Camp Concord - S. Lake Tahoe, CA (Summer 2014)

My goodness, it’s been a long time.  What do you say to someone you haven’t seen or talked to in months?  You didn’t say goodbye nor warn that you would be out of touch...   That’s how I feel blogging today.  Embarrassed,  but happy to be back.  Where to start?

In my last entry I shared that I would be moving on from the office grind to the kitchen -- full on.  Eager and excited I packed my things and moved  into my temporary housing in S. Lake Tahoe.  A cute little cabin in the woods. Having never camped before in my life, this was quite the experience.  Living wise it would be a challenge having to share my space with an occasional field mouse running through my space in the middle of the night.  But over that, the experience was absolutely wonderful.

Getting up and walking just a few feet to the kitchen was in and of itself magical!!  No commute, truck noises, standing in lines, paying fares or tolls – just the smell of fresh air and the sound of birds and other small wide life.  I’d arrive at about 5:30am, start the coffee and get started on my morning service. We also served lunch, dinner and happy hour for the adults.  I would return to my cabin, think about my game plan for the next day, read a few cook books or flip through pages of Bon Appétit or FoodNetwork magazines, sleep for a few hours and it would all start again with my 5am shower the following day.  5am to 8pm -  6 days a week!

The fun:  creating new menu items and designing weekly menus.

The challenge: issues with raising the level of work by staff (most were teenagers or young adults), and getting management to let go and allow me to run the kitchen

What I miss: the staff counselors and aids, and guests.  The view!  My prep cook (Mike) and bakery magician (Dean)

I learned so much about batch cooking.  You are obviously taught these things in culinary school – how to increase yields, plan ahead, etc., but until you actually do it for groups of 200+ it really doesn’t sink in.  It got real, quickly!

Tell a crowd of teenage boys you’re out of fettuccini noodles and that they’ll need to wait 9 mins. for a fresh batch.  Wait for the warm response.  NOT. 

I miss the standing ovations, and thank you’s… I miss the kids who would come up to me and ask me to give their Mom my recipe for this or that for a food they hated up until now… the hugs.  I miss the Firefighters Burn volunteers.   I even miss the sometimes grouchy dairy delivery guy…

It would be easy to say that spending the summer  in Tahoe killed my marriage, but spending the countless hours I do cooking anywhere -- preparing for cooking, dreaming about cooking, watching cooking related TV would kill any marriage.  Lol.  That story is for another day…  Would I do it again? ABSOLUTELY.