Description
Start Date-End Date: 04/28/2018-04/28/2018
Land Manager Office: Mountain Park Environmental Center
Land Manager Contact: Dave Van Manen
Funding Partner:
Programmatic Partner:
Summary: Join us at the beautiful Mountain Park Environmental Center in Beulah, CO to improve your camp cooking skills.
Description: Learn what it takes to successfully cook for volunteer and other work crews in remote settings.Topics will include setting up and managing a backcountry kitchen, menu planning for remote trips, using pack-string support and dutch oven cooking. You'll get to serve up delicious food prepared during the class to trainees attending a trail skills workshop on the same weekend.
Camping will be available to volunteers arriving the night before the training. Indoor dormitory space will be made available if the weather is not suited for camping.
It is recommended that trainees also attend the April 11th VOC Crew Chef Webinarto learn about the overall VOC Crew Chef program.
Please contact Dan Williams with any questions.
Latitude/Longitude:
Additional Information:
Camping Available: Yes
Physical Difficulty:
High Altitude Project:
Desired Number of Volunteers: 10
Total Adult Volunteers Attended: 10
Total Youth Volunteers Attended: 0
Total Volunteer Days: 10
Total Unique Volunteers: 10
Total Volunteer Hours: 90
Staff Hours: 5
Stipend Hours: 0
Project Summary: Tim Zvada, experienced back country crew chef and long time VOC volunteer, taught nine eager students the ins and outs of being a successful back country crew chef for crews of around 15 people for periods of up to a week or longer. Topics covered included menu planning, food issues such as refrigeration and dried or powdered alternatives, kitchen location and set up in the back country, food storage techniques, working with pack stock and packing paniers for stock to carry food and equipment into the work site, propane stove (conventional) cooking options, Dutch oven techniques and recipes, and more. Students worked on packing paniers and weighing their loads. They also all cooked a Dutch oven meal which they then served to trail skills students who were at a concurrent VOC training at the Mountain Park Environmental Center. The following morning, students cooked a conventional skillet breakfast for the trail skills volunteers and cleaned and packed up the kitchen.
Successes and Challenges: All cooks successfully made delicious and wonderful Dutch oven meals.
Lessons Learned: Tricks of the trade including access to powdered food options such as powdered eggs, whipped cream and milk to save precious refrigeration space in coolers. Tricks and tips for Dutch oven cooking including the right ratios of charcoal to use for different sized ovens to achieve certain cooking temperatures. Guidance on how to run a kitchen and how to always serve your volunteers instead of let them serve themselves to make sure everyone gets a fair share.
Special Notes:
Stewardship Education: Leave No Trace concerns for not scorching soil that you put the Dutch ovens or charcoal burners on.
Key Concerns or Comments from Staff or Volunteers: The trail volunteers loved the food! They found it "delicious and "outrageous."
Description of Accidents/Incidents: None.
Description of Work Completed:
Details
| 16 and older |
