Day fifty five

A courtesy of

What can affect purchasing decision?

Back to classes. Even though today is Wednesday, we have our schedule moved for one day ahead due to Good Friday (regardless that in California this is not a state holiday). Tomorrow will be Friday for me.

Campus this week is crazy. One group graduated last Friday, but we have two groups returning from an externship and three new groups of students. Lunch are is packed with people, parking lot is full. Also it was an open house today.

So, what did I learned today?

Math, we are moving forward every day. Today was about purchasing decision. There are always many choices and we should be able to make the right one based on our operations. Let's say cloves - we have choice to buy
8 oz container for 5$ or 1 pound container for 7.5$. So it seems easy, 1 pound costs less per ounce. However, you use may be 6 oz of cloves per year and by the time you get to the bottom of 1 pound container, there will be no indication that it is cloves except for the label (no aroma at all). Do you still want a big one? Another example - lemon juice. You can buy lemons and make juice. The cost will be 0.11 $ per ounce, or you can buy already made lemon juice in a 32 fl. oz jar with a cost 0.13 $ per ounce. Lemons seem to be a cheaper choice. Also with lemons you may do so many things: get zest from them, slice and put slice in a cup of tea, make candied lemons. It looks really great to buy lemons... However, you know your operations and you know that for a cup of tea you need a slice of lemon once in a blue moon. You made candied lemons two years ago and they are still in a fridge, zest yes it a good thing, but you really use it very seldom. Do not forget, that you have to pay a prep cook 15$ an hour to juice all these lemons and it will take him/her an hour and a half to get 32 fl oz of juice. So better to buy a juice and one lemon in case customer ask for a slice for a cup of tea.

Gastronomy was about very provocative topic. We talk about genetically modified food. Is it ethical to make these modification. Do millions of starving people justify these modifications? We watched video and one of the fact was about Zambia. The government of Zambia rejected GM seeds from USA and it was a big scandal, because there are so many starving people. I agree that something should be done. But I do not think that GM food is a panacea for this problem. What I do believe, that many diseases are related to GM food (this is only my opinion, I can not prove it and I do not have any research to prove this).

Nutrition was about proteins and amino acids. As usually recommendation is to reduce intake of read meat and switch to nuts and seeds. Do not know about this. You switch to nuts and seeds, then grass.... I do not like an idea of giving up nice piece of meat.

First  year experience was about managing yourself and others, a little bit about management. In the evening I have got a note from the chef-instructor saying that I do not have any outstanding homework and if I do a final project well enough I could earn an A. Should think about this. It's tempting to get at least one A.