Week Four (6/6-13/15)

As you recall, I attended the birthday festivities of one of my coworkers on Friday night. However, the fun did not stop there! The very next day, I drove three and a half hours up to the bustling city of Minneapolis to look for an apartment! Don’t worry, I wasn’t driven there due to any inadequacies at UNI. Rather, I’ll be completing my dietetic internship (DI) at the University of Minnesota in the fall and decided that a semi-permanent residence in the area would facilitate the whole learning experience. Call me crazy, but the 14-hour commute from Oklahoma just isn’t conducive to my learning style.

I’ll be living with three other interns in the same program, and lucky for us, one of said future roommates was able to meet me in Minneapolis for the weekend house-hunting venture. After four house tours and countless emails exchanged amongst the four of us, we selected a lovely triplex in the Burnsville area about 25 minutes from downtown Minneapolis. We were pretty surprised we found such a perfect place in one weekend.

Not only that, but I got to ride some roller coasters at the Mall of America before I skipped town!

The Fairly OddParents ride!

Definitely tall enough!

In case you hadn’t figured it out, I’m not exactly good at sitting still. Activity is my bread and butter: yoga, hiking, running, dancing, weight lifting, the works. Imagine my relief to have my rotation through the night shift at the bakery after sitting in my car all day. While totally throwing a wrench in my circadian rhythms, the bakery rotation was quite enjoyable. I’d never worked in a commercial bakery before, so it was nice to have time and space to learn how to use all the machines and observe the workflow. It is nice to know how to operate a 5-pound tabletop mixer, but there’s definitely a sense of empowerment that comes with gaining the competence to operate a 200-pound standing floor mixer. Seeing similarities to old experiences is just a valuable as learning new skills, too. Just like in any bakery, sheet pans are their own form of currency. Apparently, during the school year, the turnaround on usage of these sheet pans is only seconds long.

All of these are full during the school year, apparently! Can you imagine the sheer volume of baked goods this bakery puts out with this many sheet pans?!

I spent most of the night mixing dough for doughnuts and cookies, but I also got to fry, glaze, and ice the doughnuts with two student workers. We had the bakery mostly to ourselves, so we had a ton of fun together talking and making very amusing doughnut jokes. I’d tell you some, but they’re probably not funny to someone who has adequate sleep. Just trust me that it was a grand ol’ time.

Frying doughnuts!

Glazing doughnuts! 

Finished doughnuts!

The shift came to a close at the merry hour of 5 am, so I went home and slept until noon, watched some Netflix, practiced dance, and spent some quality time at the gym.

It was the commissary’s turn with me on Tuesday, so at 5:30 am, I donned my white chef’s coat and got to work. The commissary’s function is to provide all the sliced meat, cheese, vegetables, and fruits for the entire campus. Yes, I felt empowered yet again after I learned how to operate the meat and cheese-slicing machine that stands taller than I do. I’m 5’10”, so this is no….small feet (oh, that was a really bad joke). I spent literally the entire shift preparing ingredients thusly, utilizing every slicing machine I could get my hands on: the Behemoth, as I nicknamed the one described previously, a 50 lb slicer, a tabletop slicing machine that looks a lot like a miter saw turned on its side, and a robocoup (aka glorified food processor). The commissary cooks were friendly and fun, so of course we enjoyed each other’s company.

The dining facilities all participate in the university compost program, and when I inquired, all the staff told me how easy it was to integrate the compost bins into their daily routine. They have big green trashcans on wheels into which all rinds, peels, and excess organic debris are thrown. These are kept in the walk-in until full, at which point they are dumped in the appropriate dumpster on the loading dock for the University Physical Plant to pick up. The university sells the compost as fertilizer once it’s degraded enough, which is a great way for the university to get the most value possible out of edible inventory. Anyone who has ever eaten out is familiar with the concept of plate waste and its financial blow to a foodservice operation, so to cut that essentially in half by turning the organic matter into a profitable product is pretty awesome from both a financial and academic perspective. It’s also pretty cool that the staff is so accepting of the program; I know other program’s staff is sometimes not as accepting of change.

Wednesday was a day of freedom, save for an hour and a half leadership class I decided to participate in at Lisa’s suggestion. The Piazza’s main manager, a man named Mike (alliterations abound, apparently) (oh boy, so much literary nuance!), leads these mastermind classes with gusto. This particular class is based on leadership expert John Maxwell’s book “Everyone Communicates, Few Connect,” a self-help book for aspiring leaders that details how to build meaningful relationships with individuals, groups, and audiences. While the lessons from the book provide some great material for reflection and self-analysis, my favorite part of the class is watching Mike—not in a creepy way, let me finish! As people become more involved in our discussions, his eyes begin to twinkle, he leans forward in his seat, and he really listens to what people are saying. He is intimately engaged in the discussion before he even utters a word. I love how his passion for leadership and helping others develop leadership skills shines through his body language—body language accounts for 55% of our communication, you know. Words claim a measly 7% while tone of voice accounts for the remaining 38%. See? I’m learning already! When Mike does speak, he thanks people for their input and often asks reflective questions that demonstrate his understanding of the previous comment. I felt pretty confident in my ability to connect with others walking into this class, but I’m still glad I’m doing it just so I can observe what passion looks like and reflect on how I express myself through my own passions.

Thursday marked the beginning of my catering rotations. Dawnell, the catering manager, gave me the low down on her operation, then took me with her to go check out the events for the day. It's a good thing we did so, because one event scheduled for next week had somehow been double scheduled this week, too. Thankfully, we caught the set up team in the midst of their duty; they hadn't put out much besides the decorations and silverware. They were able to pack up the decorations and china in a transport to save for the next week. The food was a bit more problematic because half of it had already been prepared. Luckily, we were able to use most of it at the Piazza. Lesson one in foodservice management: go with the flow, and be prepared for anything!

I went home and danced for a bit, then went to a movie night in PV. Well, “movie night” is a bit of a misnomer: we were having such great conversation that we never actually started the movie!

On Friday, I got to work in the catering prep kitchen helping prepare food for two weddings on Saturday. I actually get to serve at one of the weddings, too—talk about experiencing the whole wedding hosting package! I measured and cut parsley, washed romaine, cut fat off pork loins, measured out over 120 lbs of potatoes, and de-stemmed and chopped thyme. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of this task, let me put it this way:

After I relaxed at the gym and cleaned myself up, I headed over to Logan and Matt’s apartment for an evening of sand volleyball and Cards Against Humanity. I dunno if you've ever played this game with someone unfamiliar with the colloquialisms of the English language, but let me just say that explaining the meanings of some of the cards was.....unpleasant. The evening culminated with Insomnia cookies. Believe it or not, Cedar Falls has its own warm cookie delivery service!

I’ll have some great pictures from the wedding up next week! See you then!