By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT

Activities, books and conferences are just three ways to spark your own learning and experience personal and professional growth this summer.

Last month, we discussed using field trips and site visits effectively, and now that the summer months are here, it is time to consider how we replenish our information bank, our instincts and our personal and professional insights. We will discuss the ABCs and the DEF’s of professional development, this month the ABCs—activities, books, and conferences—and next month the DEFs. What better time to think about your professional development when so many of our students are graduating and moving into new phases of their lives. A great time to consider new beginnings in our lives and what we can or want to do to make these new beginnings grow and prosper!

By Kim Reddin, courtesy of the National Onion Association

Onions provide color and texture to a dish, but their flavor is what really makes them irresistible and virtually irreplaceable in the kitchen. From raw to caramelized, the flavor of an onion has many layers.

Onion Production
Commercially grown in 20 states from coast to coast, onions are the third-largest fresh-vegetable industry in the United States; Idaho-Eastern Oregon, Washington and California are the leading production areas.  The National Onion Association estimates that fewer than 1,000 U.S. farmers plant more than 142,000 acres of onions each year. Americans consume nearly 20 pounds of onions per capita annually.

Flavor Factors
Onion flavor is determined by many factors including genetics, planting location, soil and temperature.  While compounds such as sugars and organic acids can contribute to what people taste, a special class of biologically active organosulfur compounds is what actually give onions their distinctive flavor and aroma.

By Anselm Doering

Commercial oven cleaners contain some of the most toxic chemicals found in any restaurant kitchen. What works just as well and is safe on the environment? This tip and nine more will help you be more ecologically and even economically sound.

Coke and Pop Rocks can kill. Elvis is coming back. And green cleaning a restaurant is burdensome, expensive and less effective than the traditional toxic approach.

I cringe each time I hear this. The green-cleaning myth, that is. Elvis, I’m not so sure. He may indeed be alive and well and living in Las Vegas.

But, when it comes to green cleaning restaurants, there are many quick, simple, environmentally preferable procedures that SAVE money and IMPROVE cleaning. Immediately.

Here are 10 easy and effective ways to improve green cleaning at your restaurant:

Maple Leaf Farms is calling for entries for The 2011 Discover Duck™ Chef Recipe Contest now through August 5, 2011. Open to professional chefs and culinary students, the contest challenges entrants to create up to three original recipes that showcase duck in creative ways. Professional and student-chef recipes will be judged in separate categories, each with their own cash prizes.

“The possibilities are endless with duck. It’s so versatile,” said Maple Leaf Farms Marketing Manager Cindy Turk. “This contest gives chefs a chance to use their culinary creativity. We look forward to seeing a lot of innovative and inspired recipes.”

Recipe entries must include a Maple Leaf Farms duck product and may be submitted for any menu part. The recipes will be judged according to originality, flavor, simplicity (easily sourced ingredients and ease of preparation) and accuracy of the recipe ingredients and method.

Sullivan University’s National Center for Hospitality Studies (NCHS) will honor Chef Walter Bundy of Lemaire Restaurant, located in the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Va., with the prestigious Distinguished Visiting Chef award on Thursday, May 19. As recipient of the award, Bundy will present on-campus cooking demonstrations in addition to a question-and-answer session held exclusively for Sullivan University students.

Designed to connect today’s aspiring culinarians with industry leaders, The Distinguished Visiting Chef Series has been recognizing three top chefs annually since its inception in 1988. Bundy will be the 40th recipient of the award, joining an impressive roster of chefs that includes Bob Kinkead, Emeril Lagasse, Louis Osteen, Rick Tramonto and Marcel Desaulniers.

“We are honored and excited to welcome Chef Bundy to Sullivan University and to present him with the Distinguished Visiting Chef award,” says Tom Hickey, director of the NCHS. “He brings an innovative and modern style to traditional Southern cuisine, and I look forward to our students having the opportunity to experience his approach to cooking firsthand.”

Les Roches International School of Hotel Management, one of the leading hospitality-management schools in the world, is pleased to announce a new management program in its wide range of curriculum: the postgraduate diploma in business administration for culinary-arts professionals, a one-year program starting in August 2011 on the Les Roches campus in Bluche, Switzerland.

Want to sample the creations of one of the top 10 pastry chefs in America? Just visit the Apple Pie Bakery Café at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA). Francisco Migoya, CIA associate professor in baking and pastry arts and executive chef of the Apple Pie Bakery Café, has been named one of the best pastry chefs in America for 2011 by Dessert Professional magazine.

The Apple Pie Bakery Café is one of five public restaurants on the Hyde Park, N.Y., campus, all of which are also classrooms for students pursuing their bachelor's or associate degrees at the CIA. As such, in addition to being the restaurant's executive chef, Migoya teaches the sophomore-level Café Operations course for baking and pastry-arts majors.

By Michael DeJager, ’12, student-body president, JWU

Success in diverse working environments does not come easy. It takes a concerted effort on behalf of all parties to ensure that work flows smoothly. This process takes cultural intelligence, or an awareness and sensitivity to the nuances of cross-cultural communication. When employees have a sense of cultural fluency, communicating and interacting across cultures becomes natural.

By Christopher Koetke, CEC, CCE

Are we heading for a worldwide famine by mid-century? Is our very civilization unsustainable? Is it too late to stop the train and turn it around? The answers are yes, yes and no.

Julian Cribb, Australian author of The Coming Famine (University of California Press, 2010), paints the picture of a perfect storm in which a number of sustainability issues will reach criticality and come together over the next few decades to portend a worldwide famine that will change the face of our world.

The concept of “peak oil” is something that we’ve all become familiar with over the last decade. Put simply, it’s a situation where demand outpaces the discovery of new reserves of a finite resource, so supply gets scarce and expensive. In Cribb’s estimation, water and agricultural outputs will also reach their peak in the near-term horizon.

In fact, we’re already seeing some evidence. While the United States, Australia and Europe are awash in food, literally throwing half of it away, the rest of the world is not. For the last half century a billion people in the developing world have been going to bed hungry every night. The resulting “food insecurity” has devastating effects.

Johnson & Wales University's Cuisinart Center for Culinary Excellence in Providence earns LEED gold certification.

Johnson & Wales University (JWU) has been awarded LEED® gold certification established by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and verified by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) for its Cuisinart Center for Culinary Excellence. One of the newest and most prominent facilities on the Harborside Campus of the university's expansive Providence, R.I., campus, the 82,000-square-feet Cuisinart Center for Culinary Excellence features a state-of-the-art environment specifically designed to accommodate the university's advanced culinary curriculum.