Week Three (5/30-6/5)

Ah, what a relaxing weekend. I ran, did yoga, walked around some bike trails, hiked for a few hours on the south side of the river near George Wyth State Park, and danced quite a bit—don’t worry, I did responsible things, too! I finished my Blue Zones project research and now just need to post it up in the dining hall. I went to Joker’s Comedy Club to hear comedian Mark Poolos on Saturday evening. He was pretty funny, and the club is quite swanky. I think it’d be a fun place to go with a group, so that’s the goal for next time!

Cedar Falls is so good about keeping their town clean!

The Hartman Interpretive Center on the south side of George Wyth State Park. It was closed for the evening by the time I hiked up there, but there are lots of buildings where they host nature classes for all ages!

A little gathering spot under a shelter built from tree branches!

As always, I greeted Monday morning with roughly an hour of yoga. I reported to the Piazza at 8 am. My mission: rotate through each Piazza concept and complete as many tasks from three pages of little bullet point objectives as I could. I stayed in the kitchen for a good portion of the morning cutting fruit and making lasagna (unrelated tasks, although a fruit lasagna would be very interesting to attempt). I set up shop at Stackables for lunch (think Subway—they even use the same sandwich toaster!) and at Sizzles, the fry and grill station, for dinner. I learned how to set up and close down both stations and how to clean the deep fryer, the grill, and the two griddles. I also helped out a bit at Serranos, a concept that’s half taco bar, half pizza parlor. Cleaning out the giant pizza oven is an interestingly satisfactory process involving a metal-bristled, long-handled brush and no small amount of elbow grease. I stayed until all the cleaning was done. By the time I got home and wrote up my report for the day, I was exhausted.

Oh, one more thing: I’ve decided on a camping theme for my event! Say hello to s’mores, fake campfires, crock-pot cobbler, window cling animal tracks, and a tent set up somewhere in the dining hall!

The rest of the week went by in a blur even though it was not particularly busy in the venues. Our meal counts were anywhere from 80 to 150 students and participants in various camps held at the university in the summer. However, the general lack of chaos made it much easier to learn how each venue operated, what they serve and where, how to operate and clean the different machines at each station, and gave me a great opportunity to observe the flow of food from kitchen to dish pit. I also followed some of the kitchen staff for certain shifts taking inventory, receiving trucks, restocking the venues, and doing some recipe testing and batch cooking for meals. I got to know both the cooks and the student supervisors pretty well during this week. 

Three black oak sausage test recipes I helped make for the Piazza--we're going to use one for my camping event!

Since I am the only NACUFS intern at UNI, it has been a bit lonely up until this point, so I am quite glad to have some friends my age that like to hang out and do the same things I do. The adults I’ve met thus far have been absolutely wonderful to learn from and and joke around with at work, don’t get me wrong, but it can be hard to relate and hang out after work because I am neither married nor multiparous. In addition to working with the student staff, there was a pancake event in PV on Thursday night, so I went and enjoyed some yummy homemade pancakes with the RA's!

What artistry.

Jeff, the artist himself.

On Friday, Lisa and I drove down to Aimes and toured Iowa State University's dining operations. It was interesting to see all-you-care-to-eat at such a large university. They are much more comparable to OSU: their student population is around 30,000 while OSU's is roughly 25,000. They have a distribution center where the trucks drop off deliveries, which are then delivered to those on campus venues where the semi cannot get. This is a pretty new development; once upon a time, they had no prime vendor and had to receive pallets and pallets of single items and make their own trucks to go to each venue. Their prime vendor now is Martin Brothers, who makes custom pallets for their customer's needs. For instance, if a venue needs 3 cases of marinara sauce, 2 of pasta, and 20 cans of chicken broth, MB will make that pallet at the warehouse and deliver it rather than making Iowa State order an entire pallet of each item. It's pretty cool that they do this. We also visited the bakery in their makeshift dining facility for a newly opened dorm on campus. It's pretty impressive what they can do with an empty ballroom and lots of transports.

The bakery section of the ballroom. To the left is the catering storage area.

Outdoor freezers! A pretty innovative solution to a space and facility shortage.

Their bakery makes most everything from scratch or orders it from local vendors, just like UNI. The Union's dining center is quite lovely. They were serving s'mores bars for dessert that day, so I took a picture for some research for my own event!

S'mores bars!

The salad concept. They also have a parfait and hummus bar. Yum. :)

These are the seat backs of the booths in the union! The material is water resistant-- functional and funny!

I really liked the integration of different campus resources into the dining center at the union. This TV is connected to the university's Healthy Choices Instagram, Twitter, and FB pages. It displays students' posts during dining hours. The Union also displays student-made pottery, blown glass, and paintings and photographs.

Friday night was a blast, too: one of the student supervisors had a birthday this weekend, and she invited me to celebrate with her! We hung out at her apartment with her fiancé and a bunch of her friends both from UNI and from other places in Iowa. I met some great new people and got to know some of the UNI folks even better. All in all, it was a stellar week! Stay tuned for stories of my adventures for the weekend: driving up to Minnesota to look for a house for grad school in the fall! Not only that, but next week, I get to rotate through the bakery, commissary, and help catering with a wedding!