8 Tips for a successful camp kitchen
From Cookie:
“An 8 year burner, and head of the Karma Police camp.”
Over the past 5 years, the Karma Police have planned their camp and meals through emails and most of us live in various cities around the world. I don't claim to be an expert of group food planning, but we have gone through this process for approximately 20 people for the past 5 years or so and we've had some humorous (though not at the time) results.
I wanted to share the following tips to hopefuly minimize any time lost during the shopping process or general food waste. We have learned these lessons the hard way over the past few years. Some of these items are no-brainers, but the exciting time with friends just before you get to the playa can be intoxicating and common sense left to the wayside – plus a reminder never hurts. :)
1. Since everyone's personal schedule alternates greatly once they arrive on the playa, it's best to do one big meal a day, and then have
plenty of snackable items so that people can eat when they choose, or more thoroughly, a breakfast and a “big meal.”
2. Find someone or multiple someones in the group to plan, create a shopping list, and prepare the “big meal.” Don't underestimate the fact
that some people don't know how to cook (or are too lazy). Some of our camp members ended up eating squeeze cheese and tortilla chips for two
days before we ran into Gerlach to get propane for our grill one year.
3. Take suggestions from group members on easy to prepare food that they would prefer. Not everyone likes meat, but also not everyone likes
vegetarian food. Some people are picky eaters and being picky is not a crime.
4. Make sure that all the “snackable” food is easily preparable (laugh at item 2). In one situation, we bought a huge block of hamburger meat
(instead of the packaging that contained meat that was already formed into patties), only to get out to the playa and realize we had to thaw
the whole block out to make the patties and no way to re-store and re-freeze the meat, so alot of it spoiled.
5. Once the shopping list is generated make sure that the people who buy the products at the supermarket also cook at home on a regular basis. On
one occassion, we had someone in our group buy all the groceries, and then afterwards admitted that they ate out EVERY SINGLE meal and had
rarely ever been grocery shopping. This resulted in a lot of waste, and an absence of some necessary cooking items.
6. Break the list down into 2 or 3 segments and have only 1 person shop for each segment. We have had shopping sessions at the Wal-mart in Reno
for a 6 hour stretch (and I'm not exaggerating) because we were running all over the store looking for each other to see if the other got this
item or that item.
7. When buying generic items such as chips, try to choose the regular flavor that you know everyone will eat. It may sound/taste boring, but
it will eliminate waste. We had a situation one year where we bought several containers of pringles. Though one person who was shopping for
chips decided to purchase 20 packages of sour cream and onion flavor and only 5 regular flavor. It turned out that he was the only guy in the
camp that liked sour cream and onion, so there was a huge surplus of them at the end of the week, when the regular flavor went on the 2nd day.
8. I'm not sure if there will be such a thing as a burn barrell or legal fire at Nowhere, but keep an eye on packaging when buying products.
Papers cups, plates, and paper packaging is much easier burned than carried back to a dumpster.