Megan: "This weekend was something I looked forward to since the beginning of the internship because I had to opportunity to go to San Francisco. Although I have already recently been to San Francisco, I decided on a few things I wanted to do this time when I visited. First, in the morning I met up with some friends and went to a spicy foods festival, then I ventured to a place to eat called Sushirrito to have a burrito that is made out of sushi. After, I picked up my sushi roll, I went to Union Square where I sat and enjoyed my lunch. I then went to China town and eventually made my way down to the pier where I sat by the water and enjoyed the sunshine. Then at night, I met Renee and her husband at the Giants versus Phillies baseball game. My favorite part of the game was the location of the stadium because it sat directly on the water, which was really neat! It was a super busy day but I had a lot of fun and lots of adventuring."
Union Square
China Town
First time at Sushirrito!
Ferry Building Marketplace
AT&T Park in San Francisco
Giants verse Phillies game!
Sunday-
Today we went to the beach in Santa Cruz!
Today we went to the beach in Santa Cruz!
Monday
Today we started our day at the Golden Bear Cafe. We were introduced to Dave, who is the floor manager and he gave us a general tour of the facility. He talked about product purchasing specification such as the grade of the product, packaging and preparation method (frozen, fresh, or in syrup.) Also, we did a calculation of how many cases of chicken strips the GBC goes through each day and the amount they need to store on hand just for one day. Almost 12% of their sales last year were from chicken strips, but now since they took out the fryers in the facility, to increase the healthiness of the menu, they face a challenge for the fall semester and the need to bring in new product that will make up for this. After, we talked about quality control of the product that comes in. An example that we saw first hand is that the supplier had sent expired milk, and therefore this had to be logged and the supplier had to be contacted so it was sent back. While going through the refrigerator, we discussed product placement in storage areas that is important for contamination concerns. Additionally, we talked about date on hand and the par level system. For GBC, the pars level is extremely important because they have less storage space than most facilities, so they need to constantly know which products sell very quick and how much needs to be ordered. Once Shannon (who is the General Manager at the GBC and also is in charge of ProShop and Common Grounds) was available, we spent some time learning from her. She discussed floor management and the importance of the appearance of the facility, the layout of the shelves of certain snacks, the aesthetics of the space and the overall atmosphere. Shannon stressed how important it was to make the space feel appropriate for students with trendy music and addresses the needs of the cafe that students can move in and out of quickly. Next, we counted the inventory in what they call the candy dry storage area. We counted inventory of many types of snack foods at the market including cereal, protein bars and crackers. Once we finished taking inventory, Shannon showed us the new program Eatec and how ordering is done. She mentioned how she does ordering based on the par stock levels that she has in her head. She completed the ordering for half of the products, and allowed us to do the ordering for UNFI. Once we were finished with this we went over to the CalSO lunch event that was in the central quad to check how the set up was going.
Melissa counting the number of cases of Luna bars!
Taking inventory in the candy room!
Taking inventory in the drink walk-in
Set up for CalSO lunch
Melissa completing ordering through NIF
Tuesday
Today, we went to Golden Bear at 6 AM and worked with Carlos to do the receiving in the store room. At GBC there are two store keepers during the summer, Carlos and Terrance along with the Pepsi store keeper. Carlos explained to us what happens when orders come in and the difficulty of not having a proper loading dock because it is under renovation. Carlos showed us how he checks the current inventory on the floor; based on his observation, he would brings up product from the supply room to stock the shelves. Although there were not a lot of product coming in, we helped restock the shelves on the floor and straighten the product to make it look presentable. After everything was stocked we each hopped on the line preparing food for the opening of the market. Melissa took orders for breakfast sandwiches, and prepared breakfast plates. Then Megan was on the other side of the line helping prepare yogurt parfaits, fruit cups, and all of the fruit for the smoothies. Megan also worked at the Peet's coffee shop and worked her magic making hot and cold drinks such as lattes and tea. During lunch, we finalized the document and sent to marketing to give them the exact specifications of what we need for our event. After working at GBC, we meet up with Brian and worked through a few issues with the special event. Brian allowed us to sort through one of the storage units to find supplies and decorations we could use for our event. Going through the storage room was a lot of fun because we found a lot unexpected items that we can use to spice-up the dining hall. Lastly, we meet Shawn who is the Executive Director of Cal Dining. We loved meeting Shawn because he was extremely knowledgable, and has a ton of experience. He talked to us about how he got into CalDining and the changes that he has seen occur over the year and the way in which CalDining has grown.
Wednesday
Today was an exciting and fun day! We visited NAPA State Hospital and Culinary Institute of America (CIA) with Renee (RDN), Chef Macros, Chef Daniel and Chef Matt.
NAPA state hospital is a psychiatric hospital in Napa, CA which hold 1200 patients. The residence areas are fenced and guarded by police. The place that we visited was the dietetics office and central kitchen. The central kitchen cooks all the foods and
distributes it to ten dining rooms. Even though the hospital has a very old
history, it is very neat and well maintained. Our tour was led by Marilou
Goldstein (Assistant Director of Dietetics) and two cook specialists. According to Chef Oscarz, they use a five week cycle menu. The 5th week cycle menu is only used twice a
quarter year when they want to try out new menu item. Along with the regular
menu, there are many special diet menus, including low sodium, cardiac diet,
calorie count diet, modified consistency, and vegetarian. They also have a
disaster menu used for any emergency situation, such as an earthquake. In order to prevent cross contamination, the employees who work in
the special diet kitchen are very detailed oriented and specific as they
label all the special diet menu items on the packaging and where it is delivered. Registered
Dietitians/Dietetic Interns also communicate with the patients about their
allergies and plan their menus accordingly. Overall, we were very impressed with
the extensive layout of the facility and the amount of labor that put into
maintaining the operation of the facility. Before lunch, we visited the Oxbow Public Market
and Shackford’s Kitchen Store. The market is a local gathering place for food
and wine in downtown Napa. The market features local food vendors, organic
producers and artisan cafes. The market
and its vendors passionately support the concept of sustainable agriculture and
local harvest. Shackford’s Kitchen store is a very neat place where you can
virtually get any kitchen tool you need! They have a huge selection of
kitchenware in different color, size and brand.
We had lunch at Tarla, a Mediterranean restaurant in
downtown Napa. After lunch, we headed to the CIA at Greystone. It is one of the
most prestigious and unique campuses for culinary education. This campus offers an associate degree, accelerated certificate programs and wine and beverage
studies. They have about 350 students pursuing their education on this campus, some of which came from the main campus in NY. We
visited their teaching kitchen and observed the two classes that were being
taught. During holidays they prepare food and cookies for example to go to the local community
centers or to the elderly. Some of the courses they offer are food safety, knife skill,
communication, nutrition and many others. At the end of our tour, we briefly
met with the Registered Dietitian of CIA, Ms. Delmonico. She explained her role
and responsibility as a RD in CIA. She teaches nutrition and food safety
classes, and arranged health and wellness conference on campus.
Overall, we really enjoyed our trip to CIA! We
have learned so much from the professionals and hopefully apply the knowledge
into our future careers!
Napa State Hospital
Very old Middleby-Marshall oven
Spice room
Steamers used to cook vegetables
Chef making scrambled eggs
Melissa and Megan reviewing the cycle menu with the cook specialist Oscarz
Saying bye to Napa State!
OxBow Market
Look at all those delicious sweets
Welcome to CIA in Napa
Teaching kitchen for associate students at the CIA
Conference room where special events are held at the CIA
Ghirardelli Chocolate Lab!
Students building chocolate centerpieces!
State of the art Viking Kitchen!
Wine lab tasting room
Thursday
Today, Megan went to CalSO at 7:30 AM. After that, she met with Melissa and Sunil to do some purchasing at the Berkeley Bowl Market.The Berkeley Bowl is a local full-service supermarket that aims to provide the highest quality product at the lowest possible price. The Berkeley Bowl was extremely big with a ton of produce and organic products. Megan also met a fruititarian at the market and tried two figs, it was an interesting encounter! We also went to a Ver Brugge meat and seafood shop to get lamb bacon samples. After we went to meet with Shannon to go over quality control and the importance of checking product to the appropriate standards. We also reviewed the importance of sanitation. She told us that they have an on-campus health inspector that completes the audit twice a year. After we both joined the line, Megan prepared sandwiches for lunch. Melissa prepared fruit cups and went to CalSO lunch to monitor student flow. Later in the afternoon, we went to Pat Brown's and cooked with Kristen Rasmussen, RDN, who is a professor at UC Berkeley and working to make Pat Brown's a local menu with products mostly from California. We prepared two dishes including a spinach salad and tabouleh, each dish with two different preparation styles. One way we prepared the tabouleh was to make one with wheat bulgur and the other with millet. Kristen was interested in trying millet because there is a student group who is growing millet, and therefore she is working with them to incorporate it into the restaurant. The salad and tabouli we sampled were delicious and really enjoyed making and testing the food. It was really fun cooking with Kristen and getting to know a little bit more about what she does! We are looking forward to working with her again next week!
The Berkeley Bowl
Megan getting 1 cup of almonds!
Melissa grabbing some shallots for the recipe!
Ver Brugge meat and seafood where we got local lamb bacon
Pat Brown's campus resturant
Vegan spinach salad with nectarines which was AMAZING!
Melissa and Megan taste testing the spinach salad!
The beginning to our millet salad!
Friday
Today was our last day shadowing at campus restaurants. This morning, we met with the General Manager, Jeff. He explained his role and responsibility as a general manager. Then, Megan worked at the Freshen smoothies’ station and learned how to make delicious smoothies. Melissa worked at the bagel and breakfast station. She greeted customers and took orders. Around 11am, we met with Brian and headed to Foothill for our final walkthrough of the special event. We sat down and discussed about the decoration details for the Stern dining room. It was challenging for us to decorate this room as we can’t take any of the big posters off the wall and the cost of printing new posters to cover the previous posters was extremely high. We also check the storage room and see if we can reuse any of the decorations from previous events. When we got back to the office, Shawn invited us to visit the Hodo Soy Beanery that is located in West Oakland. Minh, the Tofu Master gave us a tour of the factory and explained all the intensive process of making tofu. The factory produces 25,000 pounds of tofu from 25,000 pounds of soybeans every day. The ratio of soybean to tofu is 1:1. They use only whole, organic certified, non-GMO beans from a farmer cooperative called the Midwest Organic Farmers Cooperative. The equipment used in this factory is designed to minimize the use of water and electricity. For example, they use steam boilers to power their soymilk making unit in order to minimize the use of electricity. They also use chilled cooling tanks to reduce the temperature of hot tofu. By doing so, they recycle and reuse the water. Hodo Tofu supplies to some of the biggest companies in US like Whole Foods, Costco and even Chipotle. Other than tofu, they also make other soy products like Yuba, soy puffs, soy-milk and ready-to-eat products. We were so pleased to be invited to visit this factory and meet Minh! He takes a lot of pride on the great quality soy products that they made. At the end of our visit, he also gave us some free samples to try.
Hodo Soy in Oakland California
Megan, Melissa and Sunil outside of HoDo
Dry soy beans ready to be soaked
Extraction of soy bean curd
The final product, ready to be packaged!
Yuba (tofu skin) and was super delicious!
This is how yuba is made!
The interns and the tofu master!
Shawn, Sunil and the tofu master again!
We even got some free samples to try!
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