Day in the office?
I follow many of my classmates’ internship blogs and admire their posts about amazing and exotic places on earth they are in!
Nevertheless, for this internship I stayed here, in cold little Denmark, so maybe the pictures I will upload will not be as colorful and striking, but this is somewhere I work and learn much :)
So, here you go, that’s the place where the magic happens! Very little, but very organized and clean kitchen, that sometimes has to fit 6 people.
As one of my learning objectives is to calculate the nutrition of the meals offered in KOHAOF, I get to spend a lot of time in this kitchen. And I mean a lot!
In the beginning of my internship I never had an idea how long is it going to take to do it. The food in KOHAOF is really made in “homemade” concept, prepared in huge quantities and by 3 different chefs, therefore, after researching on proper calorie calculation for restaurants (as it needs to be really exact and trustworthy), my supervisor, who is the owner of the place, and I have agreed that the process of calculating has to be repeated 3 times for each meal, dip, dressing, topping, everything! This includes following the cooking process, weighing, calculating, measuring nutrient loss, adjusting timing and cooking methods.
Trust me, this all is so vague when it comes to homemade cooking in huge quantities, and especially when it comes to a plate of soup, which has been taken from a pot ready to fill 30 plates, that are never going to be exactly same in regards of composition and nutrients. Nevertheless, I strive for perfection, or at least the most accurate numbers...
Well, I am not the only one striving for that perfection, I have some good assistance!
Meet Linda, one of the chefs ik KOHAOF. She comes from Ghana and actually has Ghanaian higher education diploma of Nutrition and Health educator. In my opinion, this is really essential for the restaurant, as for instance, the soups are made from so many organic vitamin and antioxidant rich ingredients, which are so fragile when it comes to inappropriate preparation and treatment. Yet this women knows a lot, and does her best to maintain the highest amount of nutrients in the food. However, it is unavoidable, especially when it comes to making food in high quantities and serving it to many people for certain amount of time, which also means reheating once. Anyways, what I am trying to say here, we spend a lot of time together, standing with chronometers and weighs, making it seem like a lab, and trying to achieve consistent, proportional and just in general, best result :D
This is Reza, my internship supervisor and the owner of KOHAOF. Reza is an educated and working engineer, which definitely makes him an accurate and precise person. What is funny, at the same time he is a real kitchen chef, that perceives food as art and does not believe that any meal could ever be repeated or have the exact same composition. Well, that is complicated with the meal nutrient calculation but we are trying to find a balance! :D
Let’s get out of the Kitchen. Here you see the restaurant itself. Which I guess I could partly call my office. When the place is not crowded, I work, research, calculate, create and do my other internship tasks here, as it is close to the kitchen and everything is easily accessible. Nevertheless, it is not always possible and the most comfortable to work in, so many tasks that requires just computer work I can perform wherever I prefer.
So, here you see a fragment of my home office and assistance. I am not going to lie, I have never preferred just sitting at a table stuck to the chair for all day. It is for a reason I study Global Nutrition and Health, which does not support being inactive and stationary all day. And yes, I am actually really productive when I can study or work in a comfortable surroundings.
Post is getting too long, so I will quickly wrap it up with sending wishes from our cold little Denmark, and actually not such cold early spring view from this morning! See you soon!
