This week I continued my rotation in private practice, and attended a seminar on diversity and sustainability in dietetics practice.
Here’s what my week looked like:
Monday:
Today was a work-on-your-projects-from-home day, so that’s what I did! I slept in a little, and then spent the rest of the day on my computer working on projects. Right now, I have five different projects that I have to finish by the end of the semester (in a few weeks). Tensions are running high, so it was nice to have a day to get more organized and start chunking through these projects.
I also received my Banza RD2Be ambassador kit which was very exciting! I’m not receiving any financial compensation for promoting Banza products, I just like their brand. I’ll be testing out some of their recipes soon, so keep your eyes on the blog for that. For those who may be less familiar, Banza is a chickpea pasta brand. If you’re a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN), nutrition student or Dietetic Intern (RD2Be), you can register for the Banza ambassador program here. They’ll send you a few boxes of pasta, coupons to give to friends/family/clients for free Banza products, and recipe cards.
Tuesday:
There was a thick layer of frost on my windshield this morning when I left for my private practice rotation–winter is coming! I finished printing all of the fruit, vegetable, accompaniment, and dessert recipes for a long-term care client’s master menu. We had a conference call this morning with the company that maintains the recipe database we’re using. I was able to sit-in on the call to hear about what this company was going to do to solve some of the problems we had found with the database. It’s interesting to witness the early struggles of a private practice switching over to a new database system. In some ways, it’s kind of nice that they’re learning a new system right now because it makes me feel less clueless since we’re all learning it together.
Then, I started to go through and edit all of the fruit recipes. Most of these recipes came directly from the recipe database which means that none of them are in the format this private practice uses. Essentially, I spent a lot of time writing standardized statements on recipes, and double-checking serving sizes. Since this long-term care facility client is regulated by the state, they have to ensure that fruit is given in ½ cup servings. This means that I have to convert the pounds of fruit listed on each recipe to cup equivalents to ensure that each of the 24 residents will receive adequate fruit. Lots of math. In true midwest fashion, when I left for the day the temperature had jumped to 50’F…not so frosty anymore.
Wednesday:
This morning it was raining, so evidently I was a little premature in claiming that winter was near. I can’t be mad though, because that means there was no frost to scrape off my car this morning.
Today at the private practice, I started editing all of the vegetable recipes. Just like with the fruit, I had to double-check portion sizes to make sure each person would get a ½ cup serving. I also had to fill-in standardized statements depending on how the vegetables were cooked: steamed, roasted, sauteed, etc. Quite a few of these recipes were “shells” (the recipe exists in the system, but has no ingredients or instructions). I used other recipes and common knowledge to fill-in these shells. Some were extremely simple like a seasoned pea recipe while others were a little more complicated, like a glazed butternut squash recipe. Overall, though, this work isn’t hard; it’s just time-consuming. After supervised practice, I drove down the road to my night class. We learned more about Type 2 diabetes prevalence in the United States and the public health implications associated with it.
Thursday:
Time to work on revising the accompaniments recipes. The “accompaniments” are essentially the starch component of the meal: potatoes, rice, pasta, etc. These ones were a little trickier to edit because they involve multiple ingredients, and I had to make sure that the starch component made up at least 80% of the half-cup portion. Once I finished these, I started editing some of the salad recipes. It simultaneously feels like we’ve gotten most of the recipes finished, yet we aren’t even close to being done. :P
Friday:
I had a seminar at Dominican about diversity and sustainability in nutrition and dietetics practice. For the morning sessions, we learned about diversity and inequities in food and nutrition. I was pretty excited about this, since I studied these topics during my undergrad. I’m very glad that nutrition seems to be heading into this direction of improving access and reducing disparities. Then, we had the opportunity to view posters that some Dominican English as a Second Language (ESL) students had prepared about different cultural foods. One group even brought some samples of their food to try which was a hit. For lunch, they served an authentic African meal which was very different and tasty.
In the afternoon we learned about sustainability and indoor farming advancements. It was really cool to hear about how some RDNs are getting more involved with agriculture, and how indoor farming is helping the farm-to-table movement. Overall, it was a day about broadening your perspective and trying some really tasty foods.
Weekend:
There are a lot of ongoing projects all due in the next couple weeks, so I spent the weekend getting more work done on them. I have two group assignments: a marketing project and a community intervention paper. I’m also preparing a lesson plan to teach during a health class at a high school, finish a portfolio of my accomplishments during the semester, and create a research poster using the data collected from the high school freshmen (this time an individual poster–our last one was a group poster). Needless to say, I’ve got my work cut out for me.
Next week, I’ll be at the private practice again for a couple of days before driving to Minnesota for Thanksgiving. Until then!