Jeremi and the noodle factory

Back in July, my company had it's 5 year anniversary. They official date was actually in april or june at which point we (the employees) got the bosses/founders a golden horseshoe for good luck in the future. We were told about a month earlier to keep this day free and that we might not be getting back until midnight. They kept the plans of the day a surprise until the end.

We left the office at 9 and went to the Steinberg hotel, a very nice hotel in downtown Jena. They had booked a conference room there and we went through a couple of presentations about how the company come to be, what was going on and what was going to happen next. Breakfast was also served there.

Then we got onto a bus and went to Riesa. We still didn't know where we were going at this point. Riesa is about 2 hours east of Jena, a is the site of a Noddle Factory!! The surprise was a day at the famous Riesa noodle factory. You may never have heard it but it was quite well known in the GDR (Eastern Germany) since well... they were the only noodle producer around. But now they export all over the place including Canada. There export name is Il Mondo or something Italian sounding.

We had some noodly lunch at there restaurant while waiting for the tour to begin. A food service intern gave us a presentation on the process and the company and play a video. Then we go to go around the factory and see all the pasta making machines in action. I think big industrial manufacturing processes are pretty cool so it was fun and interesting. It was also hot! The rooms are kept at around 40°C or so for drying the pasta.

We couldn't take any pictures of the actual process but here we are after the tour.

We all had to were hair nets and sanitary gowns. Here's Jörg with his still on.
Then we made our own supper at there cooking studio. The two ladies on the right were there to help us out and guide us in the right cooking direction.
Aprons were supplied but we had brought our own (another surprise), and they said "Cooking quality together" (I work for a software quality assurance company called Xceptance for those who didn't know).
Micha and Heike hard at work.
Everybody else hard at work. The kitchen was nice and huge as you can see.
I didn't get pictures of all the dishes, it was a 5 course meal. 6 with the pre-appetizers that were made for us before we got there. There were giant shell noodles filled with either chicken salad or something mexicany (or asian, maybe) that I can't remember.

The first course for which I have no picture was a spaghetti rösti. A rösti is usually a potato pancake and possibly swiss. This one was made out of panfried spaghetti instead.

Next we had a linguine timbalo see below and expertly presented.
Fish on a bed of orzo pasta and a nutty sauce.
This was my groups creation, chicken breast and vegetables en papillote with sundried tomato pasta on the side.
I'm also missing a picture of the desert, caramelized pears with sauce anglaise on thin pasta dumplings.

Everything was delicious and everyone was overly full. Fun was had by all.