After spending another week here at the University of Kansas,
I’m starting to get a better insight into the huge amount of services that are
offered through the food services department. Week one was a fast-paced
introduction to the residential dining aspect, and week two introduced me to
the catering services and the importance of the marketing department. Not to
mention Mallory and I had some fun testing and modifying recipes for our theme
dinner!
MONDAY: Talia and Mallory versus Theme Recipes
Mallory and I decided to title our theme dinner as “Mother Nature’s Menu: A Locavore’s Delight.” In addition to choosing recipes that use locally produced ingredients, we are making healthy modifications to the recipes to increase their nutritional value.
The recipes we decided to test on Monday were our baked
desserts: a chocolate beet cake with a fat-free cream cheese frosting,
chocolate chip peanut butter bars, and applesauce oatmeal raisin cookies.
Sticking to the theme, we are hoping to get the beets for the chocolate beet
cake from a local farm. The chocolate chip peanut butter bars contain mainly chickpeas,
peanut butter, maple syrup, and vegan chocolate chips, so they are gluten-free
and vegan and packed with protein, fiber, and heart-healthy unsaturated fat. The applesauce oatmeal raisin cookies replace half of the butter with
applesauce, and the cream cheese frosting uses fat-free Greek yogurt and fat-free
cream cheese, so it is…well…fat free. J
Optimistic and craving some sweets, we headed into Mrs. E’s kitchen, prepared
for a long day of baking.
We decided to divide and conquer, so I mixed and baked the
applesauce oatmeal raisin cookies, and Mallory mixed and baked the chocolate
chip peanut butter bars. The oatmeal raisin cookies were simple and came out of
the oven looking good. They tasted amazing, as well: crispy on the outside,
soft and moist on the inside. Everyone enjoyed them!
Talia and Mallory: 1. Recipe Fails: 0.
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| Oatmeal raisin cookie batter |
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| SUCCESS |
After a rejuvenating lunch, we worked together to mix up the
chocolate beet cake. It was a complicated process that involved egg separating, chocolate melting, and beet pureeing. After finally finishing
the batter, we put it in a hotel pan and threw it in the oven. In the meantime,
we mixed together the fat-free cream cheese frosting. As a huge fan of this
type of frosting, I was excited to see how the recipe turned out.
Unfortunately, it was way too runny in texture, even after we tried to thicken
it with more powdered sugar and cream cheese. We accepted defeat.
Mallory and Talia: 1. Recipe Fails: 1.
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| Chocolate beet cake |
After feeling defeated by the frosting, we were very happy
to bite into the blissful chocolate beet cake. It was moist, soft, full of
chocolate flavor, and thus withstood the critical taste-testing of our
coworkers. Although the beets needed to be pureed to a smoother texture,
overall it was a success and will remain on the menu.
Mallory and Talia: 2. Recipe Fails: 1.
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| SO GOOEY |
All throughout our beet cake process, the chocolate chip
peanut butter bars remained on the counter, mocking us. After tasting how
amazing the beet cake was, we decided from the very mixed reviews and the many
other recipes that still require modification that the bars were a lost cause. However, it’s
definitely a recipe I’m keeping on file for future use. J
Mallory and Talia: 2. Recipe Fails: 2.
TUESDAY
I returned to Mrs. E’s kitchen on Tuesday for my chill
foods rotation where worked alongside Liz chopping vegetables, mixing salad
dressings and sauces, and re-stocking the salad bar. This gave me a better feel
for all of the different walk-in coolers and the organization of the storage
room, since I was doing lots of running back and forth to fetch the items I
needed to prep.
WEDNESDAY
On Wednesday, Mallory and I took a field trip with David to
the Sysco warehouse in Lenexa. Lorenzo, KU’s Sysco representative, joined us on
a tour. We started in the dry storage area and got to see the
loading docks where the shipments come into the warehouse. It was such a huge
storage area, and I was amazed that it remained organized in such a fashion
that the workers could efficiently find the products they needed to stock or
ship. Our tour guide explained that the warehouse runs on an automated system
involving electronic bracelets. The employees use the bracelets to scan bar
codes on the supplies, which tells where they are stocked and keeps track of
the inventory.
Next, our tour started to get chilly as we walked through the
refrigerated storage. My favorite thing to see was the fresh fish section. Our
tour guide explained that Sysco takes pride in the freshness of the fish they
offer to their customers. The fish is usually shipped to customers within three
days of being caught, which is impressive since a lot of it comes from the east
coast and Canada.
While I already knew that keeping cold foods such as fish
and meat is vital to assuring food safety, I was surprised to learn that one of
the most difficult products to ship under temperature control is bananas since
the temperature that bananas are stored in can vastly alter their ripeness. If
they are too warm or too cold, they will ripen in an odd way and may not be in
prime condition when they reach their destination; thus, Sysco has special
blankets that cover the bananas to protect them from the elements while they
are being shipped.
We finished our walk through the warehouse by checking out
the freezer. The cold temperature brought back memories of bitter Pennsylvania
winters, and thus I wasn’t thrilled about the freezer section! It was really
cool to see how huge the freezer was, though, and it amazed me that such a
large area can be kept that cold!
We ended our tour by heading up to the test kitchen. On the
way, we walked through a few display rooms that contained paper products,
breads, pastas, and other miscellaneous items that Sysco supplies to their
buyers. I learned that Sysco also offers a lot of other services to their
customers. These services include marketing (such as writing menus), helping
their customers save money in any way they can by finding the best products for
their needs, and the test kitchen. They can use the test kitchen to help
customers modify recipes they may have or to find different ways to use
products in order to get the most bang for their buck.
After discussing the test kitchen, we got to see it in
action and enjoy a freshly prepared lunch! It began with a mixed green salad
topped with strawberries, blueberries, pecans, locally produced cheese, fried
shrimp, and a sun-dried tomato dressing (the dressing was my favorite part –
I’m always down for sun-dried tomatoes J).
This was followed by grilled chicken with a cream dill sauce, green beans, and
roasted baby potatoes. We finished it off with massive chocolate chip cookies.
Mallory and I were pretty full by the time dessert rolled around, but we ended
up gobbling down the cookie nonetheless.
After the tour ended, we had a little extra time before we
needed to be back to campus for our meeting with marketing, so Dave took us to
Pendleton Farm. There were a lot of succulents for sale, which I found
absolutely gorgeous, so of course I had to buy one! It added some nice
decoration to my windowsill and made my room feel a little homier.
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| My first succulent :) |
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| A preview of marketing materials to come! |
We met with Claudia next and told her about our theme dinner and
ideas we had for posters and menus. I showed her a few pictures that one of my
graphic design friends made for me as a starting point for our posters. She also gave us more information about marketing research we
could do to get the ball rolling on our food truck project. She actually had a
focus group from a few months ago that touched upon KU students’ opinions of
what they would like to see offered on a food truck. Mallory and I were so
thankful for the information because we’ve been brainstorming pretty
unsuccessfully on that project so far! Additionally, we were comforted to find out that
the marketing department has cameras and media tools we can use to create our
separate video projects – a big step up from using our smartphones!
Next, we walked over to Lauren’s office to discuss using
social media to promote our projects. I am thinking about putting some info on
Twitter about the progress of our theme dinner in order to get people excited
about attending. Lauren gave us some great ideas about ways to get the word
out, along with some ways to promote our food truck project as well. It kick
started some more brainstorming for Mallory and me about involving the student
population in developing the food truck concept.
THURSDAY
On Thursday I headed back to the Kansas Union building to
work with Kim and Janna. I started off my day at Impromptu Café. I shadowed Kim as she managed Impromptu throughout lunch. While walking me through the kitchen area and café, Kim
explained to me the idea behind the cafe. It was opened in 2006 in order to
give diners at KU a full-service, sit down dining option with affordable
prices. She explained that they keep their costs low by working with the
catering department; when Impromptu is busy, Kim can pull staff from the
catering kitchen to help out. Additionally, a lot of the food items at Impromptu
are prepped in the catering kitchen, which is across the hallway from
Impromptu’s kitchen. The relationship between Impromptu and the catering
department also allows Janna to test new recipes on Impromptu’s menu or use
extra food/ingredients from a catering event to change up Impromptu’s menu.
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| Mozzarella Flatbread |
One of the specialties at Impromptu is the watermelon
lemonade that uses locally grown watermelons. In addition to the watermelon,
herbs from the roof top garden also allow a lot of the menu items to have fresh
and local components to them. On Thursday’s menu, there was a flatbread pizza
that featured a mozzarella cheese infused with rosemary and lavender from the
garden located on the roof of the Union building. Kim got one as lunch and
allowed me to try a small piece. I was not surprised that it was delicious!
Once 2:30 rolled around, I wrapped things up with Kim and
then headed across the hall to Janna’s office to learn more about the catering
department. She showed me some brochures of the catering menu and explained the
different kinds of events that are catered by KU Dining Services. Along with
prepping and serving the food, there’s a lot of budgeting and time management
that must take place to execute all of the different events. I really admire
Janna for all of the work she has to do to assure that the preparation for the
events takes place properly so that they run smoothly – my head was spinning
just hearing about all of the tasks she completes on a regular basis!
Janna showed me around the catering kitchen next and then
walked me up to the roof top garden. It was a beautiful day, so I got to soak
up some sun while I admired the variety of herbs growing in the garden. I was
jealous of all the basil. I feel very inspired to start
my own herb garden when I return home!
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| Rooftop Garden |
Along with changing up my work schedule, working with Janna
and Kim was a great experience in that I was able to better realize how
different Impromptu and catering are from residential dining. Residential
dining has a more consistent structure to its menu and staffing schedules,
while managing Impromptu and the catering department require a lot more
thinking on your feet, especially since the food items at catered events are
chosen by the customers, while the menus at the dining halls are more
consistent. I’m excited to help staff a catered event to understand more fully
how the catering department at KU operates!
FRIDAY: Talia and Mallory versus Theme Recipes, Round 2
Mallory and I had another project planning day on Friday, so
we tested more recipes for our theme dinner. Mallory started with the
cauliflower mashed potatoes, while I worked on the cauliflower alfredo sauce.
I’ve never been a huge fan of alfredo sauce because of the heavy cream, but
this recipe avoided the heavy cream by using pureed cauliflower along with
vegetable broth, garlic, skim milk, salt, pepper, and a small amount of butter.
I was worried that it wouldn’t be thick enough, but it actually turned out
really tasty! I needed a bit more salt, though, because when we tasted it with
pasta, the flavor wasn’t quite strong enough. We’re hoping to pair it with
whole wheat fettucini in order to increase the nutritional profile of the dish.
Talia and Mallory: 3. Recipe Fails: 2.
The cauliflower mashed potatoes tasted great as well,
despite the potatoes needing to be cooked a little bit longer. We chose this
recipe because it’s lower in fat due to the addition of chicken broth and
nonfat Greek yogurt in place of some of the butter. It also is lower in
calories since the cauliflower replaces some of the potatoes. We paired the mashed potatoes with a recipe we found for mushroom gravy, which ended up being one of our
favorite so far! When we put it on the mashed potatoes, we couldn’t
even tell they contained cauliflower.
Talia and Mallory: 5. Recipe Fails: 2.
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| SUCCESS |
Another recipe that we are putting on the menu is Cajun
baked sweet potato fries. They were really easy to make because I simply had to
mix together the spices, toss them with the fries and some olive oil, and put
them in the oven. Mallory and I were very pleased with how they turned out and
will definitely be including them on our menu!
Talia and Mallory: 6. Recipe Fails: 2.
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| "Respect the beet." |
The final recipe we tested on Friday was called Beets n’
Sweets and consisted of sweet potatoes, beets, and onions with a mild amount of
seasoning. Mallory was really excited about this recipe because beets are one
of her favorite vegetables. I'm not ashamed to say that her enthusiasm for beets has been rubbing off on me
lately -- it’s amazing how naturally sweet they are! Despite our passion for beets, the dish
didn’t turn out quite the way we had expected. Since we had to use frozen sweet
potatoes, we thawed them out first by steaming them in the Combi oven. They
unfortunately came out of the Combi very mushy and thus didn’t roast well.
Additionally, the onions were pre-sliced and were too thin, so those roasted
too quickly, while the beets needed to be roasted a little longer. The flavor
was good, though, so we simply need to re-test the recipe with properly thawed
sweet potatoes and a longer roasting time.
Talia and Mallory: 7. Recipe Fails: 2.
SATURDAY
On Saturday, Mallory and I got up early to go to the
farmer’s market in Lawrence, but we had the address wrong and therefore missed
our chance to buy some fresh produce. However, we did get to stop in a cool
little coffee shop on Massachusetts street. I have a passion for espresso, and so I was very pleased
with the drink I got, Shots in the Dark, which consisted of two shots of
espresso in a cup of coffee. Probably too much caffeine, but it hit the spot.
J
On Saturday evening, I played some pick-up volleyball and
basketball with some friends I’ve made through working at Mrs. E’s. I’m not too
skilled at either sport, but it was fun to bring out my competitive side! Not to mention, my
basketball team was the champion in a 3 game series.
Now that week 2 is under my belt, I’m beginning to feel even
more at home here in Lawrence! I know I have much more to learn still, and I
can’t wait to see what opportunities will present themselves in the coming
weeks!
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