I Cried Twice

To kind of recap this past week I spent Monday Shadowing one of the managers of the catering team, that was a lot of fun to see what events they participate in and how they set up.
Tuesday Liza and I helped the dietary specialist plan what is called The Five Star Dinner. It's one of the many special events dinners that the dining halls put on every year and the menu consist of items from restaurants and other organizations that have won the Ivy Award. No two recipes can be from the same person, so Liza and I started picking out all the recipes we wanted to use and will finish this project tomorrow.
Wednesday we toured a local farm called Roots, they growth a large variety of organic fruits and vegetables and are a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). So people buy in at the beginging of the growing season which is 16 weeks long paying about $30 a week , this is how the farm gets the money to buy seed and the equipment that they need with out having to take out loans. The customers that buy in get a weekly basket of produce that they can come and pick up and are not obligated to work on the farm but more than welcome. The farm is set on about 2 acres of land and only has 2 main people that work it, everyone else consist of volunteers both regular and sporadic. Later that afternoon we meet with chefs Brian and Paul to talk about our menu, Liza and I are planning the Freshman Closing Banquet at the end of the summer and we have to come up with decor, a menu,everything. This project is totally ours so we decided to go with a Mexican theme, and after talking with the chefs we have come up with a great menu that won't be too much work for them. Although they are more than willing to do whatever we want and we're meeting again tomorrow with Chef Paul to look at more side dish options, a couple of menu items include: Milanesa, Tamale's, Pork Carnitas, Churros, Flan, Sopapillas, Apple enchiladas, Red beans, Mexican rice, grilled corn, fiesta bowl salad, etc ( this making me hungry :-)

Today we went on a field trip to Sutherland's a distributor of UGA's that is based out of Atlanta; the people are wonderful. I had a wonderful time touring their facility and learning how they got started and operate in this industry today; they even had a nice lunch planned for us and gave us fruit baskets and goodies bags to take home. There was also an amazing processing plant that we toured which is not a part of Sutherland's but a separate entity that also buys direct and all they do is process foods, like cutting vegetables, preparing greens, spinach, beans, etc. We were able to walk through and see this process and I CRIED TWICE!!! Sure they were cutting up carrots, and celery in to 8 different sizes and making cole slaw with another machine, but the tear jerker for me was the onions. I have never cried so hard in my life I'm talking tears streaming down my face, we weren't right next to them but it didn't even matter. From a distance I watched as they put whole onions bulbs through a processor that finely chopped a full bucket (200lbs) in about 30 seconds. Next the onions were dipped in to a water batch with chlorine (100 parts per million) and then put in a spin dryer, this all took about 8 minutes. Finally it was dumped on a table where it got packaged, weighed and vacuumed sealed. He also showed us the blue book and talked to us a little bit about the industry itself and how he has managed to survive and make a reputable name for himself.
So that is a quick recap of my week, I don't have any big plans for this weekend as of right now so..............................................

Cia