Week Five At Purdue University!

Hello All! It is crazy (and a little sad) to think that we just completed our fifth week of our internship and that there are only three weeks left!

We started our week off by having the joy of celebrating our independence by working the fourth of July at Hillenbrand Dining Court. This is the dining court that we all normally eat in, since it is so close to our dorm, so it was interesting to see how they run their operation; and how different it is from the other dining courts. However, after our eight hour shift, we did have some fun and watched all the surrounding fireworks from Slater Hill (the only hill on campus). The Downtown Lafayette Fireworks gave us a nice show and luckily we survived the night with a limited amount of bug bites.

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, Jeanine and Mary Frances went to Ford Dining Court. They only served lunch this past week, mainly to the STAR students that were checking out the campus. On Tuesday Mary Frances worked at Sugar Hill baking cookies and manning the desserts; the remaining days were spent in Legal Grease aka the grill station. Mary Frances even got to light up the grill on Friday and make all the hamburgers, pineapples, and French fries for the day. Now she knows why they say “If you can’t stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen”. Jeanine tackled the salad station, Thyme Square, all three days, where she had the opportunity to prep final produce items for every station in the dining court. She also prepared signature salads such as the pecan and feta salad and strawberry kiwi salad-YUM. Both girls worked the front of the line at their station. (Working the front of the line takes a couple months experience for new workers, so we felt special being able to do that our first days in!)

Below is the salad bar that Jeanine set up, look at all those yummy vegetables!

Meanwhile, on Tuesday Kristen and Alice continued to work at Hillenbrand. Alice worked the dish room, putting away dishes to keep the machine from backing up. On later days, she worked the salad bar, taking temperatures of foods and struggling to keep up with the high demand for kale. Kristen manned the dessert bar, keeping the delectable treats stocked up. They had some well-deserved time off on Wednesday and Friday, and the best thing they did was visit Jeanine and Mary at Ford for lunch! Alice also continued with her marathon training by logging miles and doing functional fitness routines. Later Friday night we all went to Steak n’ Shake for dinner. It was Alice and Jeanine’s first time going and they were blown away by the delicious shakes!

Picture of Jeanine's first meal at Steak n' Shake!

Close up of Kristen's peanut butter cup shake! Would highly recommend!

Thursday rolled around and it was no surprise that we continued with the usual recipe testing at the Purdue Memorial Union Kitchen. We think are getting closer to actually testing these recipes (keep your fingers crossed for next week!) At this point, we had to write down all of the ingredients for each recipe and their inventory number so they can then be imported into the C-BORD system. All our scripting of numbers and ingredients will provide the ground work for the cooks to rewrite their recipes in a way that the not only will the “average Jo” will be able to reinvent the menu item, but also that a standardized recipe with nutrition information can be established. So our fellow cook friends have reassured us that all our “recipe testing” work will come in handy.

On Saturday all four of us were together once again, where we had a day to finish working on our wellness wheel projects. We successfully completed our December wellness board where we talked about antioxidants! The theme is intellectual, so we are hoping our superhero board will help students make healthier choices to “Power Up” their brains! Side note- we were inspired to spice up our board with some glitter while listening to Ke$ha Pandora. Only one board left to go!

Our antioxidant board for December! Our superhero is fighting off those harmful free radicals!

On Sunday, Kristen and Alice were once again at Hillenbrand while Jeanine and Mary Frances had their first day off in a week! They celebrated by going to the Loving Heart Animal Shelter in Lafayette where they got to play with some puppies! Because who doesn’t love puppies?! (Dear Mom, they are having a clear the shelter event on July 23rd… don’t hate me it’s a good cause!) They also visited the Battlegrounds at Tippecanoe where they became one with nature!