Four Fast Weeks!

        We've hit the halfway point, and I can't believe this internship has gone by so fast! It has been four action packed and educational! This week began with a day in Hot Foods and Line Service! This was an intense day that was fast paced! I learned how the food is prepared, and properly stored until serving. This production was down to the science, as we started dinner menu items at around 10 AM! Line service was also fast paced, while I was serving dinner. I was alerted that the meal we served was one of the most popular meals during the school year.  Sesame chicken and white rice was indeed popular during the summer as well!  

Lunch!

                Tuesday was our first field trip! We traveled to the Sysco Warehouse in Olathe, Kansas. This is the distributing location where KU receives their food orders from. This building was massive. The length of the hallways were incredible, multiple football fields long. The aisles where the inventory was stocked were super long as well. Some of the lights were turned off, because they are motion censored, and those were endless as well! Another neat part of this tour was the tour of the freezers. There were I think 4 different temperature freezers, all with specific items. The freezer the ice cream is stored in is negative 20 degrees (we didn’t go in that one , the 0 degree freezer was chilly enough!).  After the culmination of the warehouse tour, we went upstairs and were provided lunch by the Chef! We were able to see the test and production kitchens! Here recipes were generated, and tested for restaurants, schools and other food businesses.

The salad we ate for lunch! (So yummy!)

Our friends from Sysco, courtesy of Bri

New Student Orientation, courtesy of Bri!

                Wednesday we met with the Sport's Dietitian, Aaron Carbuhn. We learned about a day in his life at KU Athletics, learned of the projects he is working on, and saw the workout facilities for the KU Athletes! This room was massive! This was a very beneficial meeting because having an interest in sports nutrition, and seeing what he does was awesome!  We also spent ample time working on the many projects we have, especially our dinner! Thursday Bri and I worked with Christine at the KU Dining Services table at the New Student Orientation.  An hour has never passed so quickly! We were answering the questions of students and mostly parents, on how meal plans worked and the different locations of KU Dinging! It was great to see so many excited first year students eager for the start of school! It reminded me of my orientation and how overwhelming it was!  After orientation, we were able to begin testing recipes for our special dinner. Who knew what went into creating a recipe! So much trial and error. It was exciting to try new things, and watch the reactions of the different people who tried our "creation".

                Friday was a large project day! We spent a lot of time in Mrs. E's working on our projects! It was a beneficial time in order to get a good start on the projects.  We met with Christine for our Friday Lunch, and then met with RD Cheryl Wiley to do a walkthrough of one of the retail locations were we assessed the sanitation.  We then met with Mary to discuss what products we needed in order to further our recipe testing! I am excited for next week to test, test, test!