University of Kansas: Week 1

Hello!

I'm Talia Follador, and I am a senior at Penn State University studying Nutrition and Dietetics. I aspire to be a Registered Dietitian, but in terms of a career, I am not sure what path I would like to take. Hoping to get a better feel for the food service industry, I applied for the NACUFS internship and was placed at the University of Kansas. I’m beyond excited to begin working at KU and exploring the town of Lawrence!

Since the drive from my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA to Lawrence is about 14 hours, my parents and I broke it up by stopping in Indianapolis, Indiana and St. Louis, Missouri along the way. As an avid baseball fan, I was excited to attend a St. Louis Cardinals game. It was so cool to see how passionate St. Louis is about baseball! They had an awesome stadium (and a lot of good eats J).

Busch Stadium

Segway tour in Indianapolis

I arrived in Lawrence on Saturday afternoon and was greeted by my internship coordinator, David Weakley, who is the manager at Oliver Dining Hall. He showed me to my room in Hashinger Hall where I was welcomed with a care package that contained lots of KU goodies!

New favorite pillow case

On Sunday, I took the time to explore campus. The construction taking place on campus made my walk a little more confusing than I had anticipated. I lost my way a few times, but I did find the Kansas Union building and enjoyed the beautiful scenery along the way.

 Monday began my introduction to dining services at KU. I began my day by grabbing breakfast in Mrs. E’s (conveniently next door to Hashinger Hall) with the other intern, Mallory Crim, David, and Sheryl Kidwell, the Assistant Director. We spoke briefly about the expectations of the internship and were given our internship manuals. In addition to an overview of our weekly schedules, Mallory and I learned more about our expectations for the theme dinner we will be planning at the end of July. We also have a joint project of starting up a food truck concept, which Mallory and I found very exciting! Additionally, I am in charge of making a short video for KU’s website about a nutrition topic.

After breakfast, David gave Mallory and I a tour of the dining locations on campus. We began with Mrs. E’s and then headed to Oliver and North College Café. We ended our tour in the Kansas Union building and got to see where Impromptu, the full-service restaurant, and The Market are located. I was impressed with the dining options offered to students in The Union!

Next, we headed back to Mrs. E’s for a luncheon with members of the dining management team that we will be learning from this summer. Everyone was super welcoming and gave us great advice for being successful during our time here.

Signs of Life coffee shop

Once we finished up with lunch, Mallory and I adventured to downtown Lawrence. We walked into a few cool looking shops and stopped at a coffee shop to grab a mid-afternoon pick-me-up. It was a beautiful day, and I can’t wait to explore Lawrence more over the next two months!

Tuesday started our rotations in Mrs. E’s. Mallory and I are working in the different aspects of Mrs. E’s to understand how everything comes together to create a successful dining operation. I started my day off by swiping cards to allow diners in for lunch. Kory, the Service Manager, explained to me how the meal plans are set up at KU. Then, Tom, the employee scheduled to cashier that day, explained how the payment process is set up. Overall, it went pretty smoothly, and I enjoyed greeting the diners!

After a lunch break, I moved on to ware washing. Kirk, the main dishwasher that day, walked me through the different aspects of the dish room and explained to me how to operate the dishwasher. Although dishwashing isn’t the most glamorous job, Kirk explained how vital it is because it assures that the diners eat with clean dishware so that foodborne illness can be avoided.

Those dishes won't clean themselves! 

 During dinner, I worked at the KU Zone with Micah. The KU Zone serves food items free of gluten and the eight most common food allergies: wheat, eggs, fish, shellfish, dairy, tree nuts, soy, and peanuts. It also has a vegan food option every day. Micah showed me the special cookware, microwaves, and dishwasher that are used only at the KU Zone. Using separate equipment prevents cross contamination, which is a big deal for people who have food allergies. I also did an inventory of the freezer in the KU Zone. Allergen-free and vegan options (including vegan baked goods made from scratch!) are plentiful here at KU!

After my shift ended, I headed back to Hashinger and met up with Mallory to discuss our theme dinner. We are planning on combining our ideas of farm to table and healthy recipe substitutions. The theme name is still up in the air, but we picked out some recipes we would like to test and started discussing decoration ideas.

On Wednesday I started my day early at the bakery. I had to report to Mrs. E’s at 6 A.M. to assist Adrianna, so I was grateful that Hashinger Hall is right next door to Mrs. E’s!

Adrianna began with baking cinnamon buns. They smelled amazing and I wasn’t surprised that they went quickly at breakfast! Adrianna had to warm a loaf of banana bread as a back-up since the diners were gobbling up the cinnamon buns.

Next we cut the pumpkin bars that were prepared yesterday (with Mallory’s assistance) and set out the carrot cake to thaw for dinner. After that, we baked scones for tomorrow’s breakfast. The flavors included blueberry, cinnamon, and chocolate chip. Adrianna told me her favorite flavor is chocolate chip, but I was partial to the blueberry – they smelled so delicious!

After baking the scones, Adrianna was asked to test a new recipe for a theme dinner that Kory is planning for January. The recipe was an apple strudel with sunflower seeds. It didn’t turn out quite right; rolling up the strudel was a struggle, and a lot of the sugar oozed out of the bottom and caramelized on the tray. Also, the crust was a bit too doughy. A few of the employees stopped by to taste-test it and offer suggestions. Everyone agreed that a thinner crust and a little more salt would improve the strudel greatly! Testing the strudel allowed me to realize how important it is for Mallory and me to test our recipes for our theme dinner early on so that we can make the necessary modifications.

Apple strudel pre-baking

The aftermath

The last task Adrianna and I had was to cut and plate the carrot cake for dinner. By the end of my eight-hour shift, I was a master at “shingling” dessert items on the trays.

On Thursday I was scheduled for Line Service, but I started out in the dish room since it wasn’t very busy when I was there on Tuesday. I mainly scraped food off of dishes before they were to be put through the dishwasher. During the lunch rush, I really struggled with scraping the dishes quickly enough and they piled up fast! When things slowed down, I spent time loading and unloading the dishwasher and then learned where the different types of plates belong throughout the dining area.

Sweet n' Sour Pork

For the last part of my shift, I worked at the Global Cuisine station with Mike. He taught me how to make Sweet n’ Sour pork and tofu on the woks. I also learned how to use the fryer to make “pot stickers,” which are basically fried wontons. In addition to cooking and serving, Mike taught me how to take the temperature of the food on display. We have to temp the food every thirty minutes to assure that it’s outside of the temperature “danger zone,” which is the range of temperatures in which foods are more susceptible to becoming carriers of food borne illness. All of the foods safely remained above 140 degrees Celsius.

After dinner ended, I helped Mike clean the Global Cuisine area. We finished with determining how much food was served by subtracting the amount of food left over from the amount of food we prepared. This allows the supervisors to more accurately forecast how much of each food item to prepare.

I finished up my week by working in Hot Foods on Friday. By this point, I was pretty familiar with the set-up of the kitchen, but I had to learn how to work all of the cooking equipment, such as the steamers and Combi oven. The Combi Oven is really convenient in that it can be used to steam or dry cook food items and has a thermometer to insert into the food so that it can be set up to stop cooking the food once it reaches the correct internal temperature. Once the food reaches that temperature, the oven keeps the food warm until it’s ready to be worked with.

I helped prepare the pork and vegetable curry for dinner, along with prepping the salmon that will be served on Saturday

I also learned how to check the serving lines and back-up warmers to assure that there was enough food for the servers to place on the line. We didn’t run low on anything, but one of the supervisors, Mike, discussed with me the importance of having back-up food items in case anything would happen to run out. It’s important to keep the diners happy!

Mallory and I ended our week by grabbing cocktails after work at a bar called John Brown’s Underground. It was a relaxing way to end the week!

On Saturday we drove into Kansas City, Missouri to go to a farmer’s market that Mallory heard about. On the way, we saw some signs for garden tours, so we took an excursion to tour a few gardens. My favorite was the last one that we went to. It had a lot of pretty trees, and the gardener placed interesting statues around the garden. I admired the patience and hard work that was required to make it so beautiful!

Once in Kansas City, Mallory and I stopped in a few shops and roamed around the Farmer’s Market. There were so many beautiful fruits and vegetables!

Beautiful

While heading back to the car, we stopped in a place called the Opera House for coffee. The Opera House had not only a coffee shop, but also a restaurant, bar, and bakery. The soy latte I got hit the spot, and I loved the atmosphere. I’d be interested to go back again to try their food.

Overall, I really enjoyed myself during my first week at the University of Kansas! I learned a lot working in Mrs. E’s and enjoyed exploring Lawrence a bit. I can’t wait to see what next week has in store!