On Monday of this week, June 13, I did service management with Corky. I had a chance to see how the flow of meals is throughout a typical day. Since it was a Monday, we had orientation groups coming through along with the different camps and conference groups. Meaning, it was busier than usual during the summer, but a little closer to how the school year is. I also did rotations through some of the dining venues. At sizzles (the grill station) I helped grill chicken breasts, fried french fries, assembled pork sandwiches, and help set up the condiment bar. At the wok station, I made stir fried beef and vegetables. That was super fun! I love making stir frys, but I've never made them in large woks to serve a crowd before. I also helped out at stackables, the build a sandwich station (think subway)! They have 8 different wrap flavors including garlic herb, chipotle, spinach, wheat, etc. as well as many bread options. I love a good sandwich! I also worked back of the house and aided with food prep, my favorite!
On Tuesday June 14, I met with Jodie at the Center for Energy and Environmental Education on campus. Jodie is a registered dietitian who works as the local foods manager, manager of the college hill farmer's market, and a board member for the blue zone's project. As the local foods manager, Jodie's goal is to try to get schools, universities, stores, and restaurants to partner with local farms and buy as much as they can locally. Jodie works with Lisa, the purchasing manager on campus, and they have partnered with some local farms so that UNI gets local goods like corn, apples, coffee, etc. Jodie does a lot of work in local schools as well. She helped start a garden at a local junior high (where they use their own vegetables in the school lunches) and we were supposed to go help teach about gardening on Tuesday, but storm warnings cancelled the event. Instead, I learned about some of the grants Jodie is working on to fund their next project. I also toured the garden behind the CEEE building and more deer friends found me. They're everywhere!
Tuesday afternoon and evening had me working in the dish room and doing sanitation evaluations. Sanitation standards are very important to keep because you want to ensure that your staff, the working environment, the food, and the customers are all safe. Some key points we checked were that everyone was wearing proper uniform (with a hat/hairnet), the detergent concentration was accurate for the dish machine, the rinse/final rinse temperatures were in the correct range, refrigerator/freezer temperatures were taken, food is stored in the accurate order with potentially hazardous foods on bottom shelves and ready to eat foods on top shelves, utensil handles were not touching the food, tables were sanitized, etc. You don't mess around with food safety.
Wednesday June 15, I helped Logan with receiving first thing in the morning. Our trucks make deliveries Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 am. They unload dollies of stock and we then check each item off of the invoice. Once we receive each item, we unload everything into each of the proper locations (dry storage, produce cooler, milk cooler, freezer, etc.). We also pulled the food that was needed for that day's prep and the dry goods needed for the next day's prep.
I also worked with Deb, who showed me how the bills get paid, how costs are transferred between units, how cash summary reports are calculated, how deposits are made in the department, and the checks and balances system the university uses.
Following this, my mastermind class went over the law of respect (people naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves), the law of intuition (leaders evaluate everything with a leadership bias), and the law of magnetism (who you are is who you attract).
The rest of the day was spent with Sara and she talked about forecasting with me. This was very helpful as I will need to do some forecasting in preparing the items for my special event in July. Overall, experience is the most helpful in this area. The FoodPro system does give you estimated numbers for each meal item, but Sara knows trends of which will be more popular based on what groups will be here that week. The FoodPro numbers are most accurate during the school year when the same students eat each week, but the summer continuously has changing numbers and different groups coming in. For example, a group of adult teachers are likely to eat differently that a group of 8-12 year old swim campers. Sara also said that the school year trends change drastically from the first couple of weeks to the end of the semester. For example, the freshmen right out of their parents' houses go crazy drinking tons of chocolate milk (because they have unlimited access to it) and eating tons of waffles/pancakes. But a couple of weeks into the semester, they calm down. Also, the couple of weeks leading up to spring break, dessert intake declines because people are getting "swimsuit ready." Kind of interesting.
Thursday June 16, I went with Jodie and her intern Allison to a Bluezone restaurant meeting. A blue zone is a concept used to identify a geographic area where people live longer lives. It is based off of studies done by Dan Buettner, National Geographic, and the book Blue Zones. This has turned into the blue zones project and the Cedar Valley area has a lot of blue zone certified restaurants/schools and is considered a blue zone project demonstration site. The restaurant meeting was to see the progress made by the other board members of what restaurants have been made blue zone certified. To become certified, they have to earn a certain number of points by doing things like offering half portion sizes, removing salt shakers from tables, having bike racks outside the restaurant, offering some meals that are plant based, offering some meals without dairy, removing soda from kid's menus, offering more fresh veggies/fruits, etc.
After this, we moved into a blue zones lunch and learn meeting. It had a lot of people from Healthways, some restaurant/business owners involved in blue zones, staff from UNI involved with blue zones, etc. They fed us a delicious and nutritious lunch and we got to here from a member of the global team, the panel from the restaurant committee, Lisa (the RD on UNI's campus who talked about how they have made changes to meet blue zones goals), and Jodie about how she is involved and how she is getting people in the community excited about exercising and being healthy.
Thursday afternoon was the College Hill Farmer's Market. I worked with Anna, the market assistant manager, to set it up, check in vendors, get customers rewards cards, and ask people to fill out surveys. The rewards cards are a nice incentive for people to buy from the market. For each $3 spent, you get a punch. When you have 10 punches, you can take your completed card to one of the local businesses on the hill that have partnered with the market and redeem your reward. For example, you can get a free coffee from sidecar coffee, a couple dollars off at La Calle latin american bistro, etc. I was definitely glad I wore sunscreen. The parking lot was in direct sunlight and it was pretty hot. Overall, a really good turnout. Vendors had everything from produce to flowers to baked goods to crafts.
Friday June 17, I did another day of Service management and worked with Shelly. I completed the rest of the venues. Mugs is the dessert and ice cream station. In the morning, this is where the coffee cakes/donuts/muffins/etc. and waffle makers are. Serranos is the pizza station with their awesome pizza oven. (They also sometimes have a taco bar off to the side.) We made 5 types of pizza; sausage, italian beef, breakfast, pepperoni, and cheese. They looked very tasty! Bushels is the salad bar and Savories is homestyle cooking. On Friday, Savories had goulash, noodles, marinara sauce, mushroom alfredo sauce, marinated chicken breast, and mixed vegetables, yummy! After helping out with food prep for the next day and helping clean up, the work day was over. Friday flew by.
Friday evening, we had team building. A large group of those students that are working at Piazza this summer met at somebody's apartment for game night. There were so many game options! We split into small groups and played games in those groups for part of the night but we also played a couple of games with the whole group. There was a good turn out. It ended up being a pretty late night, but it was nice to get to know people a little better and see them outside of work. Some of the games were crazy though, I still don't understand how to play a couple of them!
Saturday June 18, I took a day trip to the charming town of Galena Illinois. It is truly a quaint stop. Also, the entire town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The place is swimming in history. One fun tour I did was of the Ulysses S. Grant home. That was pretty neat and almost everything in the house was original (except the kitchen stove was a replica).
Some other tours you can do are of the Belvedere Mansion, The Downing House (oldest house in Galena), historical society museum, Washborne house, Old Market House historic site, etc. There are also trolley tours that take you all around.
On the way out of Galena, I stooped by the Thunder Bay falls.
I decided to go a little further out of the way and went to the Mississippi Palisades State Park. It was beautiful! I still say that if you're going to take a selfie, one in nature is the way to go! It was truly beautiful area with some nice outlooks over the railroad tracks and water. It would be beautiful when the leaves change in fall.
A lot of the trails were paved leading up to the outlooks but there were a couple of hiking trails and I found some nice rocks to climb around on. Hooray for outdoor jungle gyms!
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| Crossing the Mississippi on the way back to Cedar Falls |
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