Week 3

Monday 12/10: I didn’t expect today to become busy at all, but it snuck right up on me. I started the day by designing a new Excel sheet for my pasta freezing project. I calculated my percentages, dilutions, and percent to be applied to pasta for freezing. After that I took off to the store and purchased my pasta. I worked right on through lunch because I got into a groove and kept my turnover going quickly- considering how many times I’ve done this same style of project thus far I’m really getting quicker and quicker. I hadn’t been paying any attention but my project manager, Aaron, was watching me and mentioned that I worked very systematically and with flow. I’m assuming this is a compliment because he didn’t have a frown on his face when he said it. I chatted with him about the results up until now and some small talk about this past weekend. Very personable people I work with, I really feel like I belong. I finished the pasta, cleaned up, and made my way to my desk to record my production results on my Excel sheet and to arrange my meal ideas by type of protein for my big meeting tomorrow. I also added side notes when necessary because not everyone is culinary apt. I can’t wait for that!! My ideation session starts at 11am with the VP of Frozen, Robert Delaney, my Team Manager, Aaron, two food technologists including Biana and Keith(the developer of the first line of my new product), as well as Seth Spill and the other JWU Denver culinary intern, Stephanie. I hope they’re all happy and satisfied with my choices and concepts.

Tonight I am going to practice my introduction and reasoning for each menu item so that I am well versed and can speak eloquently. Maybe I’m putting to much into this, but I really make to make an impression.

Tues 12/11 Today was bustling. I finished cataloging all of the equilivent numbers through two systems for the entire Boston Market line. Promptly afterwards, I hosted my First ideation session. I presented my 55(or so) ideas to the frozen VP, the team manager, and the rest of my team. I was nerve racked at first, but overall I received excellent response. We went through every item one by one (which is customary) and discussed each section while they were fresh in our minds. The intention was to have at most 20 good ideas that fit with the concept, feasibility, ease of processing, and budget. The team unknowingly picked out 25; 20 of them coming from the team manager, Aaron Bennett. We had to cut them down further to those 20. Overall, I had huge success today. Afterwards, I started pulling my recipes for my gold standards and writing my schedule. My idea is that I’ll spend 3/5 days in the lab and make 3 of the recipes each week, practicing them twice so that they’re what I feel is ideal for presentation and cutting on the last time I prepare them. From there I’ll distribute cutting sheets to the team and compile the information for further review after I get through all 20 items. I haven’t even reached the best part yet…..remember that corporate account I have with the grocery store chain? They aren’t concerned with what I spend- they want the best, most complete representation (gold standard) for the products in question. This means I’ll get to cook like any chef would kill for a chance for- a (nearly) unlimited budget with choice of the best available ingredients!!! I am so, so giddy just thinking about it. Finally, I have a job that I am in love with and can’t wait to show up for every day. There will, of course, the the desk and paper work, but I think I can deal! I also participated in a cutting of the current Smart Ones pizza. Let me say, it sucks. Everyone knows it. Horrible. Its being worked on as we speak. The crust is the downfall, its….just…..bad, beyond bad. Other wise, couldn’t be happier.

Wed 12/12: I woke up to a lovely surprise this morning. My car was vandalized and ripped apart by some low lifes who did everything they could to get past my alarm (cutting EVERY wire under my dash and steering column- the car WILL NOT start because of this) and then proceeded to destroy my interior. To make it worse, they thought it’d be really cute to leave my doors open in the pouring rain all night. My car is ruined. I’ve put so much work and time into that thing for some jerks to take it away in an instant. I’m royally ticked and depressed. I was late to work because I spent two hours on the phone between the police and making insurance claims. Everyone understood and apologized at some point in the day when they heard what had happened. I apologized for being late, but everyone understood the circumstances. My landlord is kind enough to help me out and let me borrow a vehicle so I can continue my internship.

After being an hour late to work, I jumped right on my recipe writing. I should finish tomorrow, then I’ll being my first shopping list for production. At 11:30 I had a large bimonthly meeting for the frozen section. Since my division has new(er) employees such as myself and Stephanie, my manager introduced us in a power point presentation with likes, dislikes, and humor. It was a great way to get introduced to everyone in the room that I hadn’t already met. The meeting was about profit, commodities, coming up with landmark ideas vs smaller ones (again profitability) and also explained where my line stands when compared to other concepts. There was a luncheon in between because of the length of the conference. It was opened to Q&A and a “gripe” forum too. Turns out that we really need some development in the accelerated shelf life testing of frozen foods- lots of complaints about that; they don’t accelerate it at all in quality assurance. They wait the full 1,6,12,18,24 month interval. Insane. After that, we had a freezer clean out for products because the Associated Press is coming in to visit and see the IQ center and labs. Immediately after, I went to one of the most impressive presentations I have yet to see put on in this building. It came from McCain and JonLin. They were showcasing their patented and protected smokehouse and fire roasted vegetable variations. The corporate chef was incredible- made some amazing, amazing food- the best I have had in a long time. I hope they pay him well; he could open an extremely successful restaurant if he can run a business. The processes for the veggies are amazing, and they just got done with fine tuning and the product is extremely impressive. I may very well be using them for some sources for my development. The consensus in the room is that we’re bringing them on, and fast. Somehow the time slipped by and now I’ve got to go home and deal with the harsh reality of a car that won’t start because of some thieves and immerse myself in the world of insurance claims. Good day.

Thursday 12/13: I ran late yet again because when the tow truck finally came today it was 8am. I stayed an hour late to make up for it, I really needed to do it anyway. Today I did another pasta cutting, we’ve decided which 4 (maybe 5) that I’m going to set up for bench top accelerated shelf life tests. Almost done! After that, it’ll be time to apply the methods in the mock plant. The Associated Press was supposed to come in and I’ve never seen to many people at their lab benches looking busy for photos. They barely touched the lab, they got stuck somewhere else I think. Another department let them participate in a cutting. After the cutting I started writing the rest of my recipes. I didn’t think I’d finish, but I did. I even had time to write my grocery lists for all 6 weeks of gold standards. I’m looking forwards to this with great enthusiasm. We had a freezer clean out again today where we took everything that was cluttering up space and set it free to the rest of the employees.

Tomorrow I have a review on the chicken, rice, and broccoli casserole I mentioned before. I was also invited to lasagna cutting of some kind. I think I participated before, but everything is such a blur here. I love it, always busy, always challenged. Before or after those cuttings I have to go shopping for more pasta for the shelf life test. Its killer- how much food we waste here. Gotta love capitalist America. I’ll be preparing 5 different pasta solutions and 5 of each of those for pulling, freezing, and thawing, at different intervals. I’ll receive a schedule very soon from Biana; I want to follow protocol with this one. Until tomorrow!

Fri 12/14: It’s been a long week, car is finally at the body shop awaiting appraisal. Cross your fingers for me. This morning I worked on finalizing my shopping lists and recipes. Never hurts to double check. I returned to the store for pasta, but didn’t do the process today because it would have intersected with 3 cuttings one after the other. Unfortunately for that project there isn’t any good stopping point. When I was in the lab today I ran into the research nutritionist. She was working (sorta) on developing a sundae for Smart Ones. She’s extremely smart, silly, and we get along well. We had an in depth conversation about Heinz suspending tomato paste in sugar. Its really neat to have both the culinary AND nutrition side of this industry. I can explain to her what she doesn’t understand, but she can communicate with me better than with a food technologist because even the technologist doesn’t know food. I’m a two way bridge- ITS AWESOME.

After speaking with her I was off to my cuttings. One for lasagna who’s differences were so hard to tell apart unless you took apart each component separately and the other for blending types of broccoli because of a shortage in supply on the new launch. The claim and standards of identity have to be changed last minute on the packaging. There is enough time, but just barely. I’ll be starting my freeze thaw pulls on Monday for the pasta project and probably go shopping for my first week of Gold Standards- I got the okay to get started this afternoon!! I can’t wait! I also organized my lab notebook and gave it the updating it desperately needed. Today is the company Christmas Party and its on “during” office hours because we’re okay to leave at 3 today anyway. I think I’ll make an appearance just to socialize with my co workers and get to know and make an impression on them. More than one of the lab assistants said that the party last year was awkward. I know that I’ll do fine because I’m used to being social no matter what (darned kitchen setting echoing in my head) its everyone else who is so used to clamming up and not communicating as often. They can all speak and write very well, but when they don’t know you they aren’t the best conversation starters. I understand now what is meant by the different college experiences and majors. Its so weird to watch it from the outside in. However, the lab assistants were (if not all of them) previous members of sororities and are more apt to communicate. We all get along pretty well.

Overall, I’m still loving it here.

Also, I've figured out my job here at Heinz. The dietitian can't cook, but has to deal with numbers and standards to make them fall into heath regulation- I understand and am fluent in this because of my degree basis. Next, I have the culinary and basic food technology background so I can bridge the gap between the numbers based developers and the chef based developer(ME) while still communicating both realms of the spectrum- nutrition and cooking- from one extreme to the other. I'm like a 2 way bridge spanning the river's width.