Creating a culture that recognizes differences in a positive manner is a key element of good teaching and an important strategy for making every student feel safe and secure while encouraging learning.

By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT

Last month, we discussed ways to encourage critical thinking by using executive summaries and abstracts. This month and next, we will focus on issues of difference and diversity. In some ways, these topics are a natural follow-up to discussions of critical thinking since teaching about differences and diversity is about changing or broadening people’s minds and actions. It also helps them improve their perceptual and assessment skills.

Differences and Diversity
Increasingly, the membership of our classrooms has changed to include a wide range of students from all kinds of backgrounds and with all kinds of interests. The fascination of the culinary world and its prominent status, on the one hand, and the recessionary economy, on the other, has brought students into our programs who might never have been there before. In fact, the range of differences among our students can include any of the following (in alphabetical order to point out that no one difference is more important than another):

Says Chef Weiner, it’s time to assess ourselves as role models to our students, who witness more than we realize. And a tragedy hits home that we must work to positively influence those in our charge while we have the opportunity.

By Adam Weiner, CFSE

From January through April I addressed how to teach your students recipe skills and basic cooking skills. In May I took a break and wrote about the importance of teaching real networking. In that article, I stated that I would pick up with cooking techniques this month.

Please forgive me, but I changed my mind. I decided that with the end of the school year for most of you it is timely to consider our position as role models.

It is important that we, as teachers, take a look at ourselves and realize our impact upon students—sometimes beyond anything that we imagine. Further, we have skills and talents observed by our students without our realizing it. In May 2012, “The Gold Medal Classroom” published my article on assessment. So, now at the end of the year, it is time to do an assessment of ourselves as role models.

Find answers to hot (and cold) potato questions at dr.idahopotato.com.

The Dr. Potato Blog, the Idaho Potato Commission’s (IPC) popular resource for frequently asked questions about the state’s top crop, now has its own address. For answers to puzzling ingredient, technique and menu queries about Idaho^® potatoes, the Doctor is in at dr.idahopotato.com. Even better, operators, educators and students will find useful tips for maximizing the appeal and profitability of Idahopotato offerings.

Don Odiorne, IPC vice president-foodservice and Idaho potato-industry veteran, applies his practical and culinary experience to each response. His current posts tackle timely topics like healthy Idaho potato-menu options, the best internal temperature for a baked Idaho potato and techniques for baking 50 Idahopotatoes at a time.

Submit an Idaho potato question to Dr. Potato at dr.idahopotato.com. To browse the Idaho Potato Commission’s foodservice-recipe database, “Passionate About Potatoes” foodservice ad campaign, and shippers and processor directory, or to download the Idaho Potato Commission Foodservice Toolkit, visit foodservice.idahopotato.com.

To order a “Passionate About Potatoes” chef recipe set, email the Idaho Potato Commission at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call (208) 334-2350.

A significant profit center in any foodservice operation is energy efficiency and savings.

By Jay Fiske

As the economy and the foodservice industry appear to be gaining steam, are you prepared to reap the full benefit? While operators are conditioned to keep a tight rein on food and labor costs, when it comes to overhead, many throw up their hands in frustration and resignation. You might not be able to change the terms of your lease or rising property taxes, but with a few easy actions, you can control much of your energy destiny.

Best of all, every energy dollar saved is pure profit. For an operation with an 8% profit margin, you’d have to increase sales by $12.50 to add just one dollar in profits. To keep that in perspective, if you cut $500 a month in energy expense, that adds an additional profit of $6,000 per annum. To generate that profit in the traditional way, you’d have to increase sales by $75,000. So there’s not a moment to lose!

As cooks, we exist to express ourselves, learn and work together as a team and produce some amazing art that people in the dining room will eat, smell and enjoy.

By Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

To some it may be a job, a means to an end. Yes, there are those who work in kitchens simply to pay the bills. This is not true of the people with whom I strove to work and hired for the kitchens in which I was privileged to work.

When you stop to think about it, there is something truly magical about working in a professional kitchen. I have often said that most serious cooks are frustrated artists—individuals who have this innate artistic ability that is simply looking for a vehicle of expression. Some are writers, painters, sculptors, bloggers, musicians or even poets. Few are outgoing enough to have an interest in the live performing arts, so their goal is to find a place where they can be expressive behind closed doors. Ah … the kitchen, what a perfect place.

Once they find their way into that cross between the cleanliness of a surgical room and intensity and heat of Dante’s Inferno, they are hooked. Just think of the advantages for the artist: an environment where every day you get to paint on your canvas (the plate), use a plethora of exciting raw materials, appeal to every human sense simultaneously, earn a paycheck, work with other driven artists, learn from a teacher (the chef), and receive instant feedback for your work (although many cooks could care less as long as they feel that the work is an expression of who they are).