Monday, May 5, 2014

On the Trail

It looks like good weather for this year's overnight hike.  We are making dinner for 50 for two nights:  chicken fajitas, corn on the cob, black bean salad, and pineapple layer cake on Tuesday; and spaghetti and meatballs/sausage, breadsticks, walnut orange salad, and death by chocolate trifle on Wednesday.

What did you learn from your experience cooking on the trail?

6 comments:

  1. What I learned from cooking on the trail is that it can be really stressful. We cooked for like entired hungry crowed. It also took longer to prepare the food because it was such a huge amount of ingredients needed for each day. I realized that it wasn't just a one person thing but it can take up to 7 people and it would still take for ever. Overall, I enjoyed having a challenge and learned how to become patient while the food was cooking.

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  2. The knowledge that I have garnered from cooking for 50+ stressed out, worn out, lantern avoiding teachers and students is two things. The first, to simply put it, is that food makes people happy. Giving others a chance to cool their brains down and warm their bellies up makes for a magical transformation from rowdy irritated teenagers to just rowdy teenagers. The second is that having good people to work with helps your outlook and improves your effort on the food you're giving to others, in effect the happiness of the cooks leads to the happiness of the people eating the food.

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  3. Contrary to my peers, I don't believe it was stressful to cook for the trail project. I've never cooked for that many people before, but the only difference between the smaller dishes and larger group meals is the significantly extra time it took to do the prep work, and to fry the sausages on the second night. I'd say the main thing I've taken from this trip is the time managing that goes into the food so that it's all warm and ready for the group. More than the actual cooking and preparation of the meal, however, I saw the effects of a good meal on the spirits of a large group of people, and got a certain reward from others enjoying the food we'd made.

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  4. On the trail i learned what it was like on the other side of the food. For two years i had been among the trail staff who were being fed. From that side of the experience all i knew was that however the food was cooked it was always amazing and after hours of dealing with freshman nonsense which can be exhausting sitting down to a delicious home cooked meal means the world to the instructors and commanders of the trail. looking at it from the perspective of a cook it can be a bit of a daunting task looking from the start. Although cooking did take a some hours, we always had more time than we needed so it never seemed to be a problem. overall i learned that when you're cooking for a large group of people do it with friends so that it turns from being stressful to being a lot of fun.

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  5. I learned that cooking for more people is more enjoyable to me than just cooking for myself. Preparing the food was the most fun. I'm open to all types of food besides pork and anything too spicy but when I saw beans put with mandarin oranges I wasn't sure what kind of taste to expect. I found it unique. Not something is try on my leisure but it's nice to try it. I'm glad that no one had or seemed to have any complaints about any of the food. I was surprised that the meatballs took such a long time to cook. Even after playing football for an hour another hour went by before it was done. Cooking for a lot of people was fun but it was also tiring. I caught myself dozing off when waiting for some of the food to cook. This was an enjoyable experience and I feel lucky to have it.

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  6. Amazing! The single word that could possibly describe our trip is simply amazing. I learned a lot about cooking for 50+ people, but the one thing that truly struck me was the fact that it never felt like we were cooking. During the entire trip our laughter and jokes took place of time and simply made the cooking trip seem like a trip to six flags. What I learned is that cooking brings people together to better understand one another and grow in fondness of another.

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