Welcome to Camp Panther!

Here are some pictures from my special event! The name of the menu was WELCOME TO CAMP PANTHER. While some NACUFS interns plan a special meal separate from regular dining, I planned a themed meal for the Piazza's regular customers. I had a guest count of 600 people mostly consisting of incoming students going through orientation (ages 18-20) but also including roughly 100 soccer camp girls and 50 academic camp kids (ages 8-15). This is important information because younger kids and adults are typically less open to unusual foods and more likely to eat certain types of foods like pizza and other foods they recognize. This was one of our bigger summer guest counts, so I was very determined to plan perfectly so there would not be a food shortage or, conversely, be lots of extra food.

Marc, my fellow Piazza employee, helping me set up the tent and Christmas tree.

Marc, looking suave and smelling pine fresh.

Guess how many marshmallows in the jar! The closest guess won a prize: a stuffed black bear displayed by the dessert station!

Mugs, the dessert station, served s'mores bars and cast iron peach cobbler along with some extra pastries from breakfast.

This is the bear we offered as a prize for the marshmallow in the jar game!

This is Bushels, the salad bar station. It is one of several that utilized these leaf bar runners. Marc also drew some lovely leaves on the sneeze guards with window paint! I debuted a cold broccoli bacon salad with cranberries and water chestnuts at this station. 

The beverage stations were covered in small, plastic bugs!

S'mores bars!

Cast iron peach cobbler! 

Sweet Talk/ Mugs, the dessert station.

I put a cute picnic table on the fruit table.

Nancy in her camping t-shirt!

"Bug juice"

No campfires by the ice cream station! We served two special ice cream flavors, Campfire Crunch and Bunny Tracks.

Cute little marshmallow decorations. Purple for our panthers!

Sizzles, the grill station, served fish-and-chips on a stick, a test item; brats with relish, onions, and other condiments; and campfire potatoes, sliced potatoes with onions and peppers. The tent and fishing sneeze guard art is courtesy of Marc, my artistic helper!

Purple bear paw prints!

A trail sign next to the fishing station. These are by Sizzles and Stackables, the sandwich station.

I wanted to include some fishing stuff in our camp event, too!

Pizzas roasting over open fires! The fires are made of tissue paper and real logs. I put a BBQ pork pizza here as well as a Mountain Man Breakfast pizza (scrambled eggs, sausage, cheese).

Panther Chili and cornbread decorated with a pine cone garland.

Savories, the wholesome meal station, served BBQ pork sandwiches, baked beans, and baked potatoes with cornbread and all the fixin's!

Dakota serving out some BBQ pork sandwiches and baked beans at Savories!

Teja, our best greeter, and my trail sign placed right at the entrance to the Piazza!

We had a clothes line right next to the tent and tree with Piazza employee shirts hanging from it.

Our little camp site! Some people climbed into the tent to take pictures- so cute! 

General Tso's chicken is one of their most popular entrees; we went through almost ten hotel pans of the stuff!

General Tso's Chicken and rice.

Another test recipe, black oak sausage casserole with broccoli. The sausage was cut a bit too big, but it was DELICIOUS!

Another close up of the food and sneeze guard art at Sizzles! Brats, fish-and-chips on a stick, and campfire potatoes (sliced potatoes, green peppers, and white and red onions sauteed on the griddle).

Even the dish return got a trail sign!

Some of our patrons. :)

Drinking bug juice!

I'm glad to say my event was a great success! Everyone loved the black oak sausage pasta, and the fish and chips on a stick were nearly gone by closing time. The campfire potatoes got good reviews as well, although I received a few suggestions to increase the amount of potatoes in the mix. The broccoli bacon salad went over as well as a cold broccoli salad might be expected to go over with a group of children, but the adults really liked it. I had to edit the recipe a bit to make it easier on the kitchen to prepare, but I hope they will serve it again. 

Nothing interesting at all happened during the meal, which meant that we were prepared for everything! All the staff had a good time looking at the decorations and the guests seemed entertained by the different themes at each station. Because of University rules regarding prize giveaways, I could only give the stuffed bear away to a current or incoming UNI student, which eliminated the children there from the camps but still left roughly 300 potential winners. Interestingly enough, one of my fellow Piazza employees made the closest guess (there were 1954 marshmallows in the jar), so she won the bear! Imagine counting out that many marshmallows; it took me an hour on Wednesday as I prepared for the event.

Week Eight (7/3-10)

The UNI staff got Friday and the whole weekend off for Independence Day, and I made the most of it by going up to Clear Lake to celebrate with Natalie, the girl I met in my catering rotation! Friday was a day of river fun at a nature park near town and an evening spent dancing to country music at the yearly carnival. We even jumped off the dock into the harbor!

Saturday was a wonderful 4th of July! We solicited candy from the Independence Day parade participants (who all enjoyed the enthusiasm displayed by us twenty and above year olds), ate delicious Mexican food, swam in the lake and laid on the beach, played games and grilled dinner, and sat on the beach to watch the town's impressive fireworks show. I didn't know a single person at that gathering besides Natalie going in, and I'm happy to call some of them great friends after this weekend of fun!

Monday was a busy day because Lisa and I drove up to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a tour! They have a huge operation; some unique things about them are as follows:

1) They have a whole area in their main kitchen in the Gordon Center reserved for food prep destined for their blast chiller. They store bags of sauces and gravies on plastic racks on wheels in their fridge and freezer. As new inventory is added, the carts get pushed along the wall, so one side is for adding new product and staff remove product they wish to heat up on the other side.

2) They value consistency. All the salad bars operated by the residence department have the same name, same logo, and similar menus. The same is true for all the mexican, pasta/ pizza, and home style cooking venues. They're currently exploring implementing identical menus across the campus for each venue.

This venue is unique to Rheta's Dining Center. Rheta was a beloved manager who loved to make new desserts, so they named a venue after her. I'd love to have a dessert venue named after me!

3) It can be difficult to hire new cooks/ chefs because of the school's background check requirements which are unmatched by others in the foodservice industry. Hiring turnaround delays mean that they often offer a job to an applicant who has already accepted a job elsewhere.

4) It is very important to work out the logistics of your dishroom and machine before you design a building with foodservice in mind!

5) One of their convenience stores located in the dorms is completely student run. A student manager takes care of staffing, ordering, purchasing, and scheduling for the store. It's a pretty cool little operation!

6) Here is their lovely capital building right before Lisa and I enjoyed some famous Wisconsin cheese curds!

My first Wisconsin cheese curds!

On Tuesday, we toured the U of W-Madison Union foodservice operations, which are separate from the residential operations. The Union is meant for student, faculty, alumni, and staff business, but they might serve laypeople depending on if its a game day or if it's not busy. A large part of their sales are from alcohol, and they specifically do not sell alcohol to the public unless it is a game day. In this case, alcohol sales make up most of their revenue. They have their own catering department and several little concepts on the main lobby floor. They also have a little bar called The Sett (that's what a badger's home is called, and that is the mascot of their university!) that has a lower level with a rock wall, pool table, and bowling alley!

The Union an interesting combination of fancy hotel, rec center, and food court. They also have a trademark sunburst design that they utilize on all their chairs. Apparently, if city police see these chairs in people's lawns or in houses, they have the right to seize them and return them to the Union-pretty nifty, huh? They also compost 500,000 pounds of food waste per year, which is used by the school's agriculture department for its own gardening and for the campus gardens as a whole. They do sell it as well, but like to keep the compost for school use because the students paid for the food that it is made from. One more cool thing: they have a RTE cold-prep room in their kitchen that stays a cheery 45-48 degrees. This room has significantly reduced issues with time/ temperature control, particularly with their sandwiches and wraps. Lisa and I learned a lot from this trip, but were definitely glad to be back in Cedar Falls for the evening.

Wednesday was a frenzied prep day because MY SPECIAL EVENT WAS THE NEXT DAY, AAAAAAAHHHHHH! Nah, just kidding, it wasn't that bad! I did spend a significant amount of time counting out mini marshmallows for a "guess how many are in the jar and win a prize" game though!

That's only 120 marshmallows!

Can you guess how many?

I'll have a separate post for my special event because there's a lot of pictures and I don't want to crowd this post and make it super long. I can tell you that it went very well--nothing exciting at all happened, which is great in the world of foodservice because it meant we were prepared for everything! Friday was spent relaxing in the office and finishing up a few projects I still had trailing along behind me. I ate dinner and went mini-golfing with some friends from the Piazza to celebrate my success and the end of the week!

UGA Final Days

It is hard to believe that it is all coming to an end, it seems like only yesterday I was arriving in Athens. The summer has gone by way to fast, but you know what they say - time flies when you are having fun!

Monday (7/27)

Hanging up balloons

It’s the big day – final banquet showcase! We arrived at O’House at 10am and immediately got to work; we had a lot to accomplish before the event so the whole day seemed like a blur! First, we had to hang balloons from the ceiling, with the ceiling being so tall this task took a lot longer than expected.   Thankfully everything was done in plenty of time before the guests arrived! The finished product was beautiful! It is so rewarding to see the end result after working on a project the whole summer; I was very satisfied with how it turned out.

Next, Florence and I worked on assembling the giant flower centerpieces; at first it became very clear that we are not florists. Haha After many failed attempts we finally arranged something that looked good! We were pleasantly surprised on the results. The rest of the afternoon was just dedicated to making sure the rest of the decorations were put up, the tables were set, and the serving lines were ready to go.

Flower Centerpiece

People started arriving around 5:45 and the show had begun! My job during the event was to run back to the kitchen and grab items that were low on the food line. I was very happy that service went very smoothly, nothing was out of control at any point. The students seemed to enjoy the event and everyone had a good time.

The best part of the night was getting to try the food that we had been talking about all summer and it was surely worth the wait – it was absolutely delicious! My favorite dishes were the Risotto and the Macaroons. Once everyone had eaten we did some minor clean up so that the dining room would be able to be used the next day. By the end of the evening I was definitely worn out! It was a long but definitely rewarding day. Our 1920s Speakeasy banquet was a success!

Outside Enterance to the 'Speakeasy'

Tuesday (7/28)

Clean up

This morning we had to finish cleaning up O’House. We had to pack up all of the service dishes and the decorations and take them down to the basement for storage. We also had to take off everything that was hanging from the ceiling, all the balloons and the chandelier. It took a lot less effort and time to take down everything than it did to put it all up. We finished cleaning up the dining area and putting everything back the way we had it and we were officially done with the banquet. It was amazing that it took us three days to put it all up and only took us a few hours to take apart everything and put it away.

We had a little bit of time to put our feet up and then we went to a Peer Nutrition Education class. Today they were learning about food demos and how to be effective when teaching an audience. We were able to see a couple of food demos and then we were able to participate in the class activity! We were assigned to create a simple recipe using the foods you could find in the dining hall. It was such a fun assignment; I made a fruit salad from Greek yogurt, whipped cream, orange slices, walnuts, sugar, and lemon juice. I thought the class was very informative and I will take some of the things I learned and apply them in my studies.

The rest of the day I took to pack up, it’s sad tomorrow is our last day… L

Wednesday (7/29)

Today is the final day at UGA… how bittersweet. Today was a busy day tying up loose ends and wrapping the summer up. Florence and I started the day off putting the finishing touches on our grab and go project and then were off to our farewell lunch! It was really nice getting to see a lot of great people we’ve gotten to work with over the summer and get to say our goodbyes.

This afternoon we had a resume critique, which was incredibly helpful! We had a few people sit down with us and helped us perfect our resumes. After that I had my final evaluation with Kris and got to talk about some of the things we did this summer! Now off to pack up and load up my car to head back to Virginia.

It’s been truly an amazing summer and I am so lucky to have been able to work with such amazing people. I learned so much this summer and will take away so many valuable skills and knowledge with me. I’ve had SO much fun this summer and I just cannot believe how quickly time flew by. Until next time Athens!

Kara :)