I’m the food rep for my res hall, Shafer. Once a month, all the food reps meet with folks from Wellesley Fresh, our dining service, to learn about what’s going on and share feedback. Every other meeting is an interactive; we get to go behind the scenes. This past Thursday, we got a tour of Claflin Bakery, the on-campus bakery that makes all the desserts served around campus. (I met Michael, the pastry chef, when I was on campus this summer. That was a good move. He gave me bags of vegan cookies.)
Michael showed us the machine that punches dough into little burger buns!
We saw all of the crazy industrial baking machines, things that squash dough and cut dough and knead dough. 2,500 people go through a lot of dough. Cookies, danishes, pizza crust galore…
This here machine pops out little cookie dough balls.
A giant rotisserie oven!
Sweet breads rotating through a giant oven reminded me rotisserie chicken.
Lizzie decorating cupcakes!
For Thanksgiving, Wellesley Fresh is selling Thanksgiving dinner-themed cupcakes. There are six in a box, and each represents a different dish: turkey, peas, corn, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, and blueberry pie. My friend (and fellow Shaferite) Lizzie works in the bakery, and she showed us how to decorate each cupcake. Michael used a torch for the finishing touch: crisp marshmallows on the “sweet potato” cupcake.
Michael enjoyed torching the marshmallows.
After a quick demo from Lizzie, who made it look so easy, we got to decorate our own cupcakes! I love squeezing frosting out of piping bags. Right at the end, as I was leaving, Michael told me the frosting was vegan (the cupcakes weren’t). I gave the cupcakes to an eager table of first-years in the Shafer living room, but not before spooning the graham cracker-covered frosting off the so-called turkey. I really like frosting. It’s kind of a problem.
All done!
In other news, this week was course registration, and my schedule is set for the spring semester! I’m taking music theory as a co-requisite for my guitar lessons, I’m starting Portuguese, and I was pre-registered for my first-year writing course in women’s and gender studies. There weren’t many options that fit in with that schedule, but I managed to get into an anthropology/peace and justice studies course that I’m excited about. Watching courses fill up throughout the week–seniors registered on Tuesday, juniors on Wednesday, and so on–was stressful. But the next time around, we won’t be the last ones to go.