Tuesday, June 14, 2016

A Taste of Italy: Riderwood Theme Meal

By: Sammy Koterwas & Josh Naumann

With food service as our final internship rotation, we were extremely excited to plan our theme meal. While other partner pairs were given the ability to choose their theme, we were given the task to bring Italian cuisine to Riderwood. This worked to the advantage of both sides of production; interns were able to spend more time in the kitchen practicing our culinary skills, while kitchen staff felt more confident aiding in the preparation of familiar recipes. 

Although we were given our Italian recipes, through “taste-testing” we were able to adjust ingredient amounts, as well as put our signature on dishes. While testing our lemon and chive risotto, we decided to put a spin on the original recipe. We first formed our finished risotto into cake patties. We then fried half them on the griddle, and baked the other half the oven. All cooks were then given a chance to taste both versions of our risotto cakes. The fried version on the griddle won unanimously, and the new recipe was then incorporated into our final menu.

Other adjustments came with each recipe we tried; vegetables were cut uniformly in the ratatouille for aesthetic appeal, fresh eggplant was used instead of frozen to easily roll our rollatinis, and mascarpone cheese was made from scratch instead of ordering it premade.

Spending less time on menu planning also allowed us to spend more time with marketing materials. Our commercial was recorded week 2 of our rotation, allowing the filming crew to add extra editing and effects to our finished product. Our commercial was able to air more than a week prior to our theme meal attracting more Residents to our event.

Our theme meal was a hit with residents with almost 100 in attendance! Authentic music played softly while residents enjoyed our Italian dishes. We were able to make our rounds with tables, thanking them for attending our meal while obtaining feedback and suggestions. It was a rewarding experience to hear first-hand how much the residents appreciated our hard work.



With the guidance of the Riderwood cooks and staff, we were able to make our final project in our final rotation a success! We enter the world of dietetics with a new appreciation for food service industry.

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Happy Maryland Day!



Even though I am not originally from Maryland, I was pretty excited to be a Maryland-er for the day! Maryland Day is an annual event hosted at the University of Maryland, College Park. It attracts thousands yearly where everyone enjoys a day of good food, games, informative booths, raffles, cooking demos, and more! The interns were fortunate this year to volunteer at either the UMD internship booth where there was a game of corn hole, the UMD extension booth where they were passing out Maryland swag, or the UMD Campus Sustainability booth which was hosting a "What's in Season" game and passing out kale plants or making bean pots.


We all took turns volunteering at a designated booth, but also took some time to walk around and explore the other events. This was a great way opportunity for the interns to get involved in the community help out at a campus event. Luckily the rain held off and people were able to enjoy the nice weather as they strolled around campus.


Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Life of a Traveling RD2be

As interns, we seldom have a moment to breathe. If it’s not time spent working for free it’s case studies, projects, and miscellaneous homework assignments. I’ve found that in between a full time job and college-like amounts of homework, I sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic. More times than I’d care to admit I’ve had some form of road rage knowing I have so much looming over me. An irrepressible anger that won’t seem to go away with the soothing guitar riffs from Dave Matthews Band or the latest catchy Taylor Swift lyrics.

With the ever-changing, ever-advancing technology that is right at our fingertips why not kill two birds with one stone? I’m not saying break out the metabolism textbook mid-commute nor am I condoning the use of cell phones while driving. In this day and age however, nearly any smartphone is equipped with a voice recorder or some form of voice to text application, if not readily available it can be just a download away from an app store of your choosing. Simply turn on voice-to-text or voice memo, drop the phone in a cup holder and use these moments to knock out the latest mandatory internship blog you’ve been assigned to complete, rattle off any ideas for upcoming projects, or set reminders of points to discuss during a presentation. The uses for an RD2be are limited only to how creative you choose to be. When you’re finished just save the note and email to yourself. ¡Voila! One assignment less to stress over. Sure, there may be a few errors, but how hard is it to spend 5 minutes cleaning up a paper compared to an hour it may have originally taken you?
  
So use that travel time for good, and remember eyes on the road and hands-free keeps you a smart and safe RD2be.