Kiss the Cook

I've had a few culinary adventures up at Camp Steiner.  Let's see if I can remember . . .

Every other Monday Commissary sends us "chicken fillets" for dinner.  These are pre-cooked chicken breast fillets, with about a gallon of pepper on each piece.  I'm supposed to bake them and serve them with county gravy (basically just a white sauce).  I simply can't do this.  So the first time I had them I made Winger's Sticky Fingers recipe (thanks Stephanie!).  Everyone loved that, which only encouraged me. 

The next time we got the chicken fillets we lucked out and they were not coated in pepper.  This time I breaded them and coated them in parmesan cheese before baking.  Then we topped them with a dollop of spaghetti sauce, a sprinkling of mozarella cheese and voila! Chicken Parmesan!  This was hugely popular as well. 

But then we got the peppery stuff again.  So I threw it in a strainer and washed the pepper off.  I had to wonder how many people wash their cooked chicken before serving it up.  Anyway, I made Chicken Supreme out of it (honey, mustard, and curry powder). 

I've also taken to making Beef & Broccoli stir-fry every other Friday night instead of grilling steaks every week. Now my staff thinks I am totally amazing! 

We have orange juice listed on our breakfast menus every day.  At first we only got orange drink mix —think "McDonald's."  So I asked the commissary lady, Julie, if we were supposed to get real juice and she said, "Yes!" 

Yay!!  

The first time I served OJ, I mixed three gallons of it in a big cooler.  Everyone was really excited to have real orange juice, so I mixed the same amount the next day.  They only drank about two-thirds of it that time.  I couldn't fit the leftover juice in the fridge, but it's pretty cool at Steiner so I left the remaining juice in the insulated cooler and then added just a little more to it the next day.  I did this a few times.  Well, one day the juice tasted a little different. I am often the last one to serve myself and start eating, and nobody else had said anything, but I noticed that it was kind of fizzy!  My brain instantly said, "This juice is fermenting." After breakfast was over, one of our older leaders confirmed that thought by saying the juice tasted just like a screwdriver; I don't think he meant a tool.  What kind of a woman serves alcoholic beverages to the staff at a Boy Scouts of America camp?!

Well, nobody seemed more sleepy or any sillier than usual that morning; no one got sick.  So I don't think I got anyone drunk.  But I threw out the last of that juice and now I just mix it one gallon at a time.

Last week I burned myself while I was fixing the Scoutmaster Luncheon.  My arm hit the top oven rack while I was pulling baked potatoes out of the oven.  Owie!  I had to hurry and get the lunch out, so I waited about 15 minutes before running it under cool water.  Then I had to get the staff lunch ready.  So I worked on that a little, but my arm hurt, so I stuck it back in the faucet and Bob went to get our medic, Katy.  She was happy that I'd put my burn right into the cool water.  What she doesn't know . . .

wounded in action

The burn felt all better by evening, so I took off my tough-looking bandaging.  But on Saturday morning I scraped the blister on one of the shelves.  Owie, owie!!!!  So I had Katy bandage it up again.

This past week I was thinking that if I had to have a job, this one is perfect for me.  I really, really enjoy cooking for people. I don't think I'd like running a restaurant—too much pressure and too impersonal.  And I don't think I'd particularly like catering, although that would be better than a restaurant, I think.  Possibly I'd get return customers and it would be a little more personal.  I was explaining this to Michael one day as he was helping Bob and me.  I told him that I really like cooking for a group of people—people who like me, and I like them . . . 

And Michael said, "It sounds like you like to have a family."

Huh!  He's right.  I like feeding my family!