffee beans

Coffee roaster

Jittery Joe's

Jittery Joe's coffee roasting facilities

Mayfield's Dairy Farm

After Jittery Joe's we went to Mayfield's Dairy Farm to tour their milk processing facility. We learned the history of the Mayfeild dairy and then we got to see their facilities. One of the things that Mayfield's does that makes their milk unique is that they package there milk in opaque plastic containers, instead of the clear containers other companies package their milk in. The reason they do this is to keep out UV rays that they say will decrease the nutrient content and alter the taste. The uniqueness that Mayfield milk has against the other brands is that their milk does not contain any antibiotics.

We were lucky enough to get a celebrity tour of the facility from Scottie Mayfield himself. After the tour he was kind enough to take us to lunch at a lovely vineyard and sign the Mayfield farm history book.

The Vineyard where we ate.

with Scottie Mayfield

Golfing

On Friday we went to a management workshop, out at the golf course. We first had a presentation from Randolph Carter on diversity and communication styles. He informed us that 99% of conflict comes from communication issues. This is part of the reason proper communication is so important. He talked about the difference between prejudice and discrimination. Previous to his explanation of this I truly did just lump prejudice and discrimination together. He went through the different intercultural communication styles, which are direct or indirect, emotionally charged vs flat, personal or business, more or less confrontational and more or less connected to accomplish a task. We then did an exercise, to show communication misunderstanding that I think very effectively showed why it is important to make sure you are specific and clear when you communicate. Also that you must understand since people communicate differently, to may need to customize how you communicate with individual people differently.

We took a break to have a great lunch and got a chance to hit some golf balls on the driving range. I'm not much of a golfer at all so I missed the golf ball most of the time, however I still found this activity to be fun, the few times I did hit the golf ball.

After golf we listened to Jeanne talk about how we can be great in food services. She also talked about the difference between a team and a group of people is that a team has a common goal or mission. Then Brain Varin and Susan Van Gigch, went over the mission statement they had come up with.

We ended the afternoon with Kris Ingmundson, talking to us about personal accountability and time management. We also went over "QBQ" questions, which I found to be particularly interesting. This principle is that when you start questions with "why", "when". and "who" you make yourself the victim. Responsibility is a key part of leadership, which is why you need to turn those questions , into asking yourself what you can do to make a situation better and not who is to blame for it.

Golfing!

Traveling on Tybee Time!

This weekend Colleen and Myself took a road trip with one of the Kennesaw State NACUFS intern Adriane, to Savannah Georgia. We got to walk around and see the beautiful historic city of Savannah. Then once night hit we took a haunted ghost tour of Savannah. Since Savannah is the most Haunted city in the US.

The next day we drove out to Tybee, Island. Tybee is only 20 minutes from Savannah. Tybee Island was so pretty and it was nice to be on the beach even though it rained a little we stuck it out.