Farewell to Big Rapids

I cannot believe our time at FSU has come to an end! This summer really did fly by.

Some of the highlights of this last week included doing a food safety in-service for some of the full-time food service workers, as well as a couple fun field trips! Brenda took us to an Amish cheese factory near Greenville, MI. We got a behind-the-scenes look at the extensive process required to make cheese. One of the employees was explaining to us the huge number of tests and precautions they take to ensure that the process is as natural and sanitary as possible. They had really cool flavored cheeses like bacon, horseradish, smoked cheddar (that is actually smoked over wood), and habanero (only for those brave enough to try it). They use real and natural ingredients to flavor these cheeses. Some of the most delicious cheese I've ever tasted!

One of my favorite field trips yet was Hilhof, which is a USDA-certified organic dairy farm. All of their cows are also grass-fed, which has reduced the incidence of sickness and disease among the animals to almost none. We got to try both the skim milk and chocolate milk. I had never tasted natural, unprocessed milk before so the taste was different for me! It was a lot less sweet since there was no added sugar, as there often is with store-bought milk. The owner even gave us some cream to take home to make butter with! All you have to do is let it sit out for 6-8 hours, shake it for about 5 min. in a jar, and voila!

A lovely day at the farm!

Mr. Brutus. Half dog, half cow.

They sure love cows

Margaret and I also each got to do a mock interview to practice our interviewing skills. It was a little nerve-racking being put on the spot in front of Laurie, Brenda, Mike, and Bryan, but I think we both did well!

Looking all professional for the big interview

Brenda sent us off with a lovely farewell reception with delicious treats and presents! It was sad saying goodbye to everyone that we've gotten to know so well these past 2 months, but I know that we will stay in contact with them.

Margaret, Melody, and me 

Brenda, our lovely coordinator

Farewell Big Rapids! You've treated us well.

Themed Meals at FSU

This is the week we have been preparing for all summer- our themed meals! We have spent a good deal of this internship planning and preparing for our special lunches and this week Margaret and I finally got to execute them! 

My theme was "A Taste of the Mediterranean" and consisted of lemon chicken breast, Mediterranean quinoa salad, grilled zucchini and summer squash, basil pesto vegetable soup, and Greek baklava for dessert. While I was a little nervous introducing something like quinoa to a lot of the employees and locals who had never heard of it before, I'm glad I took the leap. Some people seemed to really enjoy it, while others didn't care for it. Some people gave me feedback that it was refreshing to see a different, healthy option being offered at the Rock. Just what I was going for!

Overall, the meal was a great success! I have a feeling this coming week is going to fly by as we're quickly approaching the last of our time here at Ferris State. How crazy!

Week 7 at Ferris

Week 7 flew by in one big whirlwind. This past week, Emily and I both executed our theme meals. For the past 6 weeks I have been researching, planning and organizing a themed meal to put on at lunch at The Rock Cafe. I decided on the Comfort Zone Station because my theme was "Thanksgiving in July"-- my favorite holiday! After planning and testing the menu, I got together decorations and made email and table tent advertisements to bring in more customers.

Here are some pictures from my meal:

My meal: a kaiser bun with rotisserie turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce on top; a side of steamed asparagus, mini pumpkin cheesecake and butternut bisque soup! Mmmmm

Emily and our head cook, Sandy, carving the turkey in front of customers

A side brochure about Thanksgiving.

Overall I was very pleased with my meal. I created customer comment cards for those who tried the meal and the average of all the cards was a 4.7 out of 5! Although the last few minutes before the station opened were a bit stressful, everything came out great, which I attribute a lot to the great team that helped me prepare!! It was a great experience from both a cooking perspective and management perspective.

Week 6 at Ferris State

What an eventful week it's been here at Ferris! These last few weeks are surely going to fly by.

While Monday and Tuesday I spent time as the "A.M. Manager" (which I surprisingly liked a lot better than getting to sleep in to be the P.M. Manager), Wednesday we took a field trip to Michigan State University. Margaret, Brenda, Tom O. (one of the Assistant Managers), and I ventured on our 2 hour road trip to see where the other NACUFS interns have been spending their time this summer!

The campus is in East Lansing, MI and is SO much bigger and more spread out than Ferris. We first got to speak with one of the culinary coordinators, Larry, who explained what the dining venues as MSU are all about. I was extremely impressed with what he had to say. Apparently MSU makes almost ALL of their food from scratch; that is everything from their peanut butter to their breads and pastas. I found this extraordinary considering the mass quantities of people they are cooking for. They also make an effort to buy all their produce and meats/fish as locally as possible. MSU is also making huge strides to reduce their environmental impact by implementing "green" practices such as using a pulper, which recycles dish machine water. Overall, I was very impressed by how nutritionally and environmentally progressive this campus seemed to be! 

We toured MSU's football and basketball arena, both of which are big sports on campus. We learned that Magic Johnson played for the Spartans back when Brenda went to school here!

an enormous statue to commemorate Magic Johnson

Fellow NACUFS interns Jeanette and Megan!

We ate at Brody dining hall for lunch and it was deeeelicious! I've never seen a bigger dining facility in my life. They had so many options and everything was really fresh tasting.

We also stopped by MSU's campus creamery where they make their own ice cream and cheese. Brenda was nice enough to buy Margaret and me some chocolate cheese to try! 

an interesting combination to say the least

making cheese!

What a wonderful experience it was to get to visit MSU and see what the other interns have been up to!

This weekend was very special for me because my mom made a trip all the way from Connecticut to visit me! It was so nice seeing a familiar face and getting to show her where I've been living the past 6 weeks.

Friday we made a trip to the 4-H fair in Big Rapids to check out some of the cute animals!

 Saturday was our big excursion up to Mackinaw Island! The 3 hour drive plus 20 minute ferry ride was all worth it when we saw how beautiful the island is. Biking the perimeter of the island was probably my favorite part; it was so breath-taking and relaxing!

girl's day

the famous 5-mile long Mackinaw Bridge!

Sunday my mom and I spent some time in Holland, checking out the beaches and the downtown area. It was such a cute town!

Holland has their own brewing company!

I'm glad I got to show my mom a little piece of what life is like out here in Michigan. I'm so grateful she was able to visit me!

MSU Week 6

This past week included some of my favorite things experienced thus far at MSU. I've been so lucky to be at a university with so many cool things only a few hours away. I've loved getting to see so many different places while I've been here.

Monday and Tuesday I spent more time in The Gallery, my home away from home :) Monday I had the chance to work with Mike, one of the managers, and see how he does some of the ordering. We spent some time seeing how much of each item was in dry storage so that we knew what we should order more of. He let me fill out and submit the order online. Technology makes things like this pretty easy!

Wednesday was a lot of fun! We had the chance to see the lovely Ferris State interns, Margaret and Emily, again. Brenda and another man from FSU accompanied them. We started off the day with Lary telling our visitors all about MSU and dining services on campus. I even learned a few new things about the university! We spent the morning touring some of the athletic facilities. I was so excited to get to see everything! We were led around the big football stadium. Seeing everything there just made me even more excited for football season and the chance to cheer on my BYU cougars again :)

The view from the top of the stadium

Me inside the stadium

We got to see a lot of the really nice boxes inside the stadium where the important people sit for the games. They had really nice seats and accommodations! 

Emily, Margaret, Jeanette, and I with the original Spartan statue

 We also toured the Breslin Center, where the basketball games are played. It was very similar to our Marriott Center at BYU, so I felt right at home! It was a really nice facility. We learned about the Izzone, the student section. It's named after the head basketball coach, Coach Izzo. It's a pretty big deal to sit in this section. You have to camp out to be eligible to buy season tickets for this section,  you can't  have missed more than a couple games the previous season if you're a returning member, and when you're in this section you have a heavy responsibility to support the team and be energized. It sounds pretty cool and a good way to get the crowd and team fired up!

The basketball court

The MSU basketball team is pretty good, as you can see by their championship trophies

I loved seeing all of the athletic facilities. I wish I could see a football or basketball game here! It did make me miss supporting BYU sports a lot though. Can't wait to be back for my own team's season. Go Cougs!

We also showed the FSU visitors one of our Starbucks on campus and the manager let everybody get free drinks! We headed to Brody when it was close to lunchtime. We showed them the front and back of house and ate lunch. The lunch was delicious as always, and I think they were really impressed with how big the dining hall was, how many options, and how delicious and fresh the food tasted. I think it left a good impression with them! We also showed them Shaw's dining hall since it's the newest. To end the day, we headed to the dairy store so our visitors could have some MSU ice cream. We also took a peek of what was going on from the observation deck in the dairy. It was a really fun day and I'm so glad that I got to know the FSU interns while I was here. It was fun to hear what Emily and Margaret have been up to all summer at Ferris and talk dietetics with Emily since she just graduated and is headed off to do an internship next year. 

Thursday was my favorite field trip of the internship! We went to Notre Dame! I've always heard about how beautiful and historic this campus is, so I was really excited when I found out that we were going to be visiting the campus during our stay here. I've basically been looking forward to this day since I got my internship schedule. Don't worry, Notre Dame brought its A game and did not disappoint my expectations. 

I just loved seeing all of the beautiful buildings and the campus had lots of green grass and trees

We traveled with Saul and 3 chefs from different dining halls at MSU. I liked touring with the chefs because they think of different questions to ask than I do. We started off the morning by touring Notre Dame's dining facilities. Our first stop was their central food stores type building. We got to see their coolers and dry storage. They also showed us their central processing areas where they do some produce chopping and sauce making that then gets sent out to the dining halls. We also saw the bakery and decorating area. It sure smelled good!

Check out all that buttercream frosting!

Notre Dame cake

Notre Dame has a pub on campus, which is pretty unique. It's called Legends and also has a club inside. It was a really nice building. The club has hosted many musicians/comedians/performers over the years. They had a whole wall with pictures of everyone who has performed there. 

Part of the wall of pictures

Flags from the universities that Notre Dame plays during football season, including my own BYU!

We saw both dining halls on campus. They seemed pretty dated, but were still pretty nice. We ate lunch at one of them. It was fun to taste another school's food and they had some pretty yummy options. Notre Dame is really big on the feeling of community. They really want their students to get to know each other and become united. They even require all students to live on campus with a random roommate for freshman year. Pretty cool! The seating in the dining halls is meant to encourage this goal.

Inside one of the dining halls.

After lunch was my favorite part of the day! We took a walking tour of campus. We were so blessed to have such a beautiful day for this trip. The skies were blue, humidity was low, and there was a nice breeze. It really couldn't have been better. We were led around campus and learned a few history tidbits about the university.

This porch is in the movie Rudy

The grotto on campus 

The gold dome with Mary on top

Me with touchdown Jesus

The football stadium. If only they'd let us see inside!

Another shot of touchdown Jesus

We also made a pit stop at the bookstore and the woman from dining services that we spent the day with was so nice and gave us all goody bags to take home. It was such an awesome day! I loved it all!

Friday Jeanette and I started the day by finalizing which recipes we're going to test for our food truck special debut. I'll talk more about this next week, but don't worry, we're going to be making something delicious :)

The afternoon was spent in the good old Gallery. Lunchtime was super busy. A few large conference groups came through and they filled up the place. It was fun to get a small taste of what every day is like during the school year. I also helped prepare sandwiches for box lunches. Sometimes groups order box lunches from The Gallery. They usually contain a sandwich, chips, soda, fruit, and a cookie. 

I can't believe how close my time is to being done here. The next two weeks should be really fun! 

Week 5 at FSU

 This week marked our first week of the "management" portion of our internship! Now that we have a pretty solid foundation about what goes on in the cook's area, we will be better equipped to help manage all the different aspects of the Rock.
I worked as the "P.M. Manager" for this week, shadowing Mark, one of the assistant managers at the Rock. Although it was kind of a slow week, I was able to perform some manager duties such as walking around from station to station seeing if everything is clean and in order, and handling some unexpected situations. I look forward to acting as A.M. Manager this coming week!

On Tuesday, we had a nice visit from the Michigan State interns, Megan and Jeanette, along with 4 other staff members. Margaret and I gave everyone a tour of the Rock; we were both surprised at how much we've learned about the place! We also showed them the Starbucks retail store, where Laura was so kind as to give everyone free beverages :) We all got a tour of the school's hockey arena, which I had never seen before and thought was really impressive. You can tell they take hockey pretty seriously here. We then all headed back to the Rock for a group lunch! They seemed to really enjoy the food.

Jeanette, me, Margaret, Megan, and Brenda

We were lucky enough to get both Thursday AND Friday off this week, making it a very long weekend :) Margaret's boyfriend, Brian, came all the way from Pittsburgh to visit and they were nice enough to include me in a lot of their plans.

Happy 4th!

Friday we headed to Stearns Park Beach again in Ludington. Margaret and I enjoyed it so much last time that we decided we needed to let Brian experience it. We got really lucky with the weather for this holiday weekend; it was beautiful all week!

The food never disappoints here- veggie wrap and sweet potato fries from a sports bar downtown!

Saturday, it was back to the work grind (sort of). We helped cater a wedding reception near Reed City held outside of someone's house. The house seemed like it was basically in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by open field and...an animal farm. It was a pretty toasty day, but there was a huge tent that the reception was held under that kept the sun from beating down. It was definitely one of the more unique wedding parties I've ever seen!