Week Two at Purdue - The Summer's Just Begun!

I can't believe I'm already a quarter of the way through this internship! Brittany and I need to make a list of all of the things we want to get done while we're here in West Lafayette or else we'll be cramming it all in last minute! (I've heard that XXX is the best burger joint in town, so we'll probably have to check this out!) This afternoon we're heading to the Taste of Tippecanoe, where local restaurants and musicians get to showcase their talents - I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Well, this week was spend in Earhart Dining Court rotating around all of the different stations and learning about how they prepare every day to serve thousands of people. The court is named after Amelia Earhart, who studied at Purdue before she took her infamous trip. There's a very cool statue of her outside of the building...

This week began for me in the Cold Prep station at Earhart. This station is located behind the scenes in the kitchen of the building and prepares the salad bar, along with all of the produce that is needed by the other stations. Needless to say, this station stay busy all day. I learned about how important it is to prepare in advance while working in Cold Prep - a typical order for fruit can be up to 30 lbs. for one meal, and this is just over the summertime! During the school year this count will be much higher. I also got plenty of practice cleaning different produce, such as strawberries, mushrooms, and celery. Earhart is very particular about the produce they serve to the students (thank goodness!), and because of this the produce is always inspected and is delivered daily to maintain freshness. 

Tuesday was spent in the Hot Back of the House, where they make many recipes that are served in the different stations. After shadowing one of the chefs for a while, they let me make a recipe by myself - Scalloped Potatoes. The portions for these recipes are huge! The potatoes required 2 gallons of milk and 30 lbs. of potatoes! It was really cool to see the equipment they use and how they maintain order in such a chaotic, busy station. I also got to see how they handle problem solving when one of the recipes was incorrectly put together - 2 gallons of water were added instead of 2 qts. It was very interesting to see how they did a recipe substitution for this item, and everything ended up turning out the way it was supposed to. 

On Wednesday I got to work in the Pastry Shop, which provides Earhart with all of the sweets that the students here adore. We made dozens upon dozens of Mountain Nut and Sugar Cookies, along with pies, cakes, and muffins. Also, since I was working the serving line on this day, I was able to experience the rushes during the meals and had to multitask to make sure that none of the items were getting too low. I really enjoyed this station, but it took a lot of will power not to eat all of the sweets!!

Thursday was spent at The Grill, which provides most of the "American" food at Earhart. On this day, they were expecting a breakfast count of 800 people, so we were very busy before the doors opened. I was able to work the Deep Fryers to make hash browns and again worked the line to replenish all of the items once the rush came in. After breakfast, I was able to flip some burgers on the grill and helped to lay out strips of bacon to be used the next day. This station was great, and the chef in charge was really awesome to work with.

Yesterday, I spent my time shadowing a Level 6 Chef at Earhart. Her name was Christina, and she is basically in charge of all of the stations during breakfast and lunch. We came in extra early on this day to turn on all of the lights and equipment, then went around to all of the different stations to make sure that they were prepared for the day and were on schedule. Once the food was on the line, we took samples of everything and got to taste-test it to make sure the quality is what Earhart wants to present to its customers. This is a way they try to prevent any issues before they are noticed by the customer (and it was delicious!). After breakfast, I was able to help prepare a few more recipes and learned about more quality control. We inspected bags of shredded cheese, because they had noticed a few were growing mold, and contacted the companies for refunds for the bags that were not yet to their expiration date. Christina's job is never-ending, and we were on our feet all day! 

This week really helped me to appreciate all of the work that goes into preparing for each meal served at a dining court. While you can prepare many things in advance, there are always last-minute issues that come up, and you always need to be prepared to handle them. 

Inside of Earhart - Dining Area

Now, it's time to rest up for next week! More pictures to come!

-Susan