Blue Rose Cafe teacher lunch
by McKenna Nelson, News Co-Editor
On October 3 and 4 the Blue Rose Café held their monthly lunch for teachers complete with hot roast beef sandwiches and double chocolate brownies. The previous culinary arts teacher started providing lunch for the teachers once a month, and when Chrislyn Beresheim came to Rose eight years ago, she continued the tradition. “Once a month, we do a three-course lunch for the faculty and staff,” Beresheim said. “We do it for two days in a row, and sometimes we offer a dining room lunch in addition to the mobile unit lunch that we did this time.” Beresheim and her students not only provide lunch for the faculty and staff; sometimes they do a dining room for the self-enclosed classrooms on the 800 hall where some of the EC kids have class. “There are five different self-enclosed classrooms that the Academic Boosters gave us a grant to serve lunch to,” Beresheim said. “We like to do that in a dining room setting so the students that normally stay in their classrooms all day can get the experience of being in a restaurant and ordering food.” All of the students in Beresheim’s Culinary Arts I and Culinary Arts II classes participate in the planning and preparation of the food. Two students are chosen each month to be the leaders of the event, and this time, seniors Matt Haak and Toi Smith were selected. “I did a lot of managing and making sure everybody was taking care of their responsibilities,” Haak said. “I have taken culinary arts classes since I was a freshman, so I was really excited to get to lead it this month with Toi.” Smith, Haak and the rest of the students did most of the planning and preparation without the help of Beresheim. They designed the menu, found the recipes and decided how much food to buy. However, serving a three-course meal to over fifty teachers brings many challenges. “We ran out of roast beef on the second day,” Haak said, “but everything went smoothly other than that.” Because of this shortage, Haak said that next time he will make sure they are more prepared and buy extra food in case more orders come in at the last minute. Because not many teachers chose to dine in the Blue Rose Café for lunch, Beresheim and her students decided to only deliver to teachers. “My favorite part was getting to deliver the food to the teachers and see their reactions to the food,” Haak said. Haak also said that their food was met with great feedback from the teachers. Business teacher Kelly Perkins ordered the chicken tortilla soup and the chocolate brownie dessert. “The food was delicious,” Perkins said. “I have ordered from them before, and I definitely will again.” With so many teachers and staff members at Rose, getting word out about the lunch is a challenge for Beresheim and her students. However, Perkins said this is the best part of the program, aside from the food. “The best part is that they send us the menu and give us advance notice to pick out which food we want to order,” Perkins said. “I really don’t think they could improve anything. Everything was perfect.” Beresheim said she hopes to continue serving food to the teachers and students in the future. Although they face many challenges each month, they continue to give back to the teachers every month. “I like to provide an affordable lunch to the teachers who normally only get thirty minutes to eat lunch,” Beresheim said. “It’s nice to give a treat once a month as a thanks to the teachers that work so hard for their students.” |