Gee, Mom, I Wanna Go...

I just spent my second week in the Uintas at Mill Hollow cooking and cleaning to my heart's content. I am quite certain that I will have mastered the art of making pancakes and bacon by the end of the summer.

Here's a list of this week's highlights (with a few low-lights thrown in just for fun)...

1. Boondoggle. As part of our training, we got paid to learn how to make boondoggle. We also got paid to learn wicked awesome camp songs ("Gee, Mom, I wanna go to Mill Hollow..."). I'm pretty positive I have the best summer job of all time. Boondoggle is probably the coolest thing ever invented, especially because it doubles as string to slice cinnamon rolls (see #2). You learn to be quite creative when you don't have a Walmart down the street.

2. Burnt to a crisp. The head cook and I had the grand idea to make cinnamon rolls for all the staff as our last breakfast before we had to start cooking according to the set weekly menu. After hours and hours of making the dough, letting it rise, rolling it up, and slicing it with boondoggle, and putting it in the oven, the rolls somehow came out of the oven nice and black and crispy. Whoops.

3. You know you're a redneck when... Somehow a porcupine wandered into one of the cabins and nestled himself into a shelf full of teacher supplies. After nobly trying to usher him out of the building and into the wild where he belonged, we had to resort to disposing of the poor little guy. You know you're a redneck when you kill a porcupine with a pocketknife taped to the end of a broomstick and bury it outside of cabin 4.

4. Bacon. I am not a fan of this nasty meat, and cooking it for hundreds of people is not my idea of a good time. It's especially unpleasant when you open the oven and a huge cloud of bacon-y vapors shoots out at you. Gross.

5. Cream of Chicken Soup. Working at Mill Hollow, you quickly learn that there are very specific ways they like things done. It's all about tradition, I guess. Apparently they ALWAYS put cream of chicken soup in tinfoil dinners. I learned that the hard way.

6. Purple Mountain Majesties. I can't even begin to describe how stunningly beautiful the Uintas are. I can't wait to spend more time hiking in the coming weeks.

7. Frigid. It is not a rare thing to find the kitchen staff huddled around the open oven trying to keep from turning into popsicles. Temperatures have been around freezing this week, and there's still a fair amount of snow here and there.

8. El Capitan-o. As assistant cook, I'm in charge of one of 2 shifts of kitchen staff (we rotate which staff cooks the different meals). Since I mostly have no clue what I'm doing, it's pretty much the blind leading the blind. Maybe someday I'll get the hang of it, but as for now I just run around like a headless chicken and hope that somehow the food won't get ruined.

9. Speaking of food... I realized I absolutely love cooking. I might not be saying that by the end of the summer, but I really do enjoy it. I find myself thinking about making food constantly. I think it's becoming a bit of an obsession. However, I think I prefer cooking for less than 200 people. It's nearly impossible to try to guess how much food to make for that many people! Also, I cracked 130 eggs the other day. Just thought I'd throw that tidbit of info out there.

10. Gun show. I'm starring in the gun show at the end of the summer. Scrubbing and sweeping and lifting heavy things all day is giving me the arms of a champion body builder.


All in all, I think I like my job. It's probably one of the most challenging, stressful, overwhelming job experiences I've ever had, but I've learned a lot, and I'm sure it will continue to get easier/better as I get things figured out.