My Current Obsession (& My 1st Week of Food Service Management)

FIRST THINGS FIRST: With a week of my food service management rotation under my belt I have tons that I want to talk about. First and foremost this is a blog about my internship experience so here is last week's recap:

• On the first day I met with my preceptor and got situated. Side-note: my ID badge picture is totally hideous and it's embarrassing. I spent the rest of the day learning the ins and outs of Food and Nutrition Services. 
• Our hospital has two forms of dining services: Dining on Call and Catering to You.
• Dining on Call involves the patient calling the diet office and making an order based on the foods they are allowed to eat (think: room service).
• Catering to You involves the set breakfast, lunch, and dinner times where food is brought up, an oral menu is read to the patient, and their order is taken by the catering associate.
• I learned a lot about the managerial duties and performed a few of them myself like tray accuracy, tray assembly speed, and I did a test tray. I must say I was very impressed with how well the staff did.
• Also, the food in the hospital cafeteria is seriously so good. Another side-note: interns get free lunch during this rotation because we are working with the food service contractor so that makes me happy.

There are numerous areas of food service to cover during the internship so I am still learning about everything that goes on. This week I am doing a lot more hands-on tasks so the next post will include more stories! 

Next topic... MY CURRENT OBSESSION

So if you have never heard of Lucky's Market...you need to hurry up and go because it is the absolute best grocery store in the history of grocery stores (imagine Trader Joe's mixed with Whole Foods mixed with Aldi's prices). I will probably do a post completely dedicated to how awesome they are but that's for another day. Anyway, while I was venturing around getting my weekly produce I stopped in their beauty section. My skin has been looking a bit dull lately so I decided to try a natural product. After looking through several types I chose these two by Andalou and let me just say they are AMAZING. Both the cleanser and the mask use fruit stem cells to brighten the skin tone naturally. I started with the lemon cleanser which is refreshing and gentle. My face felt so good and full of energy after. This is a morning and night, ever day cleanser. Next I used the pumpkin honey mask. It seriously felt like I was putting the Autumn season on my face if that were ever possible. My skin was smoother, brighter, and softer afterwards. This is a powerful mask so it is only recommended 1-3 times a week. So basically if you are looking for a new face regimen try this. It's awesome. 

That's all for now. I will post more this weekend!

Have a great night, everyone! xo

153 hours later...

What a crazy couple weeks it has been! I am happy to say that I have completed my community rotation. I'm a third of the way there...except not really at all because community was only 4 weeks, food service is 6 weeks, and clinical is 22 weeks....so in reality I'm not even close.

The last two weeks of community were great. I spent most of my time at the Healthy Lifestyles Center at Saint Mary Elizabeth Hospital which is a cardiac and pulmonary rehab facility. During my time there I did cooking demos and educational sessions on weight loss motivation. The recipe I made for my cooking demo was a family recipe called Carolina Caviar (recipe below). It was a huge hit. I did the demo on a Friday and the following week I had so many patients come up to me and tell me they made it over the weekend. What a great feeling! I also had a patient who I followed throughout my rotation and counseled her three times a week. This was a great opportunity to practice counseling skills using Motivational Interviewing--a fairly new technique within the last five years. If you are unfamiliar with motivational interviewing it is basically where you get the client to set their own goals rather than telling them what they need to do (but it's much more than this, that's just literally the most basic definition I can give you). My patient that I counseled was so successful with her weight loss and I only met with her for two weeks. She lost 13 pounds! It was very rewarding to know that she did that with my help. At the end of community we have to submit this huge portfolio with everything that we've done and that took so long the last week but it felt SO AMAZING to finally press submit.

Anyway, today I started my food service rotation. I am eager to start but a little nervous since community was so relaxed and this will be very fast-paced. The days are also going to be a lot longer so I need to prepare for that. For example, instead of your normal 9-5 I am going in tomorrow at 6am and leaving at 4pm so I need to get some sleep. I'll update this more often this rotation now that I'm used to the swing of things, I promise! Also, expect a lifestyle post here in a few days :)

Have a great night everyone! xo