Many foodservice students today have yet to experience fine dining. But it’s just as important to expose them to the several other service styles in the marketplace so they may excel in their careers.

By Wendy Gay, CHE

When I attended The Culinary Institute of America in the early ʼ80s, the restaurant business was divided into four types of dining: quick-service restaurants (QSRs), casual dining (brass & fern bistros), institutional dining and formal dining or “white tablecloth restaurants.” We were required to work in each of these environments. We had the diner for training in QSR and casual dining, instruction on institutional dining and three other restaurants to expose us to formal dining. By rotating through these four environments, we gained experience in each area.

Courtesy of CIAprochef.com

You don't have to get on a plane to taste one of the glories of Brazilian cooking ... or a bubbling cassoulet from Southwest France ... or a Tuscan soup that tastes like somebody’s grandmother made it. Beans can take you there.

Through The Culinary Institute of America’s ProChef e-learning, “The World Bean Kitchen: Passport to Flavor,” presented by the Northarvest Bean Growers Association, debunks some of the myths that surround the cooking of dry beans. Learning segments include “Beyond Bean Basics,” “Bean Nation: The American Experience,” instructional videos and more.

Many free materials are readily at your disposal to teach the “3 Rs” of handling excess prepared food, food scraps and used oil more sustainably.

By Christopher Koetke, CEC, CCE

Many of us grew up with that wise adage, but it’s even more true today. In sustainability, when we talk about waste, the focus is usually on recycling and composting—basically, how to divert our waste from the landfill. However, that’s not the most sustainable solution. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have developed a program that advocates use of its “Food Waste Recovery Hierarchy.” We often talk about the “3 Rs”—reduce, reuse or recycle—and this program prioritizes those options.

Reduce. The most sustainable waste option is to not create it in the first place. According to Jonathan Bloom, author of American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It), Americans routinely toss out 40% of all the food produced each year. And it’s important to keep in mind that along with the wasted food, we also wasted the water, energy and other resources used to produce, harvest and transport it to our kitchens.

By Margaret Checchi, M.Ed.

Successful transitioning from hands-on learning to hybridized classes depends on faculty who can create dynamic and engaging course content delivered with students’ best interests in mind.

A decade ago, it was unheard of to serve foams and essences; it was unrealistic to manipulate food at the very heart of its molecular structure. What seemed unrealistic and impossible then is becoming almost mainstream now. So it is with education.

At New England Culinary Institute, our students slurp coffee desperately in the cold, black dark of the pre-dawn chill, hunching over pocket notebooks filled with ratios, temperatures, cook times and formulas as they create the day’s menus and generate mise en place lists. They are like the students before them and the ones before them, since Socrates held lessons in the olive grove. With luck, Chef will come into the kitchen having had a good night’s sleep and the students will get through the day without feeling completely inadequate.

According to NPD, more adult consumers aspire to eat smaller portions in the coming year, suggesting that this healthy eating strategy will become more important in the future.

Portion control is a tenet of healthy eating, and it appears that consumers are increasingly aware of the importance of managing the portion size of the foods they eat, according to The NPD Group, a leading market research company.

For a recent report entitled “Healthy Eating Strategies by Generation,” NPD compiled a list of 30 healthy eating and lifestyle dimensions to determine which ones consumers of different generations associate with healthy eating. Out of the 30 attributes, eating smaller portions ranked 11^th in importance among adult consumers across generations as a healthy-eating characteristic. Adult consumers ranked the top five characteristics of healthy eating and healthy lifestyles consistently: exercise regularly, eat well-balanced meals, eat all things in moderation, limit/avoid foods with saturated fat or cholesterol or trans fats, and drink at least eight glasses of water per day.