Author: rynhal12

Farm to Fit – Week 5

2/5

Today was one of those days where I woke up and went straight back to bed.

BUT

I managed to get my butt out of bed and get to Farm to Fit by 7 am to begin the lovely process of peeling and cutting 50 lbs of carrots 🙂 Peeling quite literally took 4 hours, the cutting I did about half way for another hour until I could not feel my hands or my feet. I have said this before but I really do give appreciation to the workers who do this almost everyday from 7 am to 2 or 3 pm!

On the bright side, the carrots were beautiful and organic, delivered that day, and I was happy to help make someone’s life easier by doing it. The employees there are very supportive and helpful, we got fed another lunch by Chef Juan which seemed to be birria quesadillas with a very spicy verde. It hit the spot for my crazy spicy pregnancy cravings. All in all it was a relaxed week of food packaging and I am now an expert at peeling and cutting carrots!

 

Farm to Fit – Week 4

1/3

This week was my switch to food prep!! Packaging was cool and all but I love food, so chopping, cooking and eating food is more my thing. To start off, when walking in at 8 am I noticed a truck out front labeled “Charlie’s Produce – Local Produce in Season”, I did some research and its a food delivery system in the PNW focusing on sustainability and sourcing locally, pretty neat. Anyways, I walked in to meet Juan who was very kind and helpful. He started me off working with peppers, I had to weigh them out according to the recipe but because peppers lose a lot of water weight and seeds after prep we doubled the weight. After getting them trayed up and in the oven at 425 for 25 minutes, I chopped basil. It smelt SO GOOD but I really had to chop 5 bags that I had to destem each one, so by the end of it with green hands I was ready to be done. Juan was nice enough to show me how to chop in a way that wouldn’t hurt my wrist or chop my fingers up, I can use these techniques at home when cooking now. When the peppers were done and the basil was chopped here came the fun part….

I had to hand peel each pepper, deseed and chop 6 trays. I made it through 4 trays in 3 hours… sounds harder than you think. The green peppers were ripe so they were really hard to peel and then when you open them the water retention bursts all over the place and the seeds stick to you. I put on my happy face and went through it because I knew they needed the help! Everyone was so friendly and cracking jokes with me so it was bearable. Also, because some peppers had little baby peppers growing inside of them it was a fun surprise every time. My field supervisor, G, stopped in today and made a joke that the baby peppers were similar to me being pregnant, it was funny. These employees work long hours and handle quite a bit of food the way I did so I give them a lot of props for their hard work.

Every scrap of food was composted as I went which made my greener heart happy. Lunch was made for us with the fresh produce, I was bummed I didn’t take a picture because Juan, the chef, made a beautiful plate of stir-fried rice with a fried egg on top. I’m loving this place!

Celebrate Catering – Week 4

1/2

This week involved 3 days of work, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. As my hours are raising I’m getting involved with a lot more of the technical office work of dealing with clients. I made my first few phone calls and started sending my own emails! How official.

In relation to my studies, this week I sat in on some meetings with the chefs and listened to them discuss their switch of food carries. I know they get some of their food from a company called DUCK and also aramark. Yet, they are having troubles with aramark because for how high-scale the company strives to be, the food is very low-scale. This is where I’m seeing the ins and outs of trying to run your own local business, because aramark is so cheap it fits their budget, the boss was discussing how she would rather spend more for quality food than what aramark gives them. When I was hired on she was in the process of working to become a more sustainable, local provider and I think this and the initiative of composting is the right path.

To keep up with societies high demand for locally sourced food, how actually possible is this when food has become so commodified and industrialized? This is what I’m doing my academic reading in so I hope to be of some help by the end of the quarter.

Another component of work I did this week was the presentation of food. I’m learning there are certain ways of setting up food so that consumers do not take more than they need which is really interesting. Salad or fruit, that has larger portions and is cheaper, goes first. Next would be the side dish, so roasted veggies, mashed potatoes, ect. Consumers tend get excited and over fill their plate (I mean hey if its company paid, free food). Next is always the main course, poultry, beef, seafood, charcuterie boards. Once they get to this course their plate is usually decently full, so they grab less. This works out because the main course is usually the most expensive so 9 times out of 10 it does not run out. Last is dessert. I find it so interesting there is a system thought out behind this.

This week, one of the clients swore up and down that there was not enough food for 150 guests. It did not look like much food but because my boss does this for a living she tried over and over to reassure the client she did not need more food. The client decided to wait it out but was willing to pay more for food if it went low. By the end of the event, there was still quite a bit left over that they requested a to go box. Food can be a funny thing when it comes to consumption limits.

Growing Gardens – Week 4

1/30

To kick off this week, I started in the office at Growing Gardens as always. I spent 2 hours creating 30 little booklets from construction paper and staples for the kiddos. With these booklets they would make an alphabet book, each page pertains to a letter. They would be given seed catalogs, glue and scissors to cut out collages of pictures or words relevant to a letter in the alphabet and paste it onto the according page. These books were a lot harder to put together than you think….

We then loaded up and headed to Glenfair, the schedule was:

  • 3:00 – Arrive to set up and meet the kids at second lunch
  • 3:30 – Circle time
  • 3:45 – Recess and garden time
  • 4:15 – Art with the booklets and seed catalogs
  • 5:00 – Food tasting
  • 5:15 – Kids head out and clean up

This week focused on seeds, again! Garden time was actually a lot of fun because garlic started sprouting and the broccoli and cabbage was flourishing. We let the kids taste the broccoli and then noticed somebody had pulled some garlic with the roots out 🙁 so we let the kids replant them and some of them were so excited to do it. Art took some time because we worked on the booklets I made, the kids were super creative and asked for a lot of help when it came to finding plants that matched with the alphabet. The most questions I got was if cabbage, corn and cauliflower started with a C or a K… ha! We got a “new” student this week, he is registered in the class but has always been absent, I thought maybe he would be disconnected or not care much but he was super into everything we did! His collage was very creative, he was into replanting the garlic and in the garden he pulled me aside and politely asked to have some more broccoli. It made my day. We ended on the tasting lab that involved seed energy balls. We mixed oats, honey, sunflower butter and dried cranberries then had the kids dip their mix in chia seeds, many of them loved it. All in all a successful week.

Academia – Week 4

1/29

Uh Oh! I made a woopsies. I did a check up on the Evergreen State College website ILC page to just graze my eyes over credits per hour… I’ve been doing 20 hours a week thinking that suffices for 12 credits and its only for 8, I need 30 per week!! That’s okay though, my hours at celebrate are increasing each week and I can choose to do more hours at Farm to Fit. I think an academic component would be beneficial though, so each week here on out I’ll be working with readings and outside work.

To get some inspiration on how to form a bibliography and in general ways to use wordpress I spent some time overlooking all of my classmates blogs and I am so impressed!! There are some people out there doing tremendous work, I really enjoyed reading. Some highlights I learn were:

  • Hormones in flowers that help them, but can also be used for us medicinally
  • Somebody is working with hops and beer! What a dream, loved their instagram
  • What rearing insects is and how insects wings/antennas are prime identification markers
  • Pruning trees helps with sunlights ability to photosynthesize the plant
  • What biochar is and its benefit to soil. Reminded me of how volcanic ash soil can be beneficial to plants so this would make sense
  • “slow” fashion vs “fast” fashion
  • A student literally drafted designs of nurseries.. so neat. I can’t even draw stick figures
  • A pre-school in Seattle based solely outside, reminded me of my internship, educating youth on agricultural and ecological concepts are crucial
  • Fungivores!! That’s a thing! cheese mites too
  • The honesty of stress/anxiety from steering your own ILC.. felt that on a spiritual level

 

As for academia, I did some research on potential texts or articles I will read through in the upcoming weeks on my own time to play catch up with hours. These writings will focus on the concept of  the “local” and “natural” food movement, how/why we got here and some systems making it happen! Hopefully I find some based solely about Portland

  • Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know by Robert Paalberg
  • The Industrial Diet: The Degradation of Food and the struggle for Healthy Eating by Anthony Winson
  • Food Tourism and Regional Development: Networks, Products and Trajectories by Collin Michael Hall and Stefan Gossling
  • The Political Economy of Food and Finance by Ted P. Schmidt

I will aim to read these texts in order, not in full but there are many crucial chapters in each book pertaining to my studies. It was hard to find texts specifically on Portland so I may just exclude that to research days!

 

Farm to Fit – Week 3

1/28

This week finalizes my last day doing the packaging portion of Farm to fit. This week was very similar to last week in terms of process. We sanitize tables, lay out trays, place food bowls, measure everything, lid, nutrition sticker,  put in the fridge and do it all over again. It was nice to feel comfortable and know what I was doing, some new people started today and they came to me with questions I could actually answer on my own!

There was quite a bit of food left over today so what we didn’t spread out in the bowls was put aside for the workers to take home which was awesome they were getting fed.  One conversation that sparked my interest was when a new employee asked, “these plastic bowls seem wasteful because I asked and customers are not allowed to return them”. I agreed, but to be fair they were nice plastic bowls that were microwave safe. If I was subscribing to meals I would keep every bowl as tubberware, but you can only hope that is what customers are doing if they are environmentally conscious. I wish there was a way to return the bowls for reuse but that intersects with health code violations. I wonder if there are biodegradable bowls and how those would withstand not only holding food but travelling, and cost?

The food we dished up today included:

  • Prosciutto wrapped chicken, a rice blend and brussel sprouts (unchicken for vegetarians)
  • Salmon, zucchini veg mix and mashed potatoes with a sweet butter on the side (an eggplant version of the salmon for vegetarians)
  • Roast beef in gravy with cauliflower carrot blend and some kind of grain (DELICIOUS mushroom replacement for the beef)
  • A chicken chili (veggie pepper chili to replace)

Next week I move onto food prep for the meals so it will be an interesting step backwards to see how these meals are created.

Celebrate Catering – Week 3

1/25

This week was a slow one, within the three days I worked we really only had one prominent event so I spent a lot more time in the office. I did get to bartend though so that was fun! Due to us having  a lot of upcoming events next week and the week after, the chefs spent quite a bit of time doing trial and error food for us to taste and discuss. It is interesting how food can entice someone depending on its density, sweetness, dryness, bitterness, etc. My boss has grown keen on perfecting food for clients, for example the chefs made beignets and when I tried the practice batch they tasted amazing but my boss felt they were too similar to donuts, a beignet is light and fluffy. He tried again and when she tasted them they were perfect. Other dishes we tested were a blueberry scone, brownies and a blue cheese scalloped potato medley. With each and every tiny change to the dish, it made it a world different. Crazy how food can do that!

Another exciting component was the discussion of a new seasonal menu, right now the winter menu is in place but as spring approaches, celebrate offers new food that not only aesthetically fits with the season but is currently growing or available. It also a marketing component too, with the rise of interest in “local” and “natural” foods, especially in the portland area, customers really like the idea of the sound of something “seasonal”.

Coming the next couple weeks I will be able to work 1 on 1 with clients so what it seems is I’ll be a sales person for food almost. To market food is a growing interest of mine this quarter, stay tuned!

Growing Gardens – Week 3

1/23

This weeks work started in the office of course. I attended a 1 o clock mini presentation on mason bees, which I never actually heard of until this week! The speaker was a bee enthusiast who emphasized the importance in bees and educated groups in the PNW on native bees. I’ve always been familiar with honey bees or wasps, but she described mason bees as “the kind that won’t ruin your picnic”. They are small, black, do not sting unless absolutely necessary and my favorite fact was that they do not have just 1 queen bee, all females are queens and all males are worker bees! What a life. We also looked at other native bees and some are quite literally green which blew my mind. The picture below is a chart that explains the mason bee life cycle. You can quite literally keep the larva in your fridge (Growing Gardens already had some in theirs I got to look at) until it’s time for them to “blossom”.

After, I visited Glenfair where the focus was seeds! While we had a set schedule in mind, every.single.kid had the most energy I’ve seen in weeks so to explain seeds to them was nearly impossible (to be fair it was movie night at the school, they were pumped) so we ran them outside until their energy went down:

  • 3 – 3:30 – Second lunch
  • 3:30 – 3:45 – Circle time
  • 3:45 – 4:15 – Recess/games
  • 4:15 – 4:30 – Seed matching activity
  • 4:30 – 5:15 – Popcorn!

The seed matching activity involved the students matching packets of seeds to a seed board while they guess which each seed is, they surprisingly did well! Very familiar with seeds, except the corn seeds which was funny because they looked like corn too. Once I asked them what the seed looked like they knew exactly what it was. We took so long on the popcorn because we had several groups of students actually take the kernels off cobs we collected and then popped the seeds that came off so they could actually see where popcorn comes from. They loved popping the popcorn and when they got their little bowls we asked them what seasonings they wanted on theirs. The options were: Chili, thyme and nutritional yeast. Almost all the students refused to try the chili until I put a little pile in their bowl to dip in, after that they were begging for chili, it was so cute.

 

Farm to Fit – Week 2

1/21/18

This week was another one spent packing the food. For my 5 hours there, we were able to pack about 5-6 meals. Now, this company emphasizes in making delicious food, the owner even said this when I got hired on, and they definitely deliver. As we packed the food I was able to sample things here and there and every. last. product was so good! Meals were organized by; boost, paleo, 1200 cal, 1600 cal, 2000 cal, and vegetarian. Customers have the ability to substitute parts of their meals such as no nuts, switch seafood for chicken, no mushroom, ect. The meals were:

  • Glazed pork, barley, and chard
  • Sole with a hazelnut cream sauce, garlic squash , pumpkin seeds and greens
  • Chicken with a type of gravy, greens and rice mix (vegetarians subbed eggplant for chicken)
  • Chicken stew type mix with oranges and a bacon orange saute salad
  • Chicken on salad greens with red peppers, black beans, cheese and carrots
  • Omelets with hash potato side

To pack these meals the process went as so (about 6-10 people working on it together):

  1. Sanitize tables and trays – lay trays out
  2. Place food bowls on trays by category
  3. Fill each bowl accordingly by weight
  4. Lid each bowl and place nutrition sticker on top
  5. Mark the bowls with differing color sharpies for an easy way to decipher
  6. Place trays in walk-in
  7. Sanitize each table and repeat

I got to know the workers a lot better this week so I asked loads of questions. I was very pleased on Farm to Fit’s initiatives to be sustainable. They recently set their goal of food waste to be 6% or below. They have two composting bins for leftover foods (not sure what’s done with it). The food that is extra after we plate the food is either: distributed as extra on the plate if there is a smaller amount, if there is a larger quantity left, they save it for workers to take home, they compost or donate their food. They also just recently switched supervision of their food health to a new organization (ODA) and are super adamant on no cross-contaminating since so much food is being distributed. They sanitize after quite literally everything they do.

Another fun fact is that they have monthly meetings on new menu ideas where chefs can do presentations on a new recipe. If the owners like it they will buy it off their employee!

On another note!

After I finished up my hours at Farm to Fit I decided to make my own little research excursion to a grocery store I drive by everytime I go home called Natural Grocers. It may be a chain but I was unfamiliar with it and because my interest this quarter is in the marketing aspect of “natural” food for a growing business, I stopped in! It reminded me a lot of a co-op with only natural-esc type products. Not per se too local because there were products from South America, Mexico or Ireland, but all were fair-trade or from non-profit organizations. BUT, everything that was local was clearly labeled as you will see in the pictures down below, usually in bright letters saying “from Oregon”. They also carried only organic produce and free nutrition classes.