Last Week in Laramie.

As everyone on the blog has said, this summer flew by!  I learned so much during my experience here in Wyoming.  I got to work in every area of food service which will be a valuable asset to my future career.  To any future students considering applying for this internship, do it!! I had such a great experience and met some great people!  Also, if you are selected to participate, I highly recommend going somewhere out of your comfort zone!  Olivia and I learned so much from being out west and absolutely loved it out here.  We definitely were so glad we got placed at the University of Wyoming!  Thank you to all of our preceptors and the entire staff at Washakie for making this summer an unbelievable experience.  I learned so much and it was so much more fun getting to work with a staff like y'all.


For our final week, we worked on a bunch of different projects. We made a bulletin board, tested recipes, and made some decorations for the Welcome to Wyoming dinner.  Let me tell you, cutting cardboard is a lot harder than it looks.  We spent hours making the letters for the Welcome to Wyoming sign, but it was worth it because they came out great!  Some of the recipes we found for the theme dinners for the fall Becce wanted to test and possibly use during the school year.  We decided to test 3 different recipes on the last two days to see if they should be incorporated into the menu.  They all turned out really well!  The three different recipes we tested were blackened chicken with cilantro and lime quinoa, blackened chicken mac and cheese, and french toast waffles.  The blackened chicken with cilantro and lime quinoa was my personal favorite (probably because I can't eat the other two).  We had a few mishaps with the other two recipes the first time we tried them.  We did not have the right type of cheese for the mac and cheese so we had to substitute which caused the sauce to be a little grittier the first time.  We also think we should have cooked the roux a little longer before adding the cheese.  We originally were going to make french toast pancakes, but we figured that would be too labor intense to make for a big scale.  Eric mentioned that at one of his previous schools they used to make french toast waffles with Eggo's.  We did not have any Eggo's so we figured we would try it with regular waffles to see if we should order the Eggo's.  We found that we should have made the batter a little sweeter, but a little powdered sugar made the batch we made taste great.  I personally love cooking so testing was my favorite part of the week.  Olivia and I both also loved working up in the kitchen because we loved working with the team up there so much.

Blackened Chicken Mac and Cheese Round Two! 

Watching the Robo Coup training with the staff! 

Our bulletin board we made!


Making the letters for Welcome to Wyoming! Our last picture in Washakie together :(

Washakie also just purchase a new Robo Coup and we got to go to the training with the staff and learn how to use it.  Matthew also taught us how to make some pretty flowers out of tomatoes, and birds out of apples.  On our last day, the staff threw us an ice cream party with everyone we had worked with all summer.  They definitely knew the way to our hearts (I had two bowls).  I enjoyed getting to see everyone all together before we had to say goodbye.  I would not have traded this summer for anything and I am so glad that NACUFS gave me the opportunity to be an intern this summer.  This is an experience I will never forget! Hopefully one day I will get to come back to Laramie and visit! Wyoming, I will be back!