Monday, June 25, 2012

Mizzou Livin' Week 3

I cannot believe the internship is almost half over! This week went by extremely quickly and was a lot of fun. The main focus of this week was starting our retail experiences along with working on the recipes for our upcoming theme meals. This week was a lot less structured time and more work on your projects time.

Working at two different cafes this week, Catalyst Cafe and J Cafe, was second nature to me since I worked at the cafes on the Penn State campus. We got the chance to make espresso drinks, smoothies, breakfast sandwiches, and salads all while here along with helping to grab other items for customers such as muffins and cookies. Both these cafes are small in size but during the school year can do a lot of business so everyone has to work hard and smart in the small space provided. Because of the limited space the prep work for the cafes is done at Sabai, which has a kitchen for them to use. This means transporting all their prepped items from Sabai to the cafes, which isn't very close for either. And if they run out of something then someone has to go get it or it has to get delivered to them, an inconvenience I can't imagine! Both cafes serve Kaldi's Coffee, a coffee brand exclusive to the state of Missouri but I wouldn't be surprised if they expand since the coffee tasted really good! I keep hearing the cookies are amazing as well so I will have to break down and try one soon.

Besides the cafes early in the week I also had a few days to test recipes in the Plaza 900 kitchen and finalize the menu for my themed day. This was especially exciting since the recipes were my own or ones I found online. Recipe testing sounds like all fun and games but a lot goes into making each recipe perfect. Because the recipes have to be increased to feed hundreds of college students instead of just a family of four, most the ingredients need to be weighed in ounces and even to the tenth of an ounce. Remembering to weigh each ingredient I needed was difficult and there were a few items I had to go back and weigh. Besides each ingredients weight, I also needed the total starting and ending weights in case there is gain or loss during the cooking process and the exact times the items take to cook. The recipes I tested were for coconut chicken, orange rice, and jalapeno lime sauce. The rice took a second try to get the product I wanted but all my recipes tasted good and turned out right, something I wasn't expecting! All the cooks gave me many helpful hints to improve the recipes and I am glad they did since it did make each item better. While we were recipe testing Chef Eric, the executive chef, would pop in to offer suggestions or answer our questions. He also let us sample some cookies and desserts that they were considering ordering for the dining halls, my favorite being a Cookies and Creme Rice Crispy Bar!! After recipe testing and taste testing, Chef Eric then helped me put the recipes into the correct format so we can enter them into the recipe database, CBORD, before my big theme day, which is July 10th. And in case you couldn't tell from the recipes, the theme I chose is tropical!

Friday was spent at Mizzou Market Central, one of three Mizzou Markets on campus. These convenience stores vary in size but this one, being the smallest, carries many types of drinks, candy, snack foods, some frozen items, and some health and beauty items such as aspirin or band aids. While here I got to run the register for a while, help put items away that came in from the vendors, and learn how to put an order in, although it was a fake one since it was Friday! After working at the market in the morning the managers took us to lunch and we got the chance to discuss their jobs along with how the markets are run. We also looked at the reports they can print out from the computer system, Micros, and how they use the reports. The coolest part of their job, in my opinion, is getting to see the new items on the market and deciding if they want to carry the items in their stores. I don't know about you but I would be okay with having to test candy every once in a while!

As I said, I cannot believe the internship is almost half over already and I know the remaining time will continue to fly by. I love reading all the other posts as well so keep blogging and enjoying your internships!

Pictures of the week:


 Dessert tasting. 
Yum Cookies and Creme Bars

                     Orange Rice and Coconut Chicken testing for my theme day!







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