The Final Stretch at North Dakota (Last Two Weeks)

So since I pretty much failed to post an update about week 7, and week 8 is filled with much much FoodPro, I decided to crunch these last two weeks together. You'll probably read this post as fast as these last two weeks felt like they flew by.

Week Seven - 7/15-7/19
My seventh week at UND went by super quick. I got to sit in on interviews for a Snack Bar Supervisor position dining is looking to fill by the beginning of the year. It was very interesting to be able to sit in on all three and see how different each applicant's responses were. It was also very interesting to be a part of the discussion after the interviews and deliberate on which applicant would be best suited for the position, and weigh the pros and cons of going with whoever we decided would do the best job. There is a lot that goes into deciding on an applicant that is dependent on external factors. These applicants were internal -- already in the UND system of employees -- so they don't have the 6 month window of employment where, if management finds that this person is not the right fit, they can easily let them go. On the contrary, if dining chose one of the internal applicants, it would be very hard to find a replacement for the individual if the position ended up not being the right fit. A lot of our discussion was centered on whether or not we wanted to choose one of these applicants, all of whom we had questions about, or extend the application externally and wait to see if more qualified people would apply. It was definitely a cool experience to be on the other side of the table, and I got to learn things that I think will end up helping me in interviews down the road.

This week, I finally was able to get the residence hall catering menus off of the spreadsheet, into FoodPro, and up on the web! It took some clicking around in FoodPro to figure out which actions had what effect on appearance and organization and so on, but when I finally figured it out, it turned out to be a pretty easy and not-too-technical process. We were able to meet with some of the residence hall directors and RA's to get their feedback on how the menu was organized, what things they liked or didn't like, and some things they'd like to see added, etc. I took the notes from this meeting and continued to work on the menu in FoodPro.

Notes from various meetings

Menus Menus Menus.

Aurora (the company that owns the FoodPro software) will stay in Grand Forks to host a 2-full-day training session for everyone that will be involved with this catering module and teach them how to set it up and eventually use it successfully -- I'll be able to attend this too, so I will know everything there is to know about implementing a residence hall catering module in FoodPro! (Can I put this on my resume?)

Boxes upon boxes of registration bags filled with goodies

The rest of the week was filled with finalizing details for the FoodPro conference, stuffing registration bags, running errands, and all that jazz. I won't spend any more time describing that, since you get to read about the actual event...now!

Opening powerpoint that I whipped together. Kinda proud :)

Week Eight - 7/21-7/26
My last week of interning was jam-packed with activity thanks to the FoodPro Conference actually arriving! I was so excited to be able to see all of our planning and coordinating come to life and meet FoodPro users from universities across the nation! I started on Sunday early in the afternoon, setting up registration/helping with registration. It was great to put faces to the names I had gotten so used to working with in spreadsheets over the summer :)

Our lovely banner that was donated by the CVB. Awesome to see another thing I designed come to life!

I was also able to attend dinner Sunday night, which was catered by the CanadInn. There were lots of delicious things to choose from and everything was very elegant!

Strawberry Avocado Salsa. Oh my gosh. So beautiful.

Some delicious desserts from the Canad Catering. These were gone before I even got to try one!

On Monday, I got up bright and early to welcome the guests to the Memorial Union, where the majority of the conference events would be held. During the day I was able to sit in on a few of the sessions and they were all very interesting -- it was great to have a good handle on FoodPro and actually follow the discussions and understand others' perspectives. Beyond simply making sure the conference ran smoothly and that everyone knew where to go, I really enjoyed networking and talking with the attendees and learning more about other university's foodservices. I was able to meet one of the head chefs from the Wisconsin Union, which was awesome! We joked about UND's Memorial Union and Terrace and how they compared to Madison, and I learned more about how the Union structured it's foodservice department since it is separate from residential dining services.

Dr. Steve Light of UND gave a wonderful keynote about "Leading from the Middle"

Learning about Commissary Food Production in FoodPro

Tuesday was much like Monday, and I was able to attend some more nutrition-focused sessions and hear from registered dietitians at various universities and their experiences with FoodPro. Really, after this entire internship experience and after hearing from dietitians all over, I really think I would enjoy working as a dietitian for a university dining service. I think it would offer the best of all the aspects of nutrition/dietetics that I enjoy -- interacting with people and impacting a large population with education. On Tuesday, I was able to attend the fancy farewell dinner we hosted at the new Alumni Center building on campus. It was absolutely gorgeous and the food was incredible, thanks to UND Catering. I was also able to have another slice of FABulous Pistachio Mascarpone cake from the Cakerie (I'm going to have to remember this company for other events down the road..) We also had some fun with the photobooth :)

Podium set-up at the beautiful Gorecki Alumni Center on dinner Tuesday night. Those gifts are for all of the presenters that held sessions throughout the conference!

Dinner on Tuesday was so beautifully catered!

Cheese Curds from UW Stout -- the hosts of the FoodPro Conference next summer!

Having a bit of fun with the life-size photobooth -- Me, Dustin, and Rosie from the University of Northern Iowa

Wednesday was the last day of the conference, but it was only held at the CanadInn for the morning, and my assistance really wasn't needed at this point any more since most people knew the drill. I got to sleep in just a little before I went back into the office and finished up my nutrition brochure series. Since I have been the one working with the online catering menus and the project is pretty much still in the beginning stages, I showed Laura what I had been doing to input the menus online and all of the tips/tricks I'd figured out so far, since she and Dustin would be the ones handling it once I leave. (Can't I just stay?) Later, Jim from Aurora came to Wilkerson and began the first phase of training for the staff on this module of FoodPro. All day thursday I sat in on the training sessions and rebuilt some of the menus and recipes. Okay, I can truly say that this has been no easy process. We build one type of menu, and then to change  how it appears on the web organizationally, we usually have to start from scratch. Frustration nation! We got a lot accomplished anyway and the website is actually beginning to look nice.

Thursday was also the day of the Retiree's/President's picnic at Wilkerson, and for dinner the whole dining hall was set up differently, with two lines of buffet-style picnic foods for retired University staff and faculty to come eat. I had helped plan the menu earlier in the month and worked with Mara to figure out how the foods would best lay out.

Today, Friday is my last day (tears!) I hate saying goodbye. I have had such a wonderful time here this summer and can honestly look back and say I didn't have any bad days. I enjoyed every single project I worked on, even if some were a bit more challenging and pushed me a bit further than others. Everyone who I worked with was so kind and open and let me really get the full experience this internship is meant to provide, plus more. I will always look back on these 8 weeks with a smile, and who knows, I might be working for one of these Universities some day :)

Six Weeks!

Sorry guys! I'm here, I'm here! Just a little late on the post. Let's get the recap started.

This went by at a slower pace since Dustin was gone from Wednesday-Friday at the NACUFS National Conference in Minneapolis! I heard it was a great time with lots and lots of NACUFS people taking over the minny-apple. I hope I'll be able to go to one some day :)

Monday and Tuesday were pretty crazy, though, since we had to get a lot figured out before Dustin et al. left for the week. We were basically jumping from meeting to meeting, finalizing some last plans and details for the FoodPro conference (that is next week already, holy cow!) and discussing the ResHall Catering online module.

Photo of the Playmakers lounge in the CanadInn (thanks Google)

Monday, we met with an event planner from the Canad Inn (the hotel where the guests will be staying) to go over every event that will be taking place at that location and make sure everything we will need had been ordered. After this, we buzzed over to the Art Museum to meet with catering and go over the dinner setup for one of the nights. Trying to fit a buffet-style dinner plus beverages, an entertainer, and a table for photographs in one wing of an art museum with enough space for 8 large roundtables is not a no-brainer. But we got it! And it will be just fabulous, I think. Our last meeting that day was with an event planner from the Alumni Center (a gorgeous building that opened less than a year ago) and we went over some of the same kind of details for the last dinner/reception of the conference that will be held there. I can't wait to see everything that we've been planning come together!

Semi-awkward photo of the presentation taken from the sidelines

On Tuesday, I was able to shadow Dustin as he conducted a nutrition education presentation for the UND Grad School Dean and Faculty. The presentation was originally planned to include both Dustin's education piece as well as a cooking demonstration by Chef Greg, but time was cut short so we had to cut out the demonstration. The group ate a healthy lunch of a hummus/veggie wrap, fruity quinoa salad, and yogurt parfait, and then Dustin spoke a bit about both quinoa and chickpeas, their health benefits, and tips for incorporating them into a lifestyle of eating. This is where the brochures I worked on last week were distributed. The faculty was very receptive and engaged in the presentation and even asked a few questions! Dustin was able to make the presentation personal for the group of people, which I think made it even more of an effective talk. The Dean came up to me afterwards and introduced himself -- a UW Madison grad! and told us how much he enjoyed the presentation. It just made me excited to be able to do something like this in the future and make an impression on others' lives with information I am so passionate about.

Lastly, on Tuesday we met with some more of the managers to go over the progress we'd made with the ResHall catering menu and get even more input before we finalized it for the website. I worked on taking notes from this discussion and improving the various menus for the rest of the week. Whenever I needed to re-organize something, it usually involved creating a new recipe in FoodPro or getting the correct weight for a portion of something and was pretty time consuming given all of the different menus UND is offering for their residence hall events.

Wednesday was a quick day for me since I spent the majority of it up in the kitchen and dining hall getting ready to re-introduce the Signature Salad concept again. This time, I selected an Asian Salad and a Grilled Chicken Strawberry Salad to present. Compared to the first time we set up the salad concept, the production was much smoother this time! Since it was menu-ed in FoodPro, we had all of the ingredients in inventory and each prep area in the kitchen got their specific recipes to prepare. However, I definitely did not anticipate how popular this was going to be with diners! Given the popularity of the salads last time, we projected that we'd go through about 20 of each salad -- so that's how much of the ingredients we prepared. Long story short, we basically had to double everything. I was in the kitchen for a while chopping cilantro and cabbage and slicing strawberries to replenish the ever-depleting specialty bar's stock. When I wasn't doing that, I was out in the dining center getting feedback from customers. Many people were kind enough to fill out a feedback sheet about their experience. Some people commented that the service would have to be quicker during the school year to avoid long lines. One of our main concerns was how to input the recipes into FoodPro -- either as an inclusive recipe or with each ingredient as its own component. Since the majority of customers' requests was to either add chicken or take chicken off of the salad, I think it might be a good solution to take chicken (or whatever protein) out of the salad recipes and menu it as a separate component, so that service records are more accurate and we can project production better and avoid waste.

Grilled Chicken & Strawberry Salad

The salad artists of the day

Both salads + marketing materials

Feedback forms

Thursday and Friday I was basically glued to my seat in the office all day -- no meetings to run off to! and made some headway with the ResHall catering menu and my nutrition information brochures for dining. In addition to the one I created last week about eating disorders, I started a series of brochures about each food group -- whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and protein/dairy (in one). I still want to come up with one about surviving stress healthfully and having a healthy pantry of food in the dorms/college apartments. Hopefully I will have time these next two weeks -- it's looking like busy times ahead!

Went on a walk Saturday and came across this inspirational bit written on the sidewalk :)

Week 5 and a little breaky break

This was a short week, thanks to my coordinator for allowing me to take both Thursday and Friday off to celebrate the holiday weekend with my family who drove up from Minneapolis. It was so nice to take a break and do fun things around Grand Forks with the fam. Thanks again Dustin! :)

Monday and Tuesday were spent working more on developing menus for dining's Residence Hall Catering online ordering system. The system is brand new for UND and utilizes a communication between FoodPro and an online module to allow students to place streamlined, paperless Res Hall catering orders. The road to streamlined and paperless, however, is taking a few glitches and lots of paper. UND offers its residents TONS of options when it comes to catering residence hall events  -- everything from chips and salsa to chocolate fondue and mocktails. Before we can enter the menus into FoodPro, the department together has to agree on portion sizes, pricing, minimum orders, and menu structure. A lot of the items had to be re-worked in some way, and in order to get the correct portion sizes to display, some items will have to be re-weighed for accuracy.

I also spent some time going over the next run of the Salad Concept which will happen this Wednesday at lunch -- making marketing materials and such -- and finalizing the rest of the Wilkerson Fall 2013 menu (I think it's finally done!) On Tuesday, I did some research and put together some informational brochures about Quinoa and Chickpeas for a nutrition presentation Dustin and Chef Greg will be giving to a group of Deans this week. 

On Wednesday, Laura and I had the office to ourselves since both Chef Greg and Dustin left early for the weekend. I actually got a lot done! I was able to start doing lots of brainstorming and research for the set of Nutrition Information Handouts that will be displayed in Wilkerson for interested students to peruse and take. I made my first draft of one about Eating Disorders and have many more fun ideas for nutrition topics of interest to college students.

As I mentioned, my family was awesome enough to drive all the way up here to spend the holiday weekend in Grand Forks. We had lots of fun in the hot hot heat. Hope everyone else had a lovely 4th!

Week Four in the Forks

I knew this week was going to fly by -- it sure did. When I think about the four weeks ahead, I feel the same way. On Friday, I completed my midterm evaluation and could hardly believe I'm half way through. It's crazy how much gets packed into these 8 weeks, though. Let me tell you about what happened this week!

On Tuesday, Dustin, Molly (Wilkie's Sous Chef), Jane (our intern from Korea) and I drove down to Fargo to tour a few locations. Our first stop was the main warehouse for FoodService of America (FSA) in North Dakota. FSA is the primary distributor for UND, and delivers to many different locations in the upper midwest from its Fargo warehouse. Don was very friendly and showed us around the different areas in the warehouse and described the receiving/storing/retrieving process they go through 24 hours a day. The FSA warehouse even had its own meat processing facility for packing beef and pork that they set up in a room previously used for ripening bananas! It was great to learn and see more of the food distribution process. Since UND is one of the biggest purchasers for FSA in Fargo, if the University were to request a specific product, FSA would likely be able to stock it -- a pretty good deal.

Our next stop in Fargo was a tour of North Dakota State University's dining services. I felt very fortunate to be able to see the workings of yet another unique style of operation at NDSU. Again, NDSU's dining services were very different from what I was used to at UW-Madison. Like at UND, students purchase a meal plan that allows them to eat whatever they want during a specific meal period. NDSU had 3 separate dining locations for students with meal plans, and each one was like its own mini foodservice operation. Each center had its own "warehouse" for ingredient storage, its own ordering process, its own inventory and its own menu. I can't imagine how challenging it must be to synchronize communication or manage those three separate operations just based on how complicated it can be managing one centralized unit. A couple things that were particularly cool about NDSU dining was that in every location, there was an open industrial grill top available for students to use to grill things like sandwiches or veggies, or cook eggs. At first I was completely shocked by this concept -- how could they trust students to use this equipment properly? I mean, those grills aren't cheap! But they said that the students love them and they haven't had too much trouble with them. I know I'D sure love to grill up my own fresh vegetables for lunch if I went to NDSU! Also, one of the main dining centers also had a private room for students with celiac disease. If the students came to the dietitian with a doctor's diagnosis, they received access to this room off of the main dining center that contains cooking equipment and preparation materials completely safe from cross-contamination in the main kitchen. Students can prepare meals or take some heat-and-serve entrees from storage and be safe from contamination. I thought this concept was super smart and very accommodating to students that struggle to avoid gluten.

Finally, we stopped for a delicious lunch prepared by Chuck, a broker for Hockenberg Newburgh, a food brokerage corporation. I really enjoyed getting to know what Chuck does as a food broker and could tell that he does a great job. I had the most amazing cake I have ever eaten -- yes I ate the WHOLE piece, complete with fresh raspberries that Chuck "carbonated" by placing them indirectly in the gas of dry ice. So cool!! Besides the yummy lunch, I learned a lot about food brokerage -- Chuck represents the face of many different food companies and his job is to get organizations, like UND Dining, to use the products of these food companies in their operations. The most important part of his job is understanding everyone's needs. He has to know, first of all, everything about the products he is representing. Second of all, he has to understand who is selling to and what they specifically have a need for. Finally, he has to have strong relationships with everyone in the process to maintain trust and keep food products flowing from seller to buyer. It was apparent that Chuck does an outstanding job -- just sitting down with him for lunch and I could tell how he goes the extra mile to really make sure he is satisfying his customers. I don't know if I'd even have the head room to maintain so much knowledge about different products and organizations if I were a broker. It definitely takes a special person to be able to do a good job! We all walked out of the meeting with a goodie bag filled with lots of treats -- I'm especially excited about that davinci syrup -- so many ideas!

Wednesday was another exciting day. We premiered our Signature Salad concept to diners at lunch and got their feedback. The two salads we prepared were a vegetarian Caribbean Salad with mangos, pineapple, mandarin oranges, dried cranberries and cashews (YUM), and a Chicken Caesar Salad. We wanted to test this idea to see if people would like the concept of having a fresh salad prepared for them not made to order, but made per a recipe. Many people really liked the idea, especially because they said sometimes they struggled to come up with good flavor combinations at the salad bar since there are almost too many options. I created some marketing materials for the concept, and showed the student workers how to prepare the salads according to the recipe. Along the way, Chef Greg helped us tweak some of the processes to get a better outcome -- like tossing the caesar salad in the dressing before plating it!

Since the concept wasn't on the forecasted menu, I worked with the staff in the kitchen to pull together the ingredients we needed. We had to make a few adjustments to the recipes, like using pre-cooked chicken strips instead of the raw chicken that the recipe indicated to grill prior to service, to save time. Molly showed me how to use the combi oven to steam some of the frozen products for a short period to thaw them, and then keep them cold in the Chill Blaster until we dished them up for service. I made the Honey Lime Vinaigrette for the Caribbean Salad and might be "borrowing" that recipe -- it was soooo good. :)

Wednesday was also the first day of my Food Handling Inservice training for the Cold Foods staff and Dining Room Attendants. For about 45 minutes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I got to present the training program I had been working on for the past few weeks. I think it went really well! The staff were engaged and asked questions and we even started a discussion on what could be improved specifically in the dining room for better safety/quality control. I will post a link to the training presentations here:

Day 1: http://prezi.com/qfjrqpyzflvq/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
Day 2: http://prezi.com/2hzubr-7wtoz/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
Day 3: http://prezi.com/f0wuhmihqyss/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Those are just some highlights of another busy week for me -- I also was busy working in FoodPro on some other menu assignments and did some more planning work for the FoodPro conference.

This weekend was luckily gorgeous weather, and I was able to take full advantage of it! I ran my first (real) long run -- an 8 miler, checked out the farmers' market, laid out, and went hiking at Turtle River State Park with Laura. Now, I'm exhausted and looking forward to a good night of sleep :)

Week THREE, you kidding me!?

This week went by SO quickly. I can't believe I'm already moving into my fourth week of my internship here at UND! This week was structured differently than usual, so instead of going day-by-day, I'll just go over some of the highlights.

A group of us taking inventory of some staple food products

I got to participate in the year-end warehouse inventory! Once a year, staff from the dining department come together and form three teams to tackle the inventory in the main warehouse. They do it in the summer since inventory is much lower and easier to count than throughout the school year. Teams of 3 tackled different areas of the warehouse. One team was responsible for supplies -- paper products, cleaners, utensils, etc. One team was responsible for staples -- all the dry food products. And one team was responsible for the coolers and freezers (brrrr). I was able to work with each team (my thick Minnesota skin betrayed me in the freezer though, I only lasted about 10 minutes with those guys) to see how the process flowed. With everyone working together, we were able to finish in under 2 hours!

I left a little early that day to get some rest for my night shift at the bakery! I was so excited to work in the bakery -- I love baking but rarely bake since cooking comes so much easier to me and doesn't require as much precision (in my home kitchen, at least!). Tracy, the head baker, and I had a great time chatting all night about food, fermentations, restaurants, donuts, cupcakes, life, and all things wonderful like that. I got to the bakery at 9:30 pm and before I knew it, it was 1:30 and we were taking "lunch". The other guys that worked there were obviously used to working overnight and had packed real lunches -- I opted for a slice of  homemade chipotle bread (YUM). After chugging down some coffee to keep my yawns at bay, we went to work frying donuts, making new donut dough, shaping new donuts, making bread dough, even decorating cakes! My favorite part was watching the transformation of just-risen bread go from small and pale to HUGE and brown (hello, Maillard browning) when they came out of the oven just a handful of minutes later. The chemistry nerd in me took a good appreciation for all of the science that goes on in baking, turning these mundane staple ingredients into delicious creations - it's seriously an art! Of course, I walked out of there (at 5:30 am) with more baked goods than I can handle. I definitely brought some to work to share, otherwise I'd still be riding a major sugar high. I spent the rest of the day sleeping and enjoying the sunshine -- it was a nice day off and made the week go by super quick.

The bakery! I took this photo at about 3am so a lot of our work had already been done.

My attempt at making rosebuds (blue) vs. Tracy's gorgeous yellow flowers

I left the catering cake decorating up to Tracy -- I did get to decorate my own little mini cake, though!

Cranberry Pumpernickel Bread

Some of the bakery treats we made that would get sent to Wilkerson later in the morning

My breakfast the morning after my night at the bakery -- a delicious, freshly baked pistachio muffin. Mmmm carbs.

I got started on another big project in Foodpro this week -- entering all of the changes we made during the menu planning meetings for Wilkerson's fall menu into Foodpro. Most of them were easy switches, and once I got the hang of manipulating the menu on the computer it was a pretty simple task -- the hardest part was making sure I got to every change we made on the menu spreadsheet! The staff at Wilkerson was challenged by Chef Greg to get entrees with Guiding Star ratings at every meal, every day -- if they accomplished this, he'll take them out to dinner! The menu is well on its way to including healthy choices -- the biggest problem with a lot of the items is sodium and fat (especially if the dish contains cheese). The late night menu especially struggles to include starred entrees because they are typically things students won't go for later in the evening, when most of them are taking the food back to their dorm. I think it would be a challenging but fun task to come up with some new ways to incorporate healthier entrees into a student-friendly late-night menu -- I think it definitely could be done.

Eating the stromboli dough I helped make at the bakery for dinner!

One thing that surprised me was that a lot of the changes we ended up making to the menu were to switch back some of the more creative flavors back to simple ones. Apparently, pizzas like bacon cheeseburger and chicken bacon ranch didn't go over as well as plan cheese and pepperoni pizza. Is anyone else shocked by this? HELLO college students, live a little! ;)

Let's cut the yogurt

I experienced my first food "cutting" this week, too. A food cutting, I learned, is where a sales rep from a company will come and do a taste test of their product with you, demonstrating why their product would be a smarter purchase for your foodservice operation. In our case, a rep from Dannon came to "cut" their Oikos greek yogurt product along side of the current product UND sells, Chobani. I could definitely tell a difference between the two products. I'm a huge Chobani fan, but the Oikos yogurt was a lot thicker and creamier, almost like pudding. It was sweeter, too. Dannon adds thickeners and sweeteners to their products that Chobani doesn't, so even though it's a cheaper product, it's less natural. Also, the regular yogurt made by Dannon contains gelatin, an animal product that makes the yogurt non-vegetarian. UND only wants to stock yogurt that does not contain gelatin, so these are all things the managers will need to consider before choosing whether or not to go with the product.

Tasting Tasting Tasting

So far, I've really been loving the business side of foodservice. Making decisions and working behind-the-scenes to keep the operation up and running and being the best it can be is hard work, but important work. I'm really looking forward to next week -- I already know it's going to fly by, too!

Grand Forks has some of the most beautiful sunsets.

Menus Menus Menus. UND Week 2!

This week went so quickly! I was busy all week working on various projects and I am sure the rest of the summer is going to fly by. Let me tell you a bit about what I did.

The Art Fest/Farmers Market in downtown Grand Forks on Saturday

Monday
Monday I had to come into Wilkerson early to experience inventory in the main dining center. I showed up at 6 am and started counting inventory (after a quick cup of coffee, of course) in some of the store rooms. Even though inventory is something a lot of people in retail (foodservice or otherwise) experience, I had never done it before. After working with Food Pro a bit and having more of an understanding of menu forecasting, I knew that this was probably the most important step in the cycle. With an inaccurate inventory, everything else down the line would be messed up -- forecasting, purchasing, production -- everything!

Since it was our executive chef Greg's first day back after his week of vacation last week, we had another manager meeting for all of the Wilkerson managers. One interesting thing we went over was looking at the menu to see if anything would need to be adjusted because our tip kettles were going to be replaced and would be out of service for the week. Of course, Pasta Bar was going to be featured as the specialty entree on Wednesday, so the managers had to decide the best course of action -- switch the entree or figure out another way to make the pasta. The managers decided that we could still go ahead with pasta bar, but we would make all of the pasta on Tuesday night, before the kettles were removed, and re-steam it on Wednesday before service. Smart!

Tuesday
Monday and Tuesday are major number crunching days for the managers here. Inventory is done Monday, and Forecasting is done Tuesday. I was able to watch Dan, one of the unit managers for Wilkerson, go through the process of reconciling the inventory count and forecast for the next menu, three weeks in advance. Last week, this process was SUPER confusing to try and get a handle on. After seeing an entire week of operation and putting the pieces together, it made so much more sense to me. SO much goes on behind the scenes to keep the business up and running smoothly, and it takes an enormous amount of human effort to make sure the computers are doing everything correctly.

Tuesday I was also able to shadow the cold prep staff in the kitchen to get a better idea of who I will be presenting my Food Handling Safety Inservice to later this month. They prep all of the food for the allergy-free station first thing in the morning -- to make sure there is as little cross contamination as possible. When I showed up, one of the very nice prep cooks, Erna, was portioning pineapple and watermelon into plastic cups. Erna also showed me how the prep cooks record service records. After they finish prepping their item, they weigh it and record how much they prepared. After service, the amount left over is recorded, and this way they can measure how much of that particular item they actually served. Pretty neat!

I spent the rest of the day outlining my lesson plan for the inservice. I'm so excited to present it! Stuff like this is right up my ally and I hope I can turn Food Safety into something super exciting for the staff (however challenging a task that may be..)

My workstation where all of the magic happens ;)

Basically, I will have three 45-minute presentations for the cold prep staff on proper Food Handling/Food Safety to better prepare them to pass the ServSafe exam. I am thanking all my goodnesses that I learned all about ServSafe and passed the exam this past year, so I'm actually a qualified educator! (Thanks Monica!) I'm using Prezi to develop presentations because I think they are inherently more engaging than a powerpoint. I'm also incorporating lots of group activities like quizzes, worksheets, and a case study, to keep people interested and also help them learn from each other.

Tuesday night I was surprised to hear the door to my suite being unlocked at 9pm! Jane, my new suitemate, is from South Korea and will be at UND for the whole year interning with Dining. She graduated from university in Korea with a degree in Dietetics, and is spending her year here learning more about international nutrition. She's super sweet and her english is excellent! (Even if she doesn't think so). I'm happy to have a suitemate finally! I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting a little lonely in this dorm all by myself.

Wednesday
Wednesday was a busy day! We started menu planning for Wilkerson for the upcoming fall menu, going through breakfast and lunch to determine what needed to be changed. I've said it before, but I'll say it again -- I love working with the menus. Now that Chef Greg is back, recipe testing is in full swing. Cooks are constantly making new things that we get to try and that might make it on the menu. One of the main things we are testing is proper cooking of a bunch of different types of whole grain products (farro, grano, quinoa, etc) that we hope to incorporate into hot breakfast cereals among other recipes. A major thing cooks are trying to figure out is how much water to use and how long to cook the grain to get the proper texture. Recipe testing is definitely a tasty task.

My station during menu planning -- looking up acceptabilties in Food Pro and making changes to the menu spreadsheet

Discussing possible menu changes for fall at Wilkerson

The majority of Wednesday was spent working on developing a new menu for the extensive salad bar at Wilkerson. The one that currently displays on the internet doesn't include all of the many offerings on the salad bar and the portion sizes are listed in ounces. Since the average customer might not be thinking in ounces, we wanted to create a new menu with portions in tablespoons, cups, and slices (for things like pepperoni and pickles). It sounds simple enough, but there was a lot of behind the scenes work that had to happen before we could just change the portion sizes on the menu. We had to create a "fake" menu in Food Pro that wouldn't be used to forecast needs -- it would just be used for the web. On here, we incorporated all of the existing recipes for things like veggies, fruits, toppings, condiments, dressings, etc. etc. (you really have to see the salad bar here, it's HUGE. Note to self: TAKE A PICTURE!!) but some of them were old and had to be updated with products that were actually being used. For the many recipes that had to be re-portioned, I worked with Laura to find the weight of whatever serving we needed (a half cup of corn, 5 cherry tomatoes, etc.) and created new recipes in Food Pro. Once we finally finished all of the background work, we could finally organize the menu in Food Pro. Even then, though, I had to go back and adjust some of the little things, like marking which options were vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, or received a guiding star rating.

I had to enter new nutritional information into Food Pro for some of the newer products like this dressing

Thursday
Thursday was filled with more of the same from this week, but was still busy! More menu  planning happened for Wilkerson, this time for the soups and pizzas.

Laura and I had to go over to the dining center at the Memorial Union for Lunch on Thursday to help control traffic for the students here for orientation. (Funny sidenote for everyone from Madison reading this: UND has a Memorial Union and their dining center is called The Terrace! Doesn't quite match up to ours, though ;)) I felt a little funny directing traffic in a location I really knew nothing about -- I had only been to Terrace once before -- but it ended up going fine. The only concern was that a huge group of people would show up at one time and end up crowding the first thing they saw. Our task was to make sure everyone knew were to go to get hot food and how the flow of the dining center was set up. I think we did pretty well!

The rest of Thursday was spent finishing the Salad Bar project I described up there ^^.

Thursday evening was fun. Jane and I met my friend Alex, her roommate, and her roommate's sister for pizza at this place called Rhombus Guy's downtown. Alex said great things about it when she showed me around, and I knew with pizza you couldn't really go wrong. It was absolutely delicious! I treated myself to a glass of Oberon and had a few slices of both the Margherita and Chipotle Steak pizza (I picked off the pieces of steak). YUM. After our bellies were full, Jane and I drove down to Target and Best Buy to pick her up a few things she needed, as well as a new laptop! We both got back to our rooms and were completely exhausted. Best night of sleep ever!

Friday
Since I worked a little bit later on Monday, I was able to leave a bit early today since I had weekend plans of driving back to the Twin Cities to surprise my dad for Fathers Day! (I can write this now since I'm home and he has already been happily surprised :))

Today was a more relaxed day in terms of tasks. I had a few phone calls with people -- one was with an event planner from the CVB for Grand Forks to begin working with them on getting informational material about Grand Forks for the registration packets for the attendees of the Food Pro Conference. Another was with a contact from the Guiding Stars company just confirming the project I'll be working on with them, submitting some more items for rating with their very specific photography procedure.

Otherwise, I mainly spent the day making finishing touches to the online menus for the Salad Bar at Wilkerson and finishing my Food Handling Training presentations. I was out of there by 2:30 thanks to a very kind Dustin and on the road by 3.

One of my favorite paintings that is lining the wall of the Tunnel from my dorm to Wilkerson. I get to walk past it every day!

I'm excited for a weekend at home with family. Happy Fathers day, dads!!