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!

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!

 

Weeks 3 & 4 at Ferris State

Weeks 3 and 4 wrapped up our portion of line cooking and learning the different stations. One of my favorite stations to work at The Rock is World's Fare. WF serves a meal for lunch and dinner with themes from all over the world... Spain, Peru, Greece, Mexico, Italy, China... the list goes on and on! During week 3 I worked closely with one of the food service workers, Tina, and she taught me how to make Chicken Cacciatore. We started off with the sauce-- the most important part-- and cooked up some onions, green peppers, olives, tomatoes, garlic, spices and burgundy wine. The smell was AMAZING. We then baked the chicken in the sauce, seasoned penne with Italian spices and mixed green beans with toasted almonds and lemon pepper seasoning.

Here's a photo of the finished plate:

Throughout the past 2 weeks I've helped with a variety of prepping and serving food. During week 3 Brenda took us on a nice field trip to Gregory's Asparagus Farm. The couple who run the farm were very friendly and showed us around the farm; they even let us get on the tractor and pick some asparagus. It is much more difficult than it looks!

Our tractor ride around the farm.

On the cart picking asparagus!

Our next big field trip was to Gordon Food Service, the food distributor for Ferris as well as a large portion of Michigan and the midwest. We were able to tour the inside of the warehouse where food is received, sorted, stored and shipped out. We were also able to meet with one of the RDs for GFS and received a nice and informative presentation about the importance of nutrition and the food service industry.

The weeks have been going by very quickly here in Big Rapids, and I am very optimistic about my next 4 weeks!

Midway Point at FSU

Here we are finishing up our 4th week here at Ferris State- time really is flying by! This was our last week working as "cooks"; next week we will begin the management phase and see what it is like to be a manager of dining services.

Something different that I got to do this week was work at one of Ferris' retail stores, Starbucks, which is the only retail outlet open during the summer. I really enjoyed this experience; being an avid coffee drinker myself, I've always sort of fantasized about working in a coffee shop. Laura, who is the campus retail stores manager, showed Margaret and me everything from the computer program that is used for service records and purchasing to the full line of breakfast sandwiches that Starbucks normally offers on a daily basis. She even let us try the egg white and spinach breakfast wrap with feta (I highly recommend it), and let us try one of Starbucks' new Refresher drinks called Orange Spice Iced Coffee (also amazing).
It was clear through our meeting with Laura that Starbucks holds quite the high standard for both its products as well as its employees. All of their products must contain natural ingredients, and their cafe sandwiches must be below 500 calories. Our coordinator, Brenda, was actually helping the Starbucks retail store find a bread that did not contain high fructose corn syrup (a more challenging task than one might expect), that also fell within the caloric parameters that Starbucks holds. All employees must go through 32 hours of training as well...and after working there for about 2 hours I could see why! All of the staff have to know how to make all of the different specialty drinks (how much milk to use, how much espresso to add) and all of the abbreviations for these drinks. Believe me, it gets overwhelming- especially when there is a long line of customers waiting. My experience at Starbucks made me realize that the steeper prices that you pay for many of their products are well worth it when you consider the high quality of ingredients and customer service that they work hard to maintain.

Friday was my day to work the "grill out" at the Rock! On the menu was cajun sausage with grilled onions and peppers, and turkey burgers with bacon and swiss cheese :)

I won't lie, I did drop a couple of patties- ooops

Although it was really hot working behind that grill, I had fun! I also got to test out two recipes for my upcoming themed meal with Craig, the culinary specialist at FSU. Craig, Margaret, and I tested my Lemon Chicken dish as well as the Mediterranean Quinoa Salad, since these are both recipes that they have never served before. While quinoa has gotten to be a pretty popular dish back on the east coast, I find it so hard to believe that most people here have never even heard of it! I'm looking forward to exposing a lot of the staff and customers here at Ferris to this healthy starch alternative for the first time; maybe it will even become a part of the Rock's menu cycle if enough people like it!

 the lemon chicken breasts came out delicious!

lots and lots of prep to be done for the quinoa salad

the final product- contains green peppers, red onion, olives, feta cheese, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, chives, and balsamic vinegar; both healthy and flavorful!

This weekend Margaret and I were determined to check out one of the beaches on Lake Michigan! Saturday was pretty miserable and rainy, but Sunday ended up being the perfect beach weather.

the white sands of Stearns Park Beach in Ludington! Free parking too!

Almost got blown away it was so windy

headed towards the lighthouse!

It wouldn't be a beach day without ending it with a  little ice cream! House of Flavors was delicious