The Final Countdown
After seven weeks of preparation and anticipation, the final
days of my time at KU have arrived!
Monday & Tuesday
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Mallory and I have become accustomed to having full
schedules, so were happy to have Monday and Tuesday free to completely devote
to preparing for our special event dinner and final presentation. Our first
task on Monday was to inventory and organize all of the decorations that we
gathered from Oliver Dining Hall. We were super pumped about the wooden shelf we
found – it was perfect for the farm theme! We filled it with fake fruits,
vegetables, cheese, bread, and meat to make it appear like a farmer’s market
stand. To top it off, we used paper to make a sky backdrop to place behind it,
and we put it all together to create a background for the photo booth at our
special event dinner. We organized the rest of the props we found into baskets
and set the remainder aside to decorate the serving lines on Wednesday.
After finishing up with the decorations, Mallory and I
printed off some handouts for our nutrition booth kiosk. Mallory created some
about the benefits of eating locally, and I made some about healthy recipe and
snack substitutions. We will also have samples of the chocolate beet cake for
people to test and guess what the mystery ingredient is (we’re leaving “beet”
out of the title, of course!).
In need of a break from decorating, Mallory and I checked
with Devin and Travis to make sure that all of the items we needed for
Wednesday were on the order schedule and would arrive on time. Luckily,
everything was looking good. We found out that we’d be able to get some
heirloom tomatoes from a Nebraska farm that is considered local to Lawrence,
which was great news!
Our last task of the day was to check that the advanced
preparation was going well. The main prep that needed to happen on Monday was
to smoke chicken for the barbeque chicken pizza wed be serving at the Copper
Oven station. The chicken looked and smelled great, so we headed out to rest up
for another day of preparation!
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| Soon to be BBQ Chicken Pizza |
Tuesday began with looking over the order schedule again to
assure everything would arrive on time. Not surprisingly, everything still
looked good to go. More of the food items were being prepped on Tuesday, so we
popped into the kitchen throughout the day to check up on those. The chocolate
beet cake looked like it was coming along perfectly, though we wouldn’t be able
to taste it until the event. In addition to the cake, a few pieces to different
recipes also had to be prepped, such as shredding the mozzarella for the pizzas
and roasting and peeling the whole beets for the beets n’ sweets. Of course, everyone
in the kitchen was on top of things, so Mallory and I spent our time putting
together the spin-the-wheel game for our interactive feature and printed off
the last of our menu signage. Through it all, we continued to add information
to our final presentation PowerPoint and finish up our videos – major crunch
time!
Wednesday: Special Event Dinner!
At last, Wednesday arrived! All the work Mallory and I have
been putting in since the beginning of June finally came together in front of
our eyes. We spent the day as managers, which entailed completing the
decorations and interactive feature set-up, answering questions, checking up on
food preparation, and delegating duties to the staff to help us through it all.
We did run into a few bumps along the way. There wasn’t
enough coconut milk in stock to make the chocolate ganache for the chocolate
beet cake, so Mallory and I found a different recipe in the system that called
for heavy cream. Thankfully, they were able to transfer coconut milk from
another location on campus, so we didn’t have to switch to the back-up recipe. Additionally,
some of the new recipes we put into the system were a little strange once they
were converted to larger amounts for the batch cooking, so we had to play with
the ingredient amounts a bit to make them turn out right.
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| Caprese Salad |
Despite the minor problems, 4:30 arrived and our dinner began
as planned! The food went over really well. We were surprised to see the
cauliflower alfredo sauce go quickly; we started off only making one batch and
ended up having to make two more! The baked “fried” chicken was a big hit, too.
A big group came in with about an hour of dinner left and almost depleted it,
so we had to replace it with regular chicken tenders until we could get more
baked for the serving line. The caprese salad was my personal favorite – not
only did it taste amazing, but it was beautiful with the colorful heirloom
tomatoes!
Since we only bought enough ground bison to make 280
burgers, we figured those might get pretty low, and we were right – we actually
ran out! Thankfully, this happened with only about 30 minutes of dinner left,
and there were some frozen hamburgers we could grill up quickly to replace
them. Although we wished there had been enough to last through dinner, Mallory
and I were happy to see that everyone really enjoyed our menu items!
In addition to enjoying our food, the nutrition booth and
spin-the-wheel game got a lot of activity! Although only a few people could
guess correctly that the cake had beets in it, most people gave it good
reviews. Our photo booth wasn’t as much of a hit, but we got some of the staff
to pose for pictures, and Mallory and I found no shame in having some fun with
it!
Thursday & Friday: Final Goodbyes
Mallory and I once again spent Thursday camped out in Mrs.
E’s and finishing up our presentation, food truck business plan, and videos,
which we presented to the management staff on Friday. All of the hard work paid
off! Mallory and I were a little unsure about the food truck project since
neither of us have much experience with writing business plans, but the
management team seemed to enjoy our presentation on Friday. On top of
presenting the business plan, Mallory and I also walked the staff through our
internship and everything we learned over the past two months.
We were excited to return home after putting in two weeks of
hard work, but it was definitely sad to say goodbye to everyone we’ve worked
with for so long. I know the thing I will miss most about KU is all of the
great people I’ve met! Mallory and I celebrated successfully completing our
internship by grabbing dinner at Free State Brewing Company in downtown
Lawrence. We’ve been told various times how amazing the food is, and we weren’t
disappointed! It was the perfect way to spend our last evening together saying
goodbye.
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| Final dinner -- Free State Brewing Company |
As I head back home to Pennsylvania for my last year of
undergrad at Penn State, I’m not entirely sure where my career path will lead,
but I’m overwhelmingly thankful for this opportunity. I’m sure that I will use
the skills and knowledge I’ve gained over the past two months in my future
career, no matter what that may look like. And of course, I’ve gained some
amazing friends!
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