Cooking for the Masses

Meals here are a big deal – both in importance and sheer quantity. As you might imagine, folks who devote their lives to growing healthy and delicious food take mealtime quite seriously. And there are 46 mouths to feed! It can also be rather complicated to meet nutritional requirements at each meal when there are wheat, soy, corn, peanut, dairy, and egg allergies to take into account!

Everyone must cook, taking turns in pairs. When it is your day to cook, you are responsible for all three meals and the afternoon snack (cookie fairy!). The night before must be spent doing prep, so you are wedded to the kitchen for a solid 24 hours. You do not participate in curricular activities. There is no time! The morning of your cooking day, you rise at 5 to have the breakfast bell ringing by 6:45. Lunch must be done by noon, followed by an in-field delivery of cookies at 4 PM. Dinner is served at 6:30 PM, and by the time the kitchen is clean, you were ready for bed hours before.

Guy and I signed up to cook together on Friday, April 30^th. In preparation for a busy weekend (our annual Spring Plant Sale was May 1^st and 2^nd), folks needed to be fed extra well. Our hearty southern breakfast consisted of fried eggs, straw potato cakes, and cheesy grits (with vegan option). Lunch was vegetarian French onion soup, two gargantuan challah breads (with vegan and wheat-free loaves, too), and a salad of chard, kale, foraged miner’s lettuce, nasturtium flowers and leaves, and borage flowers. The cookie fairy delivered vegan, wheat-free peanut butter blondies (almond butter blondies as an alternative). Dinner’s main course was a cheesy mushroom risotto cooked in a pan that I could have bathed in (with dairy-free alternative). We fried and salted sage leaves from the garden as a topping, and Guy made three gorgeous rosemary focaccias. The steamed broccoli was a necessarily simple side dish. Nevermind how tired we were; there would have been chocolate pudding cake for dessert if we hadn’t run out of sugar.

(6 AM)

(Guy stirring challah dough)

(Salad toppings)

(Risotto's almost done!)

(The buffet chalkboard)

Everything was so well received. Guy and I were applauded with the traditional rumble of fists pounding on the table to salute the chefs. The day proved to be more challenging than many college courses, but we loved it. Good thing we'll get to do it six more times!