DAY 16

We started off with a meeting at a cook-chill with Bob Burrows. His cook-chill operation serves all of the surrounding Bozeman schools. For extra income to benefit the school lunch program, they offer this service to local businesses such as MSU, Moo Casa, MacKenzie River Pizza, and the Soup Shack. Essentially, a cook-chill makes large quantities of food (serves 2,300-2,500 people every day) and chills them quickly to assure food safety. They mostly make sauces, taco meats, and salad dressings and store them in plastic air tight bags in crates. It was a really interesting tour because it's just such a massive operation. I thought cooking for 50 people in my quantity foods class was a lot! I enjoyed talking to him about the local school districts because of my interest in childhood obesity. They are attempting to be the first district in the nation that are taking the USDA "Healthier US Challenge" which has specifications for the food that can be served in the cafeteria. The parents are demanding nutrition at any cost. I would love to do menu development for schools that are in that mindset.

Then, we had three salad dressing samplings. First, Unilever Best Foods came to represent Hellman's and Wishbone, then it was Kraft, and then Lighthouse. They all had completely different sales styles. Sometimes it's hard not judge a product based on the salesperson. Also, some of them were very generous in what they offered as perks and off-invoice billbacks. I don't want to say too much specifically because we still haven't made our final decision!

After work we did some catering at the freshman orientation picnic. We served lemonade to about 500 people and then had a picnic dinner ourselves. It was a beautiful day so it was nice to get out of the office.

Every Monday Rachael and I have an "M Monday", which means that we hike up to the M at the edge of town up on the mountainside. It was put there by students in 1915 and can be seen from anywhere in Bozeman.