Category: Project Weekly

Week 10!

3/12

It’s my last week as an undergraduate college student!!

I decided to make my last post all in one as the week hasn’t happened yet so this is my assumption of what will be going on in my final week 🙂

Farm to Fit: Monday I will be meeting with my field supervisor at 1 to go over how the quarter went and walk through what he will be sending to my professor/how to send it. This should take no more than 2 hours.

Growing Gardens: Very similar to Farm to Fit, Tuesday I will spend around 2 hours meeting with my field supervisor to discuss how my volunteer work went and walk through what she should send to my professor.

Celebrate Catering: My boss comes back so Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will probably include more work in the office, hosting some events, running food to GFU and I will also have a meeting with her on what she should send my professor and what my future availability will look like. We probably will meet with people working upstairs to finalize the details of composting. This should all in all be 20 hours or more.

Academia: I’m looking to spend around 3 hours working on my academic statement, posting it to the blog and also contacting my professor on points for her to use in my final evaluation that my field supervisors wrote and how I want my credit to be divided. I’m thinking it should be a mix of food sustainability, business and something else, not sure yet!

Celebrate Catering – Week 9

3/8

With my boss out of town it was a bit of a slower week where I was doing less office work and more work on the floor. Wednesday, I ran food over to George Fox University and set up for an event myself that included cranberry chicken, roasted veggies, rice, mixed green salad and some beautiful fruit galettes. When I came back to the event center we spent the rest of the time hosting an event, bussing table, keeping the place in check and then after the event doing a reset for events the next day.

Thursday we had 2 events back to back, beginning with a chaotic morning. One of our clients (who happens to be the people who own the building and us) added another 10 people to their guest list last minute which is a big no no in the catering industry and they demanded we be prepared… We had to add 2 tables (topped with water goblets and 2 carafes), adjust drink portions and the chefs had to whip up more food as quick as they could. We managed to get it done before the guests arrived and everything went well with no complaints. The food was beautiful and delicious, we served teriyaki steak tri tip, rice, a rice noodle salad and a regular salad and cookies, we also added on teriyaki chicken at least minute to feed the extra people. From then on we bussed the room and cleaned up after them to then reset the entire room for another event 2 hours later so all in all it was a fun day (ha). Luckily the second event was an easier one food wise with simple cheese platters, veggies and fruit.

Due to my boss being out of town, I haven’t touched on the composting project as I need to wait for her to begin meeting with people. That is something I will be working on event after the quarter ends, I think it will be a good resume point if I stick with the sustainability field.

 

Trip to Evergreen – Week 9

3/6

What a bittersweet day. After driving 2 and half hours I was more than happy to be back at “home”, my college home anyways. I missed it and came on the most beautiful day! It was nice to see Sarah again and finally get a look at all the faces of the people I am classmates with.

Giving my final presentation made me a bit nervous (as any public speaking does for me) but half way through, the vibe of the class relaxed me. I was happy to see people engaged and asking questions about my presentation as I went. My pictures really amazed some people which is great! I was willing to be a guinea pig for the first presentation to help set my classmates up for theirs next week, definitely went over time so that is something I recommend they rehearse because I didn’t! The feedback after was very constructive too. Looking back on it, the way I set up my presentation made me realize how much work this quarter I really had done and how interconnect it was.

For the tea sampling, it was my first time trying puer tea and I honestly had no idea tea could come in bricks! The tea reminded me a lot of green tea with added astringentes. I got hints of an oaky, dark finish as well. I was surprised to learn that tea bags have plastics in them that release after you steep the tea, made me think twice about the tea I consume at home and how that impacts my baby. I also didn’t realize how intricate soaking tea can be, especially the way the instructor did it to utilize the most flavor out of the tea, I’m used to soaking my herbals for almost 10 minutes, the instructor soaked his for hardly 30 seconds.

As for the hops, I had never heard of the Yakima Chief Hop Union but our instructor gave very informative background information on them and their place in the hop industry. Hearing the name “Yakima Chief” I had the same thoughts as Sarah but didn’t ask, “Is the name offensive to indigenous peoples?”. I was surprised the instructor admitted to it being similar to using the name redskins. I wonder what Yakama natives think on it personally. Once we got out the hop samples, the room filled with the smell of citrus and earthiness. I won’t lie, the hops reminded me much of marijuana, not only its structure but its smell and the names given to it. Fun fact: when I went to encore teas after class I was looking at some tea samples and thought I saw a hop in some of them, come to find out it was!

1. If it didn’t just look at hop samples I wouldn’t have been able to identify it

2. I wonder what properties hop tea provides when it is drunk in tea form?

I probably won’t be visiting Evergreen until the summer so I am so happy I got to make this trip!

Celebrate Catering – Week 8

2/3

This week at celebrate, I spent Thursday through saturday doing the usual! Working events, in the office putting together menus for clients, emailing and contacting clients and so on.

In relation to my studies, I was assigned the task of specifically figuring out the compost situation. Good news! We are in a little wedge of the county where composting is free! Rhonda, my boss, asked me to reach out the the sales rep, contact our building owners upstairs to get them on board, configure how to introduce composting buckets into the facility/how many buckets and try to coordinate a plan for compost pick up. I’m pretty much in charge of it and considering she leaves town for a week she wants me to get to work on it while shes gone. The biggest problem we face, as I mentioned last week, is how to fit all our garbage, recycling and compost bins into a small garage so that all bins are easy to access for each pick up company (although it seems kind of silly to me that it is a huge inconvenience to move a bin around when they’re already getting paid for it anyways and its for a good cause) but, I need to look into it. I might not be an issue at all but I have to contact the different companies to make sure.

In other news, yesterday we had an event through the people upstairs (Home Builders Association, our owners) for a retirement party hosting upwards of 250 people. What is really cool is Oregon’s governor came! She is friends with the retiree and I got to watch part of her speech, after the event she had a line of people waiting to talk to her.

The food for this event included 300 mini burgers, a ton of corn dogs, cheese platters, hummus and pita bread and apricot meatballs. All of the food was delicious but for some reason this crowd was more of drinkers (we hosted a bar) than eaters, so all of us workers got to take a ton of food home, yay!

Growing Gardens – Week 8

2/27

Due to the Youth Garden coordinator being out of town it was on me this week to run the day! She was very helpful in setting me up with curriculum to teach and a set schedule. Honestly, I was pretty nervous because it was my first time handling the kids on my own but due to last minute changes we were able to have a retired Glenfair teacher come in for a show and tell on mason bees! We adjusted the schedule quickly and I was able to not only have him come in but also 2 other drop in teachers to look over the kids.

To start the day, I came into the office early to make sure I had all the supplies I needed and to prepare for the day ahead. I also prepped the citrus fruit for our tasting which included oranges, blood oranges, kumquats, white grapefruit and pomelo. Some of these fruits I actually have never tried before so that was exciting.

The schedule for the day:

  • 3:00 – arrive and meet with Mr. Pierce, the mason bee guy
  • 3:30 – Second lunch begins
  • 3:45 – Circle time to review mason bees
  • 4:00 – Recess
  • 4:20 – Mason bee lesson in the classroom
  • 5:00 – Citrus fruit tasting

Mr. Pierce was not only very friendly but extremely popular in the school because he had taught there before, so the kids were very excited and engaged to see him. To learn about mason bees, Mr. Pierce discussed the differences between mason bees and other bees, showed the kids a bee house (that they could keep, mason bees do not make hives), and taught the kids how they reproduce (cocooning, larvae, early life). He actually brought in mason bee tubes that we all got to keep open and remove the baby mason bee cocoons from. The kids laughed a lot because they were filled with little mason bee poops. After we got all the cocoons and looked at the differences between male and female, Mr. Pierce washed the cocoons to put into a tupperware and store in the fridge. Mason bees are interesting because they will actually birth themselves from their cocoons when it’s warm enough (springtime) so keeping them refrigerated until they can be released is important (the school was warm so the bees might think it’s already spring). The kids really wanted to open a cocoon to see a baby bee so when Mr. Pierce opened it the baby bee was alive! All the kids passed the baby bee around and were super intrigued by it.

After we cleaned up the mason bees and washed our hands, I served the kids the fruit which they loved. They surprisingly loved the pomelos and the kumquats the most. I personally thought the pomelos looked unappealing but when you ate them they were super sweet and yummy. All in all, it was a really fun day!

Farm to Fit – Week 8

2/26

This week I unfortunately didn’t make it to my first day of delivery because I woke up feeling sick 🙁 I let my field supervisor know and he assured me it was okay, I am going in next monday to do delivery anyways. Instead, I spent the day catching up on academic work and reading hoptopia to prepare for next week.

Celebrate Catering – Week 7

2/24

This week at celebrate was spent in the office but also finally back at the bistro! I enjoy the bistro because the woman I work with there is not only really nice but environmentally conscious with everything she does. She has her own composting bin that she uses on her own farm, she tries her best to reduce/reuse/recycle and any leftover food for the day that cannot be frozen or reused goes to me! This week I really left with a personal pizza, chili, a sandwich, chicken, veggies, rice and cookies. I was basically a human trashcan to reduce waste.

As for the office, we had several events cancelled due to the unruly weather so rather than catering I was on the computer communicating with clients and putting together event orders. There was a managers meeting including the chefs that I sat in the same room for Thursday and my boss, Rhonda, mentioned how she was taking a trip to Boston in the next two weeks where she will be going to do a seafood inventory to search for more sustainable seafood to include on the menu. I was kind of curious why Boston seafood may offer more sustainability but I didn’t want to interrupt the meeting. I’ll probably ask her before she goes.

Another important component of this week was that we finally had our compost meeting! It was with a representative Clackamas County’s Resource Conservation & Solid Waste group who went over how their composting system works. Some key points he brought up were:

  • 2 free bins are offered for in restaurant use
  • 1 free bin is offered to sit outside of the establishment for pick up
  • Pick up is similar to a regular trash pick up but it is not through the same system
  • Anything that was basically once alive can be composted
  • Tea bags and coffee filters can be composted
  • The compost is brought to a facility where it is put into an anaerobic chamber and the methane released off of it is captured for energy use, the leftover “black gold” is used as fertilizer
  • They offer free training on how to compost and a system to set up
  • Liners for the buckets will cost money, but you don’t have to use them. Small buckets can be dishwashed
  • The outside bucket is picked up weekly
  • Since he works for the government, he confirmed there are initiatives being made so that composting is MANDATORY in the next 2 or 3 years
  • Clackamas county does not charge you for this service BUT the city Lake Oswego charges near $36 a month

The last point was important because our business is in a weird corner where we are basically on the line of Clackamas and Lake Oswego. What is interesting is that Lake Oswego leans towards the republican right side. They are behind in energy efficient initiatives. My boss’s main concerns were:

  • Her company can’t afford another near $40 a month because (and I can confirm) their food waste production isn’t too high. The chefs make correct proportions and left overs are usually eaten by us workers or brought to veterans. The only food waste I see are from the cooking process and food left on clients plates. While any food waste is not beneficial, the amount going out isn’t cost effective for spending that much a month for a small business
  • Where the bucket would be outside, in a small garage, there is barely enough room for the recycling and regular trash. So it would become a hassle for things to be moved around to be taken out

And I know those reasons sound, per se, self absorbed in terms of a business but realistically it’s not cost effective, you have to have a business before you decide to compost, not the other way around. My boss really, really wants to if it is free, but if she is charged monthly she will turn the offer down until it becomes mandatory. As a student of sustainability but also seeing the side of running a small business, I agree with this. If the food waste was more detrimental, such as when I worked at Buffalo Wild Wings, by all means I would be for composting.

 

Growing Gardens – Week 7

2/20

The after school programs were canceled today due to snow 🙁 And I live 40 minutes from Growing Gardens and an hour from Glenfair so I didn’t want to risk driving across town as it is supposed to snow all day. Honestly a bummer because I love seeing the kids! We were going to do lessons on fruit today, pick some weeds in the garden and show the kids how to compost. Another set back is that next week I will be leading the class as my garden instructor will be on vacation! So hopefully I can link up with her later this week to prepare and go over lessons. I’m already assuming it will be an interesting experience by myself but fun nonetheless.

In place of missing out on hours today I’m going to catch up on my academic hours, which I will post about later in the week.

Farm to Fit – Week 7

2/19

3 WEEKS AND I’M GRADUATED!!!

Anyways, today at Farm to Fit was the same old same old. I peeled carrots for what it seemed like eternity (aka 4 hours) and went into chopping them diagonally (diagonal rondelle cut to us the fancy term) for an hour. I believe the carrots were going into a beef stew.

We breaked for lunch where Juan made us grilled cheese with leftover tomato soup on the side. Feeding employees at lunch is a good way to reduce food waste and make your employees happy!

Today was a pretty lax day as it is the last day of my food prep section. It was a nice perspective to see the transition of food go from from whole to diced/cubed/chopped to cooked down. Farm to Fit doesn’t buy prepackaged or ready to heat up food, they quite literally make everything from scratch to commit to their promise of delicious food. They use a specific math to make sure their yields for packaged meals is not too much or far too little. In my time working food prep, I came across a lot of organic products, while maybe not local as in Oregon local, a lot of the food comes from this coast. It’s funny because when I was hired on, my supervisor thought maybe this wouldn’t be the best fit in terms of my academic interests in local and sustainable food. Working here thus far has made me realize how underrated their sustainable practices are and their commitment to 6% or less food waste. Everything they do is in consideration to being sustainable whether they realize it or not.

I also noticed how hard the employees work considering they are preparing food from 7 am to 3-5 pm, doing hand motions and lifting things that is repetitive. After 5 hours of it my limbs get tired enough. On top of that almost every employee I met enjoyed their job and eachothers company.

Next week I switch to delivery, which should be interesting. Stay tuned!