Final Week at Purdue - Week 8

Wow, what a chaotic week. Looking back throughout this experience, I can't believe all that we have accomplished in such a short period of time.

This week was spent putting the final touches on our presentation and tweaking the recipes that we wanted to serve. We prepped most of our food on Tuesday, then finished the cooking on Wednesday. All in all, I am very pleased with how our presentation went. We talked about our vision for the theme meal, what decorations we suggested using, and the menu that we hoped would be served. After this, our guests were able to try our meal and rate it based on factors such as appearance, texture, and taste. Today, we found out that they will be serving our Mango Chicken recipe during the theme meal this Fall, and it will be added to CBORD soon, which is very exciting!

Our theme meal display

Pumpkin Walnut Bread

Malawi Shandy

Strawberry Macadamia Salad with a Strawberry Vinaigrette Dressing

Our Display Plate - Mango Chicken on top of Nsima at the bottom of the plate

While our guests were eating, we showed them our Food Allergy training module, and we seemed to get a lot of positive feedback from this. It has been added to the trainer's website so that they can begin using it, and it will be put on BlackBoard soon so that they can track which employees have completed the training. It's such a good feeling to know that all of this hard work that we've done has paid off, and that it is actually going to be utilized by Purdue!

Once our presentation was over, Mary Ann and Jill Irvin (the Director of the program) presented us with gift bags from Purdue and some flowers. It was so thoughtful of them, and I'm so happy to have some Purdue gear now!

Brittany, Mary Ann and I after the presentation

Our gift bags - all Purdue souvenirs! 

The days following our presentation were spent going over the program and thinking of ways to improve it for next year. We also had a chance to visit the zoo in Lafayette and to go to the local fair!

It's been great getting to know everyone here over the past few weeks, and I'm going to miss them all! But for now, it's time for me to go back to California and for Brittany to prepare to spend a year studying abroad in Germany.

I'm so glad to have had this experience and I'm really excited for everything that Purdue is planning for in the future. Great things are going to happen here, and I can't wait to hear about it!

I hope everyone has a great rest of their summer, and good luck with the upcoming school year!!

-Susan