Day 22 & Marinade

It's Sunday! Of course, that means basically nothing aside from a fresh load of campers are coming up. My days off are Weds/Thurs, so Sunday is the middle of my week, and food service is one of the few departments who isn't able to go to church. The beds can wait to be made, the grass can wait to be cut, but if the 500 staff don't have lunch when they get out of church, "riot" would be the only appropriate descriptive word.

We had baked potatoes and BBQ chicken for lunch, which turned out well. Because we were low on BBQ sauce, I made up a marinade for the chicken and then brushed the BBQ sauce on top. It came out well. The BBQ sauce browned in the oven perfectly and the chicken looked awesome. Except for the four pans I forgot in the other oven for about three hours... they browned quite well, too. I would post the recipe for the marinade I made, but I don't know the amounts I put in. Just pour, that looks good!


Seth's BBQ Chicken ~

- Pull all 400lbs chicken from freezer three days early and thaw in fridge.
- Marinade chicken using below marinade for at least an hour, longer if possible
- Arrange chicken on pans, brush BBQ sauce on top, bake at between 375F-400F until chicken reaches an internal temperature of at least 165F. The higher the heat, the darker the skin will be
- Serve and enjoy (yes, this is a requirement for the recipe)

Seth's BBQ Chicken Marinade ~
(all amounts are approximate. use your eye.)

Mix together in large container:
2 gal. Cold Water
3/4 gal. Distilled White Vinegar
3/4 gal. Canola Oil
6c. Worcestershire Sauce
2c. Sesame Oil
3c. Chopped Garlic
1 1/2c. Granulated Onion
1 1/2c. Granulated Garlic
3c. Black Pepper
4c. Kosher Salt
2c. Chili Powder
3/4c. Cayenne Pepper
1/2c. Lemon Juice

Adjust proportions to taste.

For Papa

Happy Father's Day!
I love you!

Day 15 & Blue

The name's bleu. Chicken Cordon Bleu, that is. Oh wait, that was for lunch my crew of two and I pulled off with a bang today. Things could scarcely have gone better. Plenty of food, good presentation (for summer, at least), and cleanup done on time.

My crew started work at 6 today, but even with the extra hour of sleep, they were still tired. Since Sunday morning are almost always easy, all food service working that morning usually eats together: cooks, bakery, and pantry. After finishing his breakfast, one of our cooks was so tired he decided to lay down on the floor and take a short nap in front of the hostess closet. I should preface this all with a statement about how creepy the Pondy Dining building is at night/early morning. It's dark, there's lots of shadows, and the building is always creaking or making scary noises. The paper tunnel in the back of the building seems like just the place for a snarling animal or serial killer to jump out from the shadows at you as you're unlocking in the morning. Well, back to this morning, one of the hostesses comes upstairs and comes around the dark corner to the hostess closet and beholds the body lying in the shadows on the floor. The lights hadn't been turned on in that area, so it looked like nobody had been through there that morning yet. She realized what was going on a moment later and comes around the corner to our table, finding one of the bakers laid out across three chairs, napping herself. Pointing at the two, I told her, "Don't eat the oatmeal."

Day 14 & Wait...

Did I work today? I can't remember. The days are starting to blend together, or I'm just ceasing to notice. Today was one of if not the first day breakfast crew has gotten off on time at 2pm. Hurray! Lunch was staff only, and all fried food, though, so cleanup was really easy and didn't take very long.

Saturday nights are always staff events during the summer, and tonight's was high adventure in the dark! The RDs and hags (High Adventure Guides) decorated the elements with strobe lights, disco balls, and christmas lights all over. And where would the night be without music? I did the rock wall twice before my arms and hands said I'd better quit if I wanted to be able to work tomorrow. Sundays I get to sleep in a full half hour, though, and start work at 5:30a. It's amazing how much that extra half hour does, though. 5am shifts are killer, 5:30a are managable if you're usted to them, and 6a are like normal.

Day 13 & Monday?

I've lost track of what day it feels like for me. I'm still recovering from the two weeks of work. My schedule is finally settling down and into the summer routine. Our summer staff are beginning to get used to the kitchen and feel more comfortable in it, not only working faster and more efficiently, but also picking up on the atmosphere by randomly breaking into song at the top of their lungs or racing the empty racks across the commissary. Today we would have gotten out on time had there been enough fried chicken prepped for us. The prep sheet said 12 cases of chicken for 750 campers plus another 500 staff. To put things into perspective, I use about 4 cases for 150 staff in the off season. So, five minutes into lunch, we run out of chicken, and have to run to Narnia (as we affectionately call our temporary walk-in freezer, due to its inherent attribute to freeze the condensation inside, forming a layer of snow over everything inside. It's always winter and never Christmas in there.), pull more chicken, throw some into the fryer to get it cooking, then pan up the rest and throw it into the oven. Which, by the time the oven preheats and then cooks the chicken, the line is 10 minutes away from closing and the kids are already all through and mostly gone. But the grilled cheese lasted. Let's hope the prep sheets get fixed for next week. One would think it'd be noticed by the fourth time this happens...

Fishing Trip Photos

Ducklings!


More ducklings!


Where I get to live and work.


What I get to eat. (Okay, not really. But what fishing trip would be complete without a trophy fish picture? [alright, alright, so maybe it's not quite the trophy fish size, but at least I caught something!] )

Day 12 & What's This?!

Another day off?? *Gasp*! What am I going to do with myself? Oh, wait, maybe recover from my 14 day straight work marathon... that's right. And what better way to do that than by fishing? I'm off for the morning with another guy to go out on the lake with a boat and fish to our heart's content! Stand by for photos (hopefully) of that big monster I've been in quest of (double hopefully with some luck sprinkled in)!

Day 11 & OFF!!!

I'm off today. I would write more but I'm still waking up... boy is this going to throw off my internal clock.

Day 10 & New Hat

Today I got a new hat, because I didn't like the baseball cap I had before, and because I had gotten $20 in the mail. Last night I saw someone wearing this style and loved it, so today I left early and the clothing company had the style.

And, this morning, one of our cooks scared a bear on the deck in front of the dining hall, digging through trash. They're out there, just waiting to scare the heck out of me one morning riding to work on my bike at 4:45am...

Day 9 & Miracles

After my early-morning fishing extravaganza, I had work. Pasta night and prep. We busted out on prep and finished a bit late. Breakfast crew was struggling to get cleaned up in a decent amount of time, and we were slow on prep, so we started making dinner about an hour later than I would have liked to. By 3pm break, we had 1/12th of our noodles for 1300 people done, one sauce done and one halfway made. That seems reasonable, no? No. I love answering my own questions. "On time" would be defined as 'both sauces made, panned, and the equipment cleaned, and at least 75% of the noodles made and panned.' At the rate people were moving, we were between 2 1/2 and 3 hours behind getting dinner out on time. So I instituted some alternate cooking methods including but not limited to: boiling 32 gallons of water simultaneously in 8 separate pots, each with enough noodles to feed yourself, myself, my roomie, and the next five hours down the street for a week, the 60-gallon steam kettle, and both braising pans. In 45 minutes, we cooked pasta for 1000. That'll be $892.54 at the second window, please make sure your tractor trailer can fit around the corner and beneath the awning. And, if you're interested and happen to buy your pasta in 20lb cases, one case will feed approximately 200 people. You can do the rest of the math.

Dinner was finished on time, we had enough food, and we cleaned up the total mess we made and got off 15 minutes early. That may not seem like much, but you didn't see the mess we made. As we like to say in the kitchen, we cook messes, and the food we produce is a byproduct of the mess. But by the food service trio of standards (out on time, enough on time, clean on time), today was a success. But there was no earthly way possible that could have happened without devine intervention. We had one batch of pasta done between 2:30p and 3p. There were eleven more to go in an hour. Each batch takes between 15 and 20 minutes to cook, not including ~2 minutes to pull it out and reset. We managed to cook all eleven batches within that hour. I panned up the last of the pasta at 4:30p, exactly when staff line opened and all cooking needed to be finished by. Reminds me of a day last summer when the chicken had ran out and we suddenly found one last pan of chicken in the back of the warmer - enough to carry us through the last 100 campers.

Early-Morning Fishing

It's one of my two sleep-in days, and I choose to spend it getting up before the sun and going fishing. Today I opted to take a canoe out instead of my usual bulky rowboat. The rowboat is nice, but it's, well, a boat. The canoe is much more manouverable and easier to propel, but there's also a higher chance of swamping and 1) getting soaked, and 2) loosing your gear. Hence, I equipped my backpack with styrofoam blocks in the main compartment to ensure flotation and put my tackle into semi-watertight plastic containers. Thankfully I didn't need to confirm the effectiveness of these precautionary measures. I didn't quite emerge from the lake dry, persay, but I didn't swamp, which was the intent of the statement. You see, I used a kayak paddle since I was going solo, and those paddles have an inherent tendency to retain water on the paddle blade until raised in the air, wherewith the water is released upon the unsuspecting paddle-holder.

By the time I reached the dam, my pants were soaked from the knees down. As always, I forgot the fish don't start feeding until 7:30-8:00am, once the sun comes over the mountains and hits the water, until which there are strange, strong currents in the lake that take your boat one way, debris in the water the other way, and your fishing line two different directions at once and then loop and wrap around to form a double bowline knot. So, an hour later, the fish began to jump. Another hour later, they finally stopped jumping, and still my stringer was empty. A little while later, after trying a variety of different baits and lures, I finally caught one with a lure. It looked more like a random catch, based on how he was hooked through the side of the mouth versus the top or bottom.

I had my fish, and I had time, so I figured I would try trolling on my way back to camp. (Trolling, by the way, is fishing by trailing your line behind a moving boat. It's nearly always done with a boat with a quiet electric trolling motor.) So I let my line out, secured my pole, and started paddling. Halfway across the lake, my line grew taut and I reeled in another rainbow (trout, that is). Still not the elusive big monster I've been looking for, but a fish nonetheless. So it was a good morning. Who else do you know who goes trolling from a canoe?

(P.S. - no live pictures of these fish. I had to clean them and was late to work, so I didn't get a chance to take a picture like of the others. I will post a picture of them frozen, though...)

Day 8 & Tiredness

It's day 12 of a 14 day marathon before I get a day off of work. Yup, twelve consecutive days to make sure campers and staff get fed on time, and completely. On my "usual" two days off, I had to work the prep shift, 7:30a-4:00p. I was in charge of making sure all the prep for the next couple days' meals got done, so the meals would get made. I laugh at using "usual" in this context, because it's the first week and my schedule hasn't had anything to be "usual" yet in the first place. Wednesday I was needed, but on Thursday I didn't really do anything that wouldn't have gotten done in time.

Sunday mornings are always weird shifts. Breakfast attracts record lows, and lunch is always the biggest single non-camp meal we do. Today we had 42 for breakfast, compared to 150 yesterday morning. I didn't hear the numbers for lunch, but we planned for 550 and had leftovers, so it was probably closer to 450-475. Additionally, the shift is an hour later than the usual weekday shift, adding to the strangeness. But thanks to that extra hour, we were able to clean up and set up the lines for dinner crew before we had to leave. After work I got my gear and went fishing by the dam, but didn't catch anything, nor had any nibbles. I brought my chair along and was nearly falling asleep sitting there, with the reflection of the sun off the water in my eyes. Listening to Ken Graves' podcasts definitely helped stay awake, but I should have just napped instead. However, I resolved to go fishing tomorrow morning. I shall endeavor to try a canoe instead of a rowboat as the preferred method of flotation. We shall see if I emerge from the lake dry tomorrow.

Roommate & the Staff Bike Jump

The title explains all. My roomie, Johnny Bravo, participates in the staff bike jump. Twice.

Day 7 & Fury

Saturday after work, on a whim, I decided to go fishing and get a boat with a trolling motor. I was tired of rowing across the lake, then rowing back, unloading all my gear and putting all the boating stuff away, and then having to ride back up the hill to my house. So I got a trolling motor which didn't move the boat any faster than rowing, but is much kinder on the arms and back. Using a motor after having to row all these times before wasn't quite as glorious as I'd imagined it to be, however. All I did was sit on the back seat and hold onto a piece of plastic for 20 minutes until I got across the lake. Hardly epic poetry material. But having the motor made it much easier to reposition the boat after drifting.

But enough about the motor, and on to the fishing. In a word, it sucked. At least the most part. I've been scouring the internet and finally found the 3 websites that have any useful information on lake trout fishing. Lots of stuff on trout fishing, and lake fishing, but not the two together. Most trout fishing is done in streams or rivers, where you can see the fish. In Hume Lake, you can see about five, maybe six feet down, on a good day. A couple times I've seen fish following my bait up as I reel it in, but usually by the time you can see them, they've seen you and have vanished into the murky depths. The fishing lately has tapered off as the lake warms up. The last couple times I've gone have been unsuccessful.

The first hour, hour and a half of today I got nothing, not even a nibble. The fishermen on the shore weren't having any better luck, either, based on the dead silence on the lake. I've been trying to train myself to find places fish would most likely hide, based on one of the three pages I read online. Finally, as the time was approaching to head back to return the boat before the staff bike jump, I spotted a potentially good fishing spot, so I motored over and cast out.

Now, keep in mind that for the past two hours, at least, nobody in the vicinity of the dam has caught anything. Sound carries really well across the water and I would have heard if anybody caught something. But they didn't. I motor over to about 40 yards from shore, about 20 yards past the average casting distance of a shore fisherman, and cast out. Within fifteen seconds, I feel a tug at my line, and another twenty has my fish flopping around in the bottom of my boat. Though it was about 70 degrees out, I could nearly see the steam coming from the fishermen's nostrils on shore. Here I was, not 60 seconds past cutting my motor, not a stone's throw away from where their lines were sitting, yet I had the fish and they did not. Such goes fishing.

Day 5 & Adaption

What stuck out to me the most from Overflow last night was the quick wit of this week's speaker. In the course of the message he made a comment about how we all need to take a break from working to refuel, or else we must be robots. We all just smiled.

After Overflow, myself and a couple other people started to walk around the lake, but stopped at the dock by the cove and laid down and stargazed for the rest of the evening until the summer staff curfew. There were no animal encounters, though one of the members of the group convinced us a (mountain) lion was following us. We all returned to camp alive and in one piece along the double yellow line on the road.

Although my "usual" schedule says I'm off today, I had to work because our summer staffers weren't supposed to get used to their work so soon. Needless to say, the day was quite laid back for summer. We instituted "Funday Thursdays", where at 2pm everyone takes a break (or gets off) and plays a game for a little bit, today's choice being catchphrase. Whisperings of sardines were heard for next week, though we shall see what's reeled in when that day comes. Also, our summer staffers seem to be getting used to the alternate definition of 'normal' known only to food service. They don't seem as startled by the pointless yelling across the kitchen (frequently with their ear being between the set of lungs and the receiving party), nor by the lights being turned off randomly whenever Someone walks past the switch, nor by the !

Now I am off to shower and then the RD BBQ which always has great food* (*food I didn't make), and then to pretend I'm assembling multiple hundred ungrilled cheese sandwiches to put me to sleep. I'm sure pretending I'm assembling them will put me to sleep just as quickly as actually doing them.

Day 4 & Waiting

Today we had our annual health inspections. Or I should say "have", because as of 4:15p when I left the inspector was still there. Either my first inspection experience was very short, or this one is very long. Due to the inspections, the kitchen was very quiet today with nothing notable occurring. According to my "regular" schedule, I was supposed to be off today and tomorrow, but this first week everyone is working 7:30-4p on their days off to pick up the slack until the summer staff become more proficient at their assigned duties. So I cleaned the first part of the morning until the Sysco truck came and brought the food to prep, and then I did that for the rest of the day. The inspector arrived on the hill around 10a, and finally got to our kitchen about 2ish in the afternoon. I left before he did, and now I'm off to our full-time block BBQ for dinner, and then Overflow tonight. Let's hope there's more excitement there than at work today.

Day 3 & Sanity

Food Service at Hume is one of the best places to work, ever. You never know exactly what will happen that day when you come to work. Whether it's one of the bakery ladies coming down the hallway lying on a cart piled with cardboard like it was a float in a parade, or one of the cooks standing in a rack and spinning around like it was the teacup ride at Disneyland, each day provides new opportunities to push the boundaries of "sanity." A few of our summer staff are unfamiliar with our methods and give us strange, uncertain, or even startled looks when these things happen. But they'll soon learn; after all, it's only day 3 of summer.

Summer Camp Day 2 & Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Well, technically summer at Hume Lake began yesterday evening with the coming of 1300-ish campers in addition to the 330 summer staff, but I worked the breakfast shift so I didn't work the first "day" of summer camp. And that's why I don't have a post for Day 1.

Today was Day 2 of summer camp, but my first day as a lead cook. Memory of that first week of last summer, when I was just figuring out my job as summer staffer, hangs faintly in my mind like the mist over the lake before dawn. This year is different. This year I'm a lead - one of the full-time cooks in the black chef coat. Now my job isn't just to make the Alfredo sauce for dinner. Now it's to make sure both types of noodles, both sauces, and the veggies are all cooked on time, served to everyone, and cleaned up on time.

This was my first "real" time leading dinner. Toward the end of last summer I somewhat took a leading role in getting prep and meals done, but wasn't responsible for seeing everything done. Today as first day leading officially, everything went well. Dinner was made on time, we didn't run out of food (though it got extremely close), and we were able to clean up and be out a half hour early.

And to top it all off, when I got home from work my Apple.com RSS feed had the story I've been waiting for: OS X Snow Leopard has been revealed and ships this September! This fall is going to be a good few months.