This was the busiest week thus far for me at the Food Innovation Center. While in the office most of the week was focused on research. A few upcoming projects being worked on focus heavily on herbs and how the beneficial properties they contain which can help the body. I did not realize just how many herbs there are out there and the insane number of things they claim to help with. One for instance is Bacopa or Brahmi which claims to help memory, stress relief, protects neurons, could possibly benefit those with Alzheimer’s, decrease opioid dependence and reduce swelling. Even though I knew that herbs could have medicinal properties, hearing things like this and just learning about a few of the many herbs out there is amazing. If your looking to learn more about herbs and a good number of the ones there are out there I found mountainroseherbs.com to be very helpful.
For two days this week I was able to attend the Oregon Dairy Industry conference. I found meeting people who work in the dairy industry to be such a great experience. I did not talk to anyone who wasn’t incredibly nice and even though I am only an intern I found that people valued me being there. I had a few people who were talking to my internship coordinator come up to me later on to introduce themselves because they were unable to have a formal introduction to me in specific. I also received opportunities to apply for various jobs and scholarships through the experience. There were also many great speakers at the event. My favorite being a talk done by someone at Oregon Freeze Dry which was about how to set up a company in a way where the employees are put above making money where all employees know how to do every task and there are easy to achieve ways for every employee to move up in their job. There were a lot more highlights from that talk but those were a few of them. I found it very comforting to see so many people who were retired but were still working in the industry because they loved it so much, that really made me feel like I chose the right field of study. To finish off the conference there was a cheese tasting event. Some of the cheeses i had never even heard of before and others that I will need to remember so that I can buy at some point. One of which being Cypress Grove Chevre. Also raclette needs to be seen more regularly like at weddings and such because it is delicious. If you are unaware what this is, it is a Swiss/French dish where a semi-firm cheese is heated and the melted part is scraped off, it goes well on potatoes, pickles, or on bread. For me it was like the more elegant form of cheese fondue.
