December 3rd: First Day of Work… Good Food. Doing Good.

I keep forgetting to update this so some of these posts are going to be really late and out of order. But thanks for reading and putting up with me.

Afternoon Cooking Team (12-7ish): Me, Geoff, Dan, Bonnie, Rachel and Jess
Morning Cooking Team (4-12): Tanya, Caitlin, Cassandra, James and Erin

Today was our first day and hopefully the most hectic day we will ever have. We were lucky enough to have about a dozen chefs from around the U.S. (mostly east coast) come down and help cook with us and teach us some tips around the kitchen. The chefs were in a group called culinary corps which combines food-centered volunteer projects with culinary educational activities. They provide team members and volunteers with an opportunity to transform their kitchen skills and passion for food into community outreach tools. When they first arrived they said their main goal for us was to provide a couple of simple classes and quick lectures that will teach us about the three S’s; Safety, Sanitation, and Storage. After about an hour of some talking we started with food prep. We had one of our most intense menus of the year. We served:

Tropical Barbeque Chicken
Fried Oysters with Garlic and Lemon Aioli
Oyster Rockefeller

Minestrone Soup (Vegan)
Sicilian Broccoli Salad (Vegan)
Spicy Succotash (Vegan)
Rosemary Roasted Potatoes & Corn (Vegan)
Hip Hop Tofu (Vegan)
Rock & Roll Pear Trifle (Vegan)

Cheesy Pasta with Caramelized Onions (Vegetarian)
Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing (Vegetarian)


We started prepping food around 1 o’clock and planned on serving at 5:30. Some kids from the morning shift came back and we had a couple Denver Americorps kids help out too. We split into four different groups; Starches, Veggies, Pastries, and Protein / Soups. I started working with the Proteins and Soups. We defrosted about 150 pieces of chicken and mixed up some dry spices to marinate the chicken in. One of the other chefs had also made a barbeque sauce that we were going to put all over the chicken right before serving. He added so many different ingredients but it was honestly the best tasting BBQ sauce I have ever tried. Since there was a bunch of us in the kitchen I also got the opportunity to go around to the other groups and talk to some of the chefs and pick up some pointers on preparing and keeping foods at different temperatures. Everyone had their own little secrets which they were all willing to share with me.

We were perfectly on the clock and opened doors at 5:30 on the dot. We were originally expecting a little over 200 people but were then told it was going to be around 300. Luckily it was only 260 or so people so we didn’t run out of any food. The chefs all knew to make a little more and have a back up plan. Sadly everyone had to choose only one type of oyster, but in the end it was good because I was able to have the left overs! Chef Frank (our Camp Hope head chef) brought all of the chefs and green two out to get our props and everyone loved our food. We had numerous people come up and say thank you and that they were excited to see what else we can come up with. Hopefully we can make some more good dishes even if they aren’t as exquisite as tonight’s.

The end of the night was also a little extreme. We normally won’t be cooking so many different dishes so we won’t have as much to clean but it also didn’t help that the main dishwasher / steamer died on us and then ran out of cleaner after we got it fixed. We had to do all the dishes by hand and it took forever. We ran out of dry towels and normal soap so we had to use hand soap and chlorine to disinfect some stuff that we will be able to properly wash tomorrow. As much as it stunk to wash dishes it gave me some time to talk to some of the chefs and hear about their backgrounds and what brought them here and where they are working back at home. I had a lot of fun and hopefully I will be able to use some of the tricks and recipes I learned. We also are trying to get other chefs to come in and help out every now and then so we can learn more.

Here is the culinary corps web site: http://culinarycorps.org/