UW Madison Week #4

Monday:

Today we went on a tour of the Brakebush brothers chicken and of UW- Stevens Point. I had never been in a chicken processing plant before today and I have to say I don’t think I need to go back anytime soon. There were six different functioning production lines and eight possible in the facility. They are currently not using two of them. The company has been in business for 90 years on the same plot of land but they have expanded and changed a lot since then.

UW-Stevens Point has two main dining centers. The one who serves a majority of students has a standard buffet line. They are going to be starting renovations sometime in the next two years. They have won a couple of prestigious NACUFS 

awards in the last few years. The main bakery is in the basement of this building and is completely student operated. The smaller dining facility is set up in a marketplace style and is more updated than the other. They also use CBORD and NetNutrition for menus and nutrition information.

I had a lot of fun touring with some of the management from different units.

Tuesday and Wednesday:

I got to work with the catering team the last two days and find out how they operate. I got to work with their event scheduling program and their ordering system. I was able to help out by entering the inventory which gave us an idea of what needs to be ordered.

We sat in on a meeting with Chef Paul, Denise, and Julie to further discuss the Partnership for a Healthier America project. Miranda and I are trying to figure out a way to successfully market with partnership and get people more involved in it. At this point the best way to go about it seems to be to educate people on how making these small changes recommended by the partnership can improve their health and lives.

On Wednesday, I worked a small breakfast event in the Symphony room in Gordon. We served fruit, quiche, muffins and small danishes along with coffee, tea, and water. I was in charge of refilling the line items and clearing dishes as people finished. I also was able to put together some of the supply carts for the picnics on Friday. 

Toward the end of the day we all went over to Carson Gulley for pizza dough tastings. They had 6 different crusts for us to try. They were all prepared at different times to see how quality would change if they were not used right away. 

Thursday:

I started the day with an early morning run on Lakeshore path. It was absolutely beautiful.

Miranda and I worked with Denise (the registered dietitian) today. We started off watching a webinar about labeling practices. UW has decided to comply with the national restaurant association’s new labeling act. They already do a good job with this so it is pretty small changes to comply. CBORD was the other main task for the day. We started off looking for some foods that would fit the criteria for the Healthier America initiative that UW Madison has partnered with. Lunch and dinner have to be less than 700 calories, 800 grams of sodium, and fewer than 10% of calories can come from saturated fat. We found a few items but still have some work to do.

There was another pizza testing today but this time it was comparing grilled crust to the normal crust used in the units. It was surprising how much the toppings on the pizza

change the texture and flavor of the crust during the cooking process.

We sat down with Sue and Mike this afternoon and had our midterm evaluations. I can’t believe we just completed our fourth week! The people we have worked with so far had all good things to say and we had some good suggestions for improvements for future interns.