Final Weeks in Berkeley, CA

  
It's hard to believe that as I type this, we are now finished with our 8-week NACUFS internship experience! Between long educational days in the campus kitchens to the worldly and eye-opening field trips, we got more out of our time here than we ever thought possible. Here's a glimpse back on our last two weeks at UC Berkeley. 

~WEEK 7~

MONDAY: The penultimate week here began on a relaxing yet productive note. In fact, most of our time in week 7 and 8 was spent working on our final project and presentation. We worked really well together, and came up with a lot of really great ideas!  As mentioned in earlier blog posts, our main project for this summer involved a makeover of one of the dining halls on campus, Café 3, to a more plant-forward menu. I'll go into more detail of exactly what our involvement in this project was later in the week. 

TUESDAY: Tuesday we spent the day in Crossroads, working with the sous chefs to prep foods for lunch. We kept busy cutting up tons of produce (zucchini and watermelon) and brushed up on our knife skills. It wasn't that exciting of a day, but since we knew our time here was coming to and end, we cherished every last moment working in the kitchens. Once we finished we headed over to Café 3 to get some last minute questions answered for our project.   


WEDNESDAY: On Wednesday we were invited to a Cheese Making Class!! Along with a few other member of the Cal Dining staff, we ventured over to the north part of campus to an educational kitchen in the Food Service department. Here we learned how to make 3 soft cheeses: Ricotta, Fromage-Blanc (Goat Cheese), and Mozzarella. We were delighted to learn that cheese making requires neither expertise nor expensive ingredients or equipment. We started by heating the milk base so that it started to curd. The enzyme rennet is added to help that process happen. The milk then begins to coagulate into one uniform mass. Once the cheese was solidified to our liking, the next step determined the type of cheese we would be making. For the Fromage-Blanc, we separated the curds from the whey (milk proteins) by pouring the mixture through a cheese cloth. The liquid whey went straight through into the pot, and the remaining curd mass was then wrapped up tightly with the cheese cloth. We hung this to further filter out while we finished the other cheeses. For the ricotta, a similar process was followed with the exception of whole milk being used in place of goat's milk. Ricotta also did not need to be drained as much as the Fromage-Blanc, so we were able to eat this one shortly after preparation. Lastly, the mozzarella had a few additional steps after the draining of the whey from the curds. We had to slice the cheese into 1" thick strips, then heat the strips in salt water. After we removed them from heat, we allowed the cheese strips to cool slightly before stretching the cheese with our hands. We had to stretch and knead the cheese, then form it into little mozzarella balls (as shown below). Once we were done with all the cheese we got to sample them with a variety of classic "cheese foods" like tomato, crackers, grapes, and wine. We had such a fun time making cheese!!
  


THURSDAY: On Thursday we started our day at Crossroads, brainstorming ideas to more conveniently display allergen information about the daily menu during service. The current method is to type up the menu items individually for each station and then add allergen information accordingly. This is an extremely time-consuming process for the office staff, as they have to do them every day, three times a day. After printing the allergen information, they then place them in plastic holders that go on top of the serving line. Our task was to come up with more efficient ways of displaying this information. Though we had many ideas, the two best ideas were to use chalkboards to write the menu and allergen information each day and to have one spot in the dining hall specifically dedicated to allergens where students could look up the allergens for each menu item. The chalkboard idea cuts down on office time and opens up the potential for a student or other food service worker to write up the menu and allergens easily without needing to access the office. The allergen zone would also eliminate the need for printing and save lots of time putting up signs at each station. They management team seemed excited about the ideas and they hope to pilot them at at least one station very soon! The rest of the day was spent working on our final presentation, which included completing the Cafe 3 menu analysis. The analysis comprised of us going over the menu and designating each item as vegan, vegetarian, or neither and then compiling statistics based on this information that might be useful to the management team. It was definitely a productive day!

FRIDAY: Today was our last field trip :(

And they certainly saved the best for last! We toured the famous Bill Niman's cattle and turkey farm and were treated to a delicious lunch served out of their actual home. The day began with a quick truck ride to the edge of the ranch (literally on the ocean!) to visit some of the happy cows. Bill talked a lot about the benefits of grass-fed beef, as well as logistics of running a cattle farm. All the cows were very docile and not at all bothered by our interruption, which Bill Niman said was an indicator of happy and relaxed cows. Niman is a huge supporter of the grass-fed beef movement, and strongly believes it could be a system that is replicated throughout the United States. After visiting the cows, we took another bumpy truck ride to the baby cows, where we learned that the cows are switched to different pastures based on age or pregnancy status. The cows do a lot to keep the brush down in the fields, which makes the pastures grassy and sustainable for cattle grazing. 

After visiting the calves, we entered the loud confines of the turkey enclosure. Contrary to the horrendous conditions most American poultry is subjected to, the turkeys' enclosure at the ranch was wide open and clean. Before we left, Bill gave us some turkey eggs to take home and eat (which we did, and they were unbelievably delicious!). A delicious lunch was then served from their own kitchen and was made by Bill's wife, Nicolette. After some wine and good conversation, we then head out on the road back to Berkeley.

<--Turkey egg

~FINAL WEEK~

TUESDAY: Tuesday we spent the day with Liam, another member of the Cal Catering team. His job is to oversee "Training Tables" which is basically just the catering and food service operation for the athletes on campus. Although he mostly works with the football team, he's also provided meal services for the basketball, volleyball, soccer, and rugby teams. We started the day at California Memorial Stadium. This is where the football team plays and trains, as well as where the primary catering office and Training Tables kitchen is located. Liam gave us a tour of the kitchen, where we were allowed to observe the football players come in for both breakfast and lunch meals. During each of the meals we had the pleasure of talking to Jordan, the new sports dietitian on campus. Fresh out of grad school, it was really interesting to hear the new and exciting nutrition-related ideas that he was bringing to Cal. He explained to us some of the healthy changes he was making to the Training Tables menus, as well as the Sports Nutrition education sessions he was planning on executing for the football team. At every meal, as athletes come through the service line, Jordan encourages them to balance out their plates with protein, grains, and vegetables. He's also a big advocate for the salad bar. The last part of our day consisted of commuting over to the other end of campus to the Haas Pavilion, where both the volleyball and basketball teams play. We saw the micro kitchens there and learned how meals are executed there on a bit smaller scale.

  

MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY: 3 Full days this week were spent completing our project and getting every detail ready for our final presentation on Friday. Everything was starting to really come together, and we were getting very excited!! We decided to use Prezi to make our presentation, which was a learning experience in itself but looks a lot more exciting than just your average Powerpoint. 

FRIDAY: Presentation day!! And also our very last day as NACUFS interns at UC Berkeley. It was a bittersweet day, but being able to present our ideas for Café 3 that we had been working on all summer was the perfect culmination of the internship. Some of the highlights of our presentation included an overview of the new elements of the Café 3 menu, some background and research on why the project was a good idea for Cal, and possible pros and cons of the new menu implementation. We also analyzed the new menu to see what percentage of recipes were vegan, vegetarian, or meat-based. Since the idea was to make Café 3 primarily a plant-forward dining hall, it was important to see what the statistics actually were! It was fascinating to pick apart each recipe and look at the ingredients to make our judgement, especially since we found the menu to be 50% vegan, 43% vegetarian, and only 7% meat-based!! Some other fun parts of our project were coming up with marketing ideas to advertise the new "look" of Café 3 to the students and faculty at UC Berkeley. We also talked about what the addition of a Kosher station to the dining hall would be like, and brainstormed all the special things the chefs and managers would need to consider to include that accurately and professionally. Overall, everyone seemed to LOVE our presentation and we both felt really proud of ourselves. It all came together so nicely, and was the perfect opportunity for us to say our thank yous and goodbyes. 

From the bottom of our hearts THANK YOU to NACUFS and Cal Dining for an amazing summer internship experience. Without a doubt we are going to take everything we learned back to the east coast, and with us as we move on through our dietetic internships this upcoming year. 

So long and farewell,

Madeline and Emily