Week 3 at UND!

One of my favorite aspects of my NACUFS internship so far is that every day is different; where I am on campus and what I am doing changes on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis. This past week at UND was no exception!

Monday, I spent most of the day in the office. After lunch, I attended a brief meeting and product sampling with Dustin. Bob, a broker for FSA, visited UND to prepare us some samples of a few chicken products Dining Services is thinking about incorporating on to menus this fall. Members of Dining Services need to take into consideration a number of factors including the price of both the new product, as well as the product it will be replacing. Taste is obviously important; our Executive Chef, Greg, wanted to make sure that the flavor would work with multiple recipes. One of the spicier breaded chicken tenders was delicious, but we all agreed that it could only be used for certain recipes with more spice in them, such as barbecue or Mexican.

chicken samples!

Tuesday, I worked a morning shift at Squires, the only dining hall on campus that is open over the summer. I started the morning helping with making French Toast at the grill station, which I actually found to be a lot of fun! I also assisted in preparing bag lunches for day camps and a bit of recipe testing. I made one Asian noodle and edamame dish, which is one of the Vegan options at the dining center! It looked delicious. In the afternoon, I sat in on a Partnership For a Healthier America webinar and subsequent meeting. UND is one of twenty six schools taking part in PHA—a movement which requires its schools to have a list of specific health-promoting characteristics. Some of the qualifications that UND has committed to meeting are offering a plant-based food option at every station serving meat, offering on average no more than one fried food item per food station, listing calories and using a “healthier” food icon, as well as many other initiatives related to nutrition and physical activity.

The rest of my week was spent working with catering. I spent most of my time shadowing Andrea, who manages the catering department and was actually a NACUFS intern at UND back in 2005! She ended up coming back to North Dakota because she met her husband while staying at UND for her internship!

Thursday was spent doing recipe testing with James, who works in Terrace Dining Hall as well as closely with catering developing dishes.  We made Southwestern tofu, Italian marinated tofu, and a coconut-lime shrimp dish. All three recipes were healthy, delicious, and easy to make…I will definitely be duplicating some of them when I get back home. Before we entered them in to FoodPro, we recorded all the measurements and notes we had on a recipe testing sheet, so we could go back and make changes. Fortunately, each recipe needed only minor adjustments! 

Tofu Italiano

Spicy Southwestern Tofu

Coconut lime shrimp. My favorite of the recipes!

Recipe testing sheet

Friday, I helped out catering setting up for a few events. Since most of them were at different locations around campus, it was a lot of loading and unloading of the dining services truck used to deliver food to events. In the morning there were a few coffee hours we set up for, as well as a table set up for orientation. In the afternoon was a bigger event being held for a local company. I learned that catering is a lot of scrambling around to get ready, followed by a lot of sitting around waiting for people to be done eating.  It does, however, seem like a fun job! The schedule is a bit all over the place, but I think that would keep things interesting!

Set up from orientation

My weekend was much needed after my long week! I rode my bike to the mall for some retail therapy and watched no less than a dozen episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. I’ve also been spending a lot of time with the other interns and students living in my hall. We have gotten very competitive with our pick up volleyball games! I also got a chance to play soccer for a little bit in UND's spectacular wellness center!