Week 3:
Monday was our last day in front of the house. It was a crazy last day due to orientation, football camp, summer school students, and other miscellaneous camps or groups visiting UWyo at the same time. We ended working every meal to help out. I definitely learned just how much work goes into getting a huge group through the dining hall smoothly at the same time. Normally during the school year Washakie has students come in at all different times. In the summer, it is totally different because the hours are limited and the campers can only eat at certain times. Lets just say its all hands on deck! You do whatever job you can possibly help out with at that moment to make everything run smoothly. Olivia and I did everything from salad bar restocking ( trust me the line gets VERY long), serving, dishes, wiping down tables, and cleaning up all in one meal.
The rest of the week we spent in the Rolling Mills Bakery! This is something very unique about the University because all of their baked goods are made downstairs in the bakery. The bakery runs 24 hours just to meet the demands. The staff was so great at showing us everything and letting us get our hands dirty baking all kinds of recipes! I even spilt eggs all over the floor and they still let me bake! (I'm not the most graceful person at times) Olivia and I's favorite job was probably the stringing! You know all the drizzled icing you see on danishes or cinnamon rolls? That's string! It was a lot of fun and completely messy!
Stringing the Coffee Cake we made!
At the end of the week, we worked the night shift! I was really excited about all of the doughs and doughnuts we would get to make during this shift, but I was worried about staying up all night! Olivia is more of a night owl than I am so she was ready to go! I surprised myself though! I had a pretty easy time staying up with some help of some coffee and Dr. Pepper. We got to help Leo (the night baker) make rolls, doughnuts, danishes, cinnamon rolls, and baguettes. I had no idea before the danishes were strung that they were glazed with a fruit glaze. It definitely made them look so much prettier and added some great extra flavor! I don't know if I could work the night shift permanently, but it was a great experience and I am glad I got the opportunity to do it and see how it works!
Week 4:
The first day of week 4 we got to follow Becce Ford around! Becce is in charge of everything in the back of the house at Washakie! We got to see what the day in the life of Becce was like. One thing I learned and liked about it was that dining is always changing. You never know what obstacle or exciting challenge you may be facing that day. After we hung out with Becce for most of the day, we got to shadow Matthew, the sous chef. Matthew showed us the ins and outs of keeping lunch running smoothly at Washakie during the heavy traffic.
The next two days, we went over to work in the prep kitchen with Jess! As Olivia said, Jess is the queen of prep! I had no idea how much work went into prepping all the ingredients for the meals. Prep done correctly makes the kitchen run so much smoother and makes the chefs lives a lot easier. Jess taught us the ins and outs of prepping. We learned how to cut, dice, mince, shred, how to take the pit out of an avocado, and how to use the robocoup. The robocoup makes every ones lives a lot easier. It shreds, chops, juliennes, and dices in a matter of seconds! I got to make some awesome guacamole and salsa! We also got to use the meat slicers. I sliced cheese and did a few other projects while Olivia was slicing meat. She had to slice over 100 pounds so it took a little longer than my block of cheese! I definitely enjoyed my time in prep and learned a lot from how to clean the ingredients to storing them properly so they are fresh when its time to cook!
Olivia slicing over 100 lbs of meat!
Since she uploaded a picture of me spilling the eggs in the bakery, I felt it was only fair to share Olivia's spill. She spilt the Zucchini Jess prepped so she had to clean it up and redo it.
The last two days of the week we got to cook! I love cooking so I was really excited for this part of the week! On Friday, we got to help Rob make breakfast. He showed me once how he does the eggs on the flat top and then it was all me! We were making a bacon, egg, and cheese scramble (one of my personal favorites). It was a lot of fun getting to cook on the flat top and good to see how fast they have to cook to keep up with the demands. One piece of advice Rob shared with me was "remember you are in control of the food." He said that one of his mentors told him that. It was so true! Eggs can get away from you when you're pouring a lot on a large area. I took control and made a delicious scramble, if I must say so myself! In the afternoon, I got to make lettuce wraps. Chef Charlie let me take this project on my own, which was awesome! They were really good, but we were having a little trouble with the lettuce wrapping part. We were using fresh romaine so it would not stay wrapped or it would rip. We displayed them a few different ways to see which one was more practical. Ultimately, we are thinking next time that maybe we'll let them make the wraps themselves!
My lettuce wraps in the VegHead station!
This weekend was by far one of my favorites! We went white water rafting and it was awesome! If you have never been you need to go! You won't be disappointed!
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