Final Week at Penn State

It’s our last week in Pennsylvania and we definitely have mixed feelings about leaving. It’s been quite the adventure from New York to Belleville and all the hard work in between. We won’t forget the experience we’ve had here with our mentors and the friends we’ve made while working.

Like we promised in our last blog, here’s the menu and theme of our luncheon.

From Marie’s Peach Summer Salad we came up with a French Vineyard theme. We called our Luncheon Soleil d'été (which means summer sun in French) – Summer Getaway to a French Vineyard.

The Menu:

Appetizers – French Bread and Gourgeres served with a Cheese, Jam, and Honey Platter

Entrée – Peach Summer Salad served with lemon basil chicken, flank steak, or tofu option and a white balsamic vinaigrette

Dessert - Raspberry Crème Brûlée

Specialty Drink – Peach Spritzer

At the end of the meal we will have to-go bags with mini macaroons inside and a thank you note attached to it. Niki and Marie are going to be in the back of the house in charge of the food. They will be working alongside Chef Mark.

We’ve had so much fun planning our luncheon. I think our favorite part was figuring out and buying our decorations. Hannah and I are in charge of the front of the house which means that this week we will be the one’s setting up the tables and getting all the decorations in place. We will also be in charge of serving the food and making sure everyone’s glasses are full.

Last week we spent our time working at the Redifer Dining Hall supervising. I think we were all excited to be able to go shopping for the luncheon at the end of the week. We bought mason jars to fill with flowers, burlap table runners, a huge wine glass, fake grapes, wine corks and a frame to put our photo inside. It took us a while to find everything…we made stops at a couple of home accessory stores and then Michaels. We also made a few stops to get some food items from Trader Joes.

The shopping day was also great because we had made plans to go to Café Laura. Café Laura is run by HRIM and Nutrition students at PSU and for the class they plan theme days. All of us and Maria got dressed up and went to Café Laura for the Polynesian theme day. The food was amazing and we probably ate our weight in food… maybe not, but it sure felt like it. Coconut Shrimp, Mahi Mahi, Chicken Sliders, and Banana Bread Pudding.

This final week has been crunch time. Hannah and I had a hard time making sure we had received responses to our evites and what protein choice people wanted. It was a little bit hectic. Marie and Niki were on top of food ordering and food prep. They had to place a ton of orders in to the Bakery for our breads and desserts. Thanks to Mary we had our menu, thank you notes and cards done by the end of last week. She was amazing at putting together everything for us, and her designs were just what we wanted.

On Monday we spent the day gathering the rest of the food we needed from Wegmans – our cheeses for the appetizer…etc. The rest of the day we put together thank you cards for everyone that we spent time with while at Penn State.

Also, Mr. Hopey was kind enough to offer some of the flowers from his garden for our luncheon so we wouldn’t have to spend money on flowers. It was perfect because we were thinking of doing yellow, purple and orange flowers which was just what he had. We are going to pick some of them after we finish setting up everything Tuesday morning. – Mr Hopey’s garden and backyard was gorgeous. There were so many flowers to choose from that our arrangements turned out beautiful.

This week is going by so fast. We made another reservation at Café Laura for Tuesday night. Hannah and I were looking forward to it because the theme is Under the Sea… Seafood is our favorite. It will be our last hurrah before our luncheon on Wednesday. We invited Maria, and her mom came too. The food and company was amazing. We even got a tour of the back of the house from Chef J.P. We learned more about the class that runs the theme day and it was pretty interesting. After all that food, all four of us reluctantly went on a run to burn it off.

We spent Tuesday putting everything in place for the luncheon which included polishing silverware, ironing linens, putting up decorations, printing out menus, name tags, and thank you tags, setting up our slideshow of pictures, and picking flowers.

The back of the house is pretty busy too… getting some of the food prep ready for the 25 people planning to attend our luncheon. They had to marinate the chicken and steak. They also had to make the vinaigrette. I’m pretty sure we are going to have a lot of food left over. We’ll definitely be feasting on it afterwards.

WEDNESDAY!! The day of the luncheon – We arrived at Redifer early in the morning to get everything else set up. Niki and Marie spent the morning cooking up the food and getting it all prepared. Hannah and I brought out the sparkling white grape juice and put the finishing touches on the tables with bread baskets and the cheese, honey butter, and jam platter. While Hannah and I managed the front of the house and served food, Niki and Marie were in the back of the house plating salads and making sure everything was looking good. Over all we were extremely pleased with how it looked. The orange of the peaches in our spritzer, the yellow and orange of our flowers, and the cheese boards.We were glad Maria could help us with the luncheon and even supply us with our red bow ties which pulled everything together.

All our hard work paid off... look at those amazing salads. More delicious than it looks. 

At the end of our luncheon we had a slide show with all of the pictures we have accumulated over our time here…some funny, some serious. We also handed out thank you bags with caramel and chocolate macaroons. They were so delicious!

The Macaroons... absolutely on point. 

Overall our luncheon went really well! The food was amazing and it was great to have everyone together so we could thank them for such a great NACUFS experience. It was especially hard for Maria seeing as it’s the last NACUFS interns she will ever have and we are all leaving to go home in the next few days. We all really appreciated her hard work and effort she put into making this internship fun and meaningful. It definitely was an experience we won’t forget. We are glad we had the chance to get to know Pennsylvania and the friendly people we’ve come in contact with here. It’s going to be hard for us to leave all of the wonderful people we’ve learned to call family. It has already been so hard to say good-bye. 

Our mentor Jaime from Pollock

Our mentor Steve at Redifer. 

And of course, Maria

Thank you Penn State for such a great experience!! We ended the NACUFS program with a bang.

                                                                - The Last and Final NACUFS Interns of 2016
                                                                                Hannah and Michelle 

Last 2 Weeks at Penn State

Hi everyone! Marie and Niki here for one last time to talk to you about our last two weeks at Penn State. Wow, we cannot believe we are done! This summer flew by!

Our final project was creating a thank you luncheon for all of the people we have met throughout our time here. For the past couple of weeks, we have been working hard to make the luncheon a success. All of our breaks during our regular managers shifts were spent glued to the computer.

We decided to be the back of the house team. As the back of the house, we were in charge of creating the menu, ordering the food, managing inventory, collaborating with the bakery, and prepping the food the day of the luncheon. Michelle and Hannah were the front of the house team. Their jobs were creating invitations, creating thank you notes, buying decorations, decorating the room, and serving the guests the day of the luncheon. It was a great experience to be in charge of this luncheon from beginning to end. It really shined a light on all the small things you need to think about when being in charge of people's food.

One of our biggest challenges was two of our guests had peanut/treenut allergies. Since some of our food was coming from the bakery, and the bakery does not have an allergen free kitchen, we had to create a modified menu for those guests and handle their food with special care.

Since the winning salad of our culinary challenge was a light summery salad, we decided to to do a summer French theme. For our appetizer, we served a cheese board with boursin and brie cheese, fig butter, honey butter, raspberry jam, french bread, and gougeres. The salad was a spring mix with peaches, red onions, tomatoes, goat cheese, candied pecans, and a peach white balsamic vinaigrette. The salad was topped with either chicken or steak option, which had been marinated in a peach lemon basil marinade. The dessert was a raspberry creme brûlée. The guests left with a bag of macaroons. Below are pictures from the luncheon

The front of the house did an AMAZING job!

No this is not a picture from Pintrest, we made this beauty!

I'm not drooling, YOU'RE drooling

Creme brûlée heaven

 Of course, none of this would have been possible without our fearless front and back of the house mentors, Maria and Chef Mark. We worked primarily with Chef Mark, who was fantastic. He kept us organized in the back of the house, tweaked recipes, and assisted us whenever we needed help. Not only is he a great chef, but he is a great leader who always has a smile on his face. We will miss you Chef Mark!!

Us and Chef Mark right before the guests arrived at our final luncheon

Lastly, we would like to thank our pineapple-loving internship coordinator Maria for such a wonderful experience at Penn State. In our first blog, we talked about how we noticed right off the bat how much she cared for each of us. That feeling has only grown exponentially as the weeks have gone on. She went above and beyond to make this experience one full of fun and great learning experiences. 

One last family portrait by the Lion's Shrine

Thanks for reading about our experiences at Penn State!

Love, Marie and Niki, NACUFS 2016

Penn State Weeks 6-7

Hi there! Niki and Marie back again to tell you all about some of our last few weeks here at Penn State. Since our last blog, we competed in a culinary challenge, where we created salad recipes from scratch to make for a panel of judges. Whoever won the challenge's salad was to be the feature entree in our farewell luncheon. We created the recipes, shopped for the ingredients through FoodPro and at Wegmans, and prepared the salads. Below are some pictures:

About to chop some basil with my newly learned knife skills!

 Presenting my salad in front of our panel of judges

All of the salads we created were delicious and completely different from one another. Ultimately Marie's salad won, but Niki's was only behind by half a point! Below are our creations:

 Romaine lettuce with pineapple, avocado, red peppers, and coconut crusted chicken with a pina colada dressing 

Spring mix with peaches, candied pecans, goat cheese, red onion, and lemon basil chicken with a honey vinaigrette

Since Marie's salad won, the final luncheon will feature her salad and the theme and rest of the menu will be built around the salad. In much of our free time these last two weeks, we have been working on finalizing everything for the luncheon. 

Later that week we went to Shaver's Creek, which is an environmental center with hiking, kayaking, and animal exhibits. Here we did some team bonding exercises to prepare us for working on our final projects as a team. 

Maria hooked us up with the marketing department to get a look at some of the rebranding Penn State is doing for some of its retail locations. While there, one of the photographers took us to the arboretum to take professional head shots. 

We took a cheesy family portrait because we are basically a family now

For our final four weeks of the internship we get to take part in a management rotation. During this rotation we shadow various managers and assistant managers at the different dining commons on campus. Our mentors show us their normal work routines and explain to us all the details of their responsibilities as a manager. Our first manager that we shadowed was Kevin, an assistant manager at Pollock Dining Commons. He is in charge of breakfast and lunch shifts so we had an early start at 5am! When we first started for the day, Kevin showed us how to open up the building and set up the dining hall for breakfast. We also got to sit in in a managers meeting that they hold before every shift. Kevin also is in charge of one of the convenient stores located in Pollock called "The Mix". This store was under construction at the time and he was working hard to open it back up as soon as possible. We got to assist him in taking inventory for the store - which included all of the inventory in the -3 degree freezer. BRR! 

The next mentor we shadowed was Jamie, who is also an assistant manager at Pollock Dining Commons. Jamie took the time to explain to us the in's and out's of FoodPro, which is a system that Penn State uses to order food. Jamie also let us shadow some of the student managers for a lunch shift. It was interesting to see how important the roles of the student managers are to make the shift run smoothly and efficiently. 

After our time at Pollock Dining Commons, we shifted over to Redifer Dining Commons to shadow another assistant manager, Steve. Steve went through the union contract and explained how Penn State employees follow the handbook. We also got to be in the front of the house and work as cashiers and supervisors. 

We only have one week left! Look out for our last blog post!

-Marie and Niki

Hey everyone, it's Michelle and Hannah again,
We are so surprised that our internship is already half way done! The time is literally flying by. The past few weeks have been an absolute blast though!

The weekend after our big New York trip we met with Chef Mark K. and he taught us knife skills and a variety of cutting techniques. Chef Mark was really entertaining to work and made us laugh a lot throughout the lesson.

We made apple swans!

We also had a diversity session which was was really interesting and interactive. We then had lunch with HR A. Martell and D. Moore where we learned a lot about their jobs and they were really enjoyable to talk to! After that we went to a resume building workshop with J. Heim. This was really beneficial because there are always changes that can be made on resumes!
We also met with C. Hurley and he taught us about pepsi contracts and different aspects of his job. Later on, we met with Ed Dobo, the safety manager. He was so entertaining to spend a few hours with and he had some crazy stories to tell us!

After that busy week of meetings, we worked at the Bryce Jordan Center Concession stand for high school commencement. We were really busy during that shift selling and making nachos, burgers, hotdogs, etc. so the time was flying by. We had the weekend off which was nice so we could relax and recooperate after our busy week.

Monday was definatly an exciting day because we had the opportunity to tour the warehouse and bakery! We went into the warehouses freezer and it was -2 degrees and absolutely huge! The bakery tour was really exciting because who doesn't love sweets?! At the end of the tour, the bakers had set up a station for us to decorate cupcakes! We were all so excited and ate way too many when we came home.

Marie decorating cupcakes

The next day we went to Belleville, PA which is amish town. All of us bought too many moon pies and whoopie pies which were absolutely amazing. We also attended a livestock auction which we found to be really sad.

Maria, Hannah, and Michelle at Belleville

So many whoopie pies!

We also were able to meet with the dietitians and hear all about what they do on campus. Their jobs seemed really interesting and everyday is different for them which is nice.

Week 6-7 at Penn State

Hello, it is Hannah and Michelle again!

We cannot believe that next week is our final week of the internship. The time at Penn State has gone by extremely fast since we have been learning a lot and having so much fun!

Week 6:
On Monday we visited Shaver's Creek which is about 20 minutes away from campus. The reason we went here is to complete ice breaker challenges and really get us to enhance our team building skills. Maria thought this would be good for us since our management rotations start soon and we will be working closely with one another!

Such a beautiful day! 

For this exercise we all had to walk on trollies together and communicate!

This was a huge wooden platform that was unbalanced, we worked together to get it to balance straight

After shavers creek, we did our culinary challenge. For this event we each picked out salad recipes with homemade dressing that we wanted to prepare and we had a competition! Chef Mark was great and had our work stations set up for us and he assisted us when we needed it. Below are pictures of our salads: Michelle made a Southwestern Chicken Salad, Marie made a Peach Summer Salad,
Niki made a Pina Colada Chicken Salad and Hannah made an Autumn Cobb Salad.

Presenting in front of our judges! Mr. Hopey, Cheff Bill, and SNA's interns, and Meghan ______

Marie's salad won the competition so we will be planning our final farewell luncheon based off of her salad! We started planning our luncheon right after her salad won. So far we have picked out a theme, brainstormed decoration ideas, sent out our evites, had our menu designed by Mary _____, and planned the rest of the menu! On our blog four we will tell you the menu and theme, but for now its a surprise, so check back in!

Later on this week, Maria was able to get us an appointment for professional photos! We went to the arboretum for these and it was a lot of fun!

Week 7:

We started our management rotations this week which has been a big learning experience. On day 1 and 2 Niki and Hannah were at Pollock Dining Commons and we shadowed Kevin Johnston and Jamie Robinson. Kevin showed us how to do inventory in their 35 degree coolers and it was so cold! Luckily he gave us warm fleece jackets and gloves. He also showed us how to do a building safety inspection which was really interesting. Jamie taught us all about Foodpro and had us shadow a crew leader for the lunch shift. It was really fun spending time with these two because they really wanted us to learn and they taught us so much about the management role in the food service industry.

On day 1 and 2 for Michelle and Marie, they were at Redifer Dining Commons. They spent their time learning how to cashier and supervise the different food stations in the dining hall.

For days 3 and 4 we switched places, Hannah and Niki went to Redifer and Marie and Michelle went to Pollock.

We also had the opportunity to shadow Meghan Kronenwetter and her 2 interns, which was really great. The interns showed us what they were working on and we learned what they do on a daily basis. They make educational food pamphlets, work with the menu and allergy cards, and they set up booths at the HUB to try and spread the word on healthy eating topics! Meghan also asked each one of us to write a blog for their website so we have all been working on that also.

Stay tuned for next week where we will show you pictures of our farewell luncheon!