Berkeley Bowl, Final Projects, and Napa Valley

This past week was really relaxed. I’m starting to finish my projects and just received a new one. I’m nearly finished with creating a Standard Operation Procedure for how hard-boiled eggs are cooked and held. My theme dinner will be coming together on Tuesday, August 2nd. I’m really excited and slightly nervous for the dinner – I’m just ready to see everything come together. My last and final project is writing up a job description for a new position that will be opening this fall. UC Berkeley is investing in a food and coffee truck to roam around campus during the day and needs an operator for. I think this is great, the only other school I know of that owns and operates its own food truck is University of Washington.

I spent Monday through Wednesday working on these projects. On Monday though, Ida Shen, our Exec Chef for Cal Dining took me to this grocery store called the Berkeley Bowl. It was amazing! It was very similar to an indoor farmers market. The amount of produce there was unbelievable. The oddest part about the store is that they want the customers to try the different produce before they buy it. One of the employees there took three different types of mangos and cut out slices and let me try them just to compare the differences.

On Thursday, myself and five others from the office, Chuck, Ida, Patrice, Alex, and Luther, took a trip to Napa Valley to visit the Culinary Institute of America and go on a wine tasting tour at Sterling Vineyards. I was in heaven when we toured the CIA. I would love to be a chef one day and the school was absolutely amazing. We were able to tour the kitchens and their lecture halls. After the CIA, we ate at this amazing restaurant called the Farmstead and then went on to tour a vineyard and try some wine. Overall, it was a perfect day! I’m nearly positive I’m going to try and move out here after graduation.

NACUFS National Conference - Dallas, Texas

This past week (Tuesday through Sunday), I was lucky enough to be able to attend the NACUFS National Conference held at the Gaylord Hotel and Conference Center in Dallas Texas! I had never been to a conference before or to Texas so this was an all new experience.

The conference consisted of many networking events, banquets, interest sessions, and one huge vendor showcase. The showcase was awesome! It was basically a giant room that held over 200 different vendors. The products the vendors promoted ranged anywhere from gelato, soy milk, burgers, to dishwashing machines, food containers, and food management systems. The best thing about the vendor show was the amount of free food and giveaways that were offered. On both days, we would skip lunch and go straight to the vendor showcase because of all the free food that was there.

During the stay at the conference, four different interest session timeslots were offered. Each time slot had about five to ten separate sessions to attend. I went to three of the four sessions. The ones I attended were titled: Grow Food Sustainably: Permaculture on Your Campus, Food Trends: What’s Hot and What’s Not, and the Culinary Forum.

While all three were extremely interesting, the most inspiring was the Grow Food Sustainably session. It was hosted by Ryan Harb, the Chief Sustainability Specialist at UMass-Amherst. Harb, along with the help of hundreds of volunteers, created the first permaculture garden to be formed on a college campus. It currently offers the school about one thousand pounds of produce each year that are used directly in their dining commons. The garden is so beneficial to Umass and really brought the school together as a whole to create this one-fourth of an acre garden. While it is great as a school activity, it is also an amazing way to teach students and faculty the importance of sustainability and how a school can help promote this. Check out this video about it at: http://permaculture.tv/umass-amherst-permaculture/ J Hopefully we can all start creating these at our schools!

Peet’s Coffee and Tea sponsored our dinner on Friday night. We were taken to the Dallas Cowboys football stadium and had dinner inside!! After dinner, we had a tour of the entire stadium and were able to walk on the field and view the locker rooms. The stadium was huge!!
Overall, the conference was amazing! I am hoping to help out at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference this coming fall since it will be held at my university, Penn State. The National Conference for next year is also going to be held in my hometown area of Boston so I would love to volunteer for this as well!

San Francisco Farmers Market

This past Saturday I was able to finally go to the infamous Farmers Market held at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. Hundreds of farmers display and sell their organic, locally grown products. Each tent offered free samples of their fruits, vegetables, cheeses, dips and spreads, oils, and honey. I naturally took advantage of these offerings and I had some of the best, most fresh fruit I’ve ever had in my life! Everything that was offered here was completely organic as well.

The place was swarming with people, each carting around their own bag of the local produce. I ended up buying a bag of some sugar snap peas because I love the vegetable and it reminds me of home (my dad has his own garden and I always eat them during the summer). I also bought a falafel with some roasted red pepper and eggplant spread. While it wasn’t the most appealing to look at, it was downright amazing. To capture this memory, I took a picture of the falafel (and some woman laughed at me when she saw me doing this).

After meandering about for an hour and sampling the fresh fruit and cheeses offered, I noticed a huge line that made its way down the pier. All the people were waiting at least a half an hour in order to get a porchetta sandwich. These sandwiches were being served by a vendor truck, Roli Roti Gourmet Rotisserie, that had 2 rotisseries built into the side of it. The sandwich was completely worth the wait. It was a big slab of porchetta on a ciabatta bun with caramelized onions, arugula, and sea salt.

Needless to say, I’ll be going to this farmers market each Saturday from now on.

Week 3!

This past week I spent my time working in the marketing department of Cal dining. Patrice, the Customer and Personal Relations director is in charge of this department. Along with her this summer are Anna and Vicki who work outside of class as her marketing assistants. Combined, all three are currently in charge of helping to run CalSO, the Cal Student Orientation for incoming freshman, while creating new signs for all of the dining establishments, and helping to plan certain campus wide events..

The first day began with a meeting between Patrice, Ida Shen (the Assistant Director/overall Executive Chef), and Shawn LaPean (the Cal dining Director). This involved planning the food and marketing for two major events, Caltopia (a free for all event held in the Rec Gym that involves two days of free food and free giveaways) and Calpalooza (an outdoor concert held on campus). The rest of the day was spent working on CalSo events, such as greeting the freshman at lunch and dinner.

The rest of the week, apart from Wednesday (when I was able to take part in the annual Organic Certification Audit), was devoted to expanding my knowledge of the department. I had a one-on-one session with Keith Stevenson, the Senior Publications Coordinator in Marketing Communications, where he taught me how to take pictures to be used in different marketing ads. I was able to use this great camera (it was wicked expensive!) to take pictures of Crossroads, the primary dining cafeteria, and then of some sports camps practicing at the turf field nearby. I learned a lot with him as to how to take great pictures that can be used in pamphlets, internet pictures, and banners. His primary lesson was explaining how students who are unaware of a photo being taken and are doing their normal activities are the best for any marketing advertisement.

I spent a lot of this week trying to learn Adobe Illustrator, their primary tool used for making event posters and promos. I have never had any prior experience with a computer program such as this and after trying it out a little bit, I was told it looked as if a kindergartener had been playing with the computer. That statement was completely true unfortunately. I’m now up to a first grade level though with Adobe Illustrator though!

A fair amount of my time was spent working on my theme project which I have decided is going to be… Las Vegas!! Each of the different cooking areas of Crossroads will represent a different hotel and will serve food that is native to the premise of that hotel (i.e. The Orleans will serve Cajun/Creole style food).

The Fourth of July weekend was great here as well!! Spent all three days of the long weekend in San Francisco exploring the area and the great food it has to offer. I was able to go on a chocolate factory tour of TCHO, an amazing local chocolate producer (I recommend ordering some if you’re a chocolate lover like me – http://www.tcho.com/).

Organic Certification at UC Berkeley

On Wednesday, I was able to participate and observe the annual organic certification audit at Cal Dining. UC Berkeley is the only school in the US that holds the title Organic Certification by the CCOF. Each resident dining hall (Crossroads, Clark Kerr, Foothill, and Unit 3) have an organic salad bar with organic dressings. I personally love this addition because all of the produce served there is so fresh!
All of the organic products must be stored on separate shelves from the conventional products in order to keep cross contamination of pesticides from occurring. Certain cleaning products, such as bleach and chlorine, are not allowed in the establishment at all and residue checks must be done on occasion to make sure there is no trace of the chemicals. There must be a separate prep area, as well as separate knives, cutting boards, and other kitchen equipment that are designated solely for the use of organic products.
During the organic certification audit, each of these areas was checked to make sure there was no cross contamination of conventional products. All of the invoice sheets (order forms) for each product must be kept and organized within binders. These must be kept for at least five years. Also all the recipes that are strictly organic must be kept as well. Both of these tracking records are used to “trace back”. A “trace back” is when the auditor chooses a random recipe and picks one ingredient and then looks at the invoice sheet for that date to make sure that the amount of that item served matches the amount bought. This ensures that no company is combining organic ingredients with conventional ingredients but still promoting the organic certification to their consumers.
Overall, more colleges and universities should start becoming organically certified. It is not as daunting a process as many may think. I believe it took UC Berkeley under a year to have all four dining halls certified. It does not cost a lot either, UC Berkeley has an annual feel that is under $1,000, which is nothing compared to the revenue they bring in each year. All that is needed is some special storage and cooler space for the produce and a separate prep area and serving station. The students here love the organic salad bar and it only brings praise to the campus.

After working my first week with the Central Dining managers and learning how the overall operations of UC Berkeley is run, I went to work and observe at my first residential dining hall, Foothill. It is one of two res halls that are currently open for summer students, as well as hosting conference groups and summer camps.

I spent my first morning there working with Ysmael, the Senior Storekeeper who is in charge of placing inventory orders and then receiving them. After working with him and reviewing invoices and checking to make the proper items were shipped, I met with the Executive Chef, Eric Haney, to learn about the many hats he wears for his job. These include cooking, correcting/creating recipes, holding staff meetings and addressing any problems within the kitchen, and creating new menus.

After meeting with them, I was able to watch and learn as the General Manager of Foothill, Brian Walker, pushed 500 football players attending a summer camp through the small dining area within an hour. I have never seen so much pizza and burgers get devoured so quickly! Once the football players cleared out, I was lucky enough to be able to sit in on an interview for the Late Night Sous Chef position. It was great to see this because the week before I had done some hiring paperwork for this exact position so I was able to see the entire process of hiring a new employee.

The next two days at Foothill involved me working with Brian to learn more about his role and how he came to be the GM of that dining hall. I also worked with Anita, the Lead AM Cook and she was able to explain to me how she delegated the day’s tasks and preps the day ahead for meals.

Thursday and Friday were spent at Clark Kerr, a group of buildings used for student dorms, banquets and functions, and dining. I worked with Ron, the Conferencing and Catering Manager on Thursday. I learned and helped with an outside banquet event that was held for 400 teachers from Teach for America. At my job back home I’ve always worked as a prep cook making the food for events such as these, but this is the first time I was able to help run one. Once the event was set up, I was placed as a bartender which was great because I was able to chat with everyone and make some tips!

Along with learning about how banquets and conference functions are booked and organized, I learned how a catering company is run as well. Cal Catering is technically a separate operation from Cal Dining, but majority of their business is created through campus events. Only two people primarily run the catering event – Tete and Doug, which is amazing because of how much work they accomplish. A normal morning for them starts anywhere between 4 to 5am and involves receiving the catered food, sorting it by events, driving the food to the event and setting up, all the while ordering and planning more events when they’re not running to different event areas.

First Week at UCal - Berkeley!!

My first week here at the University of California-Berkeley was amazing!! Everyone is wicked nice and willing to help me with anything or answer any of my questions. My supervisor, Mike Laux, first gave me a tour of Berkeley and all the dining areas on and off campus. My first day involved meeting all the staff of Central Dining. After the introductions, I was immediately involved in many different meetings. I was able to observe and ask a few questions in a phone screening/interview for the open position of Assistant Director. After this I was able to sit in and observe a labor management meeting with one of the two campus unions, Q (I believe this is the union’s name). Along with this meeting, I attended my first CalSO – or Cal Student Orientation. This involved working with Patrice, the Customer and P.R. Manager. We greeted the new students, who were on their way to dinner, and offered them information on the dining.
The next few days involved learning the basics of how the UCal dining operations are run. The entire business is connected through their food management system called FoodPro. This is the system that holds and manages all the inventories, invoices, recipes, and food costs between each different residential dining and campus restaurant. I was able to see how the Production Run is done each week as well. This inventories all the items in each establishment and gets an overall cost of goods along with other information.
Along with learning the basics of Foodpro, I was also introduced to a new system known as LeanPath that is going to be installed into the computers by August. This will be installed within each campus dining area. The main goal of this program is to measure pre-consumer waste, or any scraps of food that cannot be served. These measurements will help to lessen the amount of waste produced in each dining area. I am completely amazed at the lengths that Cal-Berkeley’s food services go to in order to ensure the best meals and a completely organic certified salad bar in each establishment. The cost of organic food can be 2 to 3 times more expensive than the basic produce.
With learning all of these essentials to running such a great foodservice operation, I was also able to meet with the budget and variance report manager, Luther. He went over the multiple binders containing hundreds of excel spreadsheets involved in only one year of budgeting. I knew that a lot of work went into creating the budgets and maintaining them, but I had never known how extensive and detailed it was.
After this first exciting and informative week was over, I spent my first full weekend in San Francisco. Some people I had met from my floor and I explored Japan town (where we had AMAZING sushi) and then spent Sunday in the North Beach area for the Italian Festival. This involved lots of great vendor food and little tents offering jewelry, art, pictures, and clothing. I love it here already and am looking forward to what the rest of the summer holds!!