4:00am wake up call for the cook staff. I think we all may have been a little grumpy, but our staff is so great that we all still got along and were flexible and collaborated about the many things that had to be done this morning. All of today’s meals were in camp.
Breakfast
Monkey bread french toast. Labor intensive. We cubed the french bread the day before and pre-cracked the eggs into tupperware containers (that held chicken salad originally- we reused these containers so many times). That seemed like a great idea, but we still had to put the eggs and all the other ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, etc) in the blender to blend it before pouring it over the bread cubes. Then tossed the egg mixture until the bread was coated. Then sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon and tossed to coat. Sprinkled with honey bunches of oats cereal and sliced almonds. Drizzled the brown sugar, butter, maple syrup, and cinnamon topping. Put in a dutch oven liner and gave to kids to bake in dutch oven. This was a hit!
Scrambled eggs take surprisingly long. They took longer to cook than the monkey bread french toast. We gave each family a crate containing 2 dutch oven liners. In one dutch oven liner was the monkey bread french toast. In the 2nd liner was the cracked eggs with ham, green onions, and seasoning.
Sliced Cantaloupe with the rind on.
For the camp staff.- Same recipes as above, just cooked. We cut the find off the cantaloupe for the staff.
Lunch
BBQ Chicken sandwiches, Coleslaw, chips, left over brownie bites.
BBQ chicken sandwiches. We started cooking this meat the night before. We shredded it and put Cattleman’s gold bbq sauce on it after breakfast and let it cook a little more. Right before we distributed the food, we put more bbq sauce on it. Loaded up RPC with a dutch oven liner that had the bbq on one side and pickles on the other. Coleslaw was in the chicken salad containers. Loaded all RPC’s in the truck and drove to camp.
Distribution went great as usual. We gave a “schpeel” to each family that picked up their food and told them what we needed them to do with the corn. Cutting corn off the cob. We gave each family about 30 ears of corn to shuck and cut off the cob so we could make real creamed corn for dinner tonight. We put the corn in a big trash bag. After lunch, Jenny and I walked around camp to get a feel for how the corn shucking was going. About half the Ma’s and Pa’s were doing the corn while the kids were off playing. They said they were enjoying the time to sit. Others families had kids doing corn. There were limited knives so only 1 or 2 people could do corn at a time. It took a little while, but I think it was worth it. Once ma and pa (the shoemakers) even stopped us and said they really enjoyed doing that with their family and that we should do that again next time (in 4 years). Lynn Christensen agreed. Some ma’s and pa’s said some of the kids had never shucked corn.
Dinner
Lasagna, Creamed corn, strawberry bundt cake for dessert.
Cooked 50+ pounds ground beef in 2 roaster ovens. In one oven, Jenny pre-browned 25+ pounds of meat before putting it in the roaster to finish cooking. I wanted to experiment with just putting the meat in the roaster raw. It was fine, but the sides started to burn and the inside was still pink. So we had to keep stirring it. Trying to break up the chunks was a little labor intensive. I think Jenny’s way of pre-browning the meat was the best.
Boiled lasagna noodles in 2 roaster ovens. We didn’t drain the noodles – the roasters are too heavy-. We pulled them out with spoons and then rinsed them in cold water so they wouldn’t stick together. That was my TIL for the day. Rinsing cooked noodles in cold water makes them not stick together.
After draining the meat, we seasoned it. Then added the cream mixture. We laid out the dutch oven liners for the families and the foil trays for the camp staff all over the room and started to layer.
Creamed corn.
Tom dumped cut corn into 4 roaster ovens and added the cream cheese, butter, sugar and salt. They started to burn on the sides until we realized that the pans need to be stirred frequently. Steve continuously walked around the room stirring the roasters until the creamed corn was done.
Serving
Families:
Loaded RPC with 2 dutch oven liner. 1 had pre-made lasagna, the other had creamed corn. When the families picked up their crate we told them to cook the lasagna for ~30 minutes until the cheese is melted. Camp Staff: We cooked several lasagnas in the oven. The oven here is slow to cook so we had to leave some in the oven to cook and come back. When we came back I still needed to rotate the other lasagna’s – remove the foil- so they’d brown properly. During that time I made a salad and brought it all back to the camp staff area. Feedback. People ( adults and youth alike) kept stopping us and expressing their appreciation for the very good food.