End of Week 3 

Thursday (6/18)

Today Laura and I worked on developing and sampling our allergen free mac n' cheese for our recipe project. After talking with Dot and doing a little research of our own, we came up with the best ingredients in hopes of making it taste as close to regular mac n' cheese as possible. We put a little twist on it, by adding cauliflower as part of the topping with panko breadcrumbs -- gluten-free of course! We also used ingredients like brown rice penne, Daiya cheese, rice milk, and Earth Balance butter. Daiya cheese definitely has a different quality to it, setting it apart from regular cheese just by looking at it. It was almost rubbery when we first began to melt it and were surprised at how long it took to melt...almost 20 minutes! As we were in the process of making it, one of the workers at Couch, who is vegan, came to talk to us about how we were preparing it, offering suggestions on other products we could use if ours failed. She was so excited to try it, and we were even more excited when she said she loved it! We were very hesitant to try it, especially because we both love cheese and were scared it wouldn't taste nearly the same, but we also ended up loving it! It almost reminded us of Velveeta cheese, and we both would easily eat it again!







Friday (6/19)

This morning we were with Kevin Barker, who was performing a safety and sanitation assessment at Couch. He performs these assessments 12 times a year at Couch, and 6 times a year at all the other dining options. The main point he enforced was that he was always looking for "indicators," meaning that if he caught someone doing something unsafe or unsanitary and someone said it was just in that moment, he knows to think differently. As he put it, he just happened to have caught that person in the right time. Basically he looked at everything from holding temperatures of food, if surfaces were properly cleaned, if everyone was wearing a hairnet or hat and name tag, all equipment was clean, etc. With Couch just having one of fourteen dining options open during the summer, I can only imagine how long it takes during the school year to get the temperature of everything!

After our assessment, Laura and I made our 25 serving batch of the mac n' cheese, for our standardized recipe, in hopes that it would turn out as well as our small batch yesterday, and it actually turned out even better! On Monday we are going to come back and see how it reheats, and give out samples for the employees to try with a small survey for feedback!

Saturday (6/20)

Today we didn't do too much by lay by the pool. After a long week of storms, we wanted to be outside for as long as possible! 

Sunday (6/21)

In the morning, we went to Einstein Bagel for brunch, then headed to Red Coyote in OKC, which is one of the top ranked running stores in the US. After that, we went to Lake Thunderbird, a huge lake in Norman that people go to do a variety of activities, from boating to fishing to swimming or camping out!


You can see in the picture below that the pier is underwater from all the flooding that has been happening!






Beginning of Week 4

Monday (6/22)

Today Laura and I sampled out our allergen-free mac n' cheese and received great feedback! There were a couple of workers who were not huge fans, but it was mainly because they didn't like the crunch on top, which is just a personal preference. One person even said they would choose it over regular mac n' cheese! Overall, we are so happy with how it turned out. Afterwards, we went back to the office to finish up the project.