Cooking

 Cook days

I’m currently in Cook Group 2, self named as (Gordon) Ramsey’s Chefs. Ironically named as none of us consider we can cook. So how does it work? It depends what meals you’re on this week. It’s common to do dinner and the following breakfast, but some are lucky enough to do lunch and dinner (avoiding that extra early wake up).

Each group decides what they will cook, with the only stipulation being there needs to be a vegetarian and meat eaters options, with protein for both. 

During the day your group heads to the local markets and buys the necessary ingredients. That has been supermarkets, but now it’s local markets with whatever is available.

About 30-60mins (or however long you think it’ll take) before the meal your group gets together and assembles the kitchen with the required equipment (burners, pots, pans, tables, plates, knives and forks, etc). Then it’s a simple matter of cooking for 24 or so people!

The scale is not something I’m used to. Just how much water do you need for 4kg of pasta? Even with the good burners, boiling that much water takes forever and moving around these large pots with hot food is a real exercise in safety. 

Eventually, hopefully, you’ve managed to get all parts of the meal heated and hopefully none of them have cooled down in the process. “Grubs up!” and everyone serves themselves.

Everyone is responsible for washing their own dishes, with the cook group responsible for washing and putting away all of the cooking stuff.

The pack down can take almost as long as prep, as each item needs to be washed and dried, then the jigsaw puzzle of putting it all back into the truck is quite the challenge. The smarter groups clean as they go!

Breakfasts can be hard for those who like a sleep in. If we want to get on the road by 7:30am, then it’s 06:30am breakfast, and you need to pack up your tent before breakfast, so if you’ve planned to cook anything special it can be as early as a 5:30am start. Now we are bush camping a lot breakfasts have become a lot simpler. Toast and hot water is typically the hot things.

Things get easier as we get faster at everything and as supplies become even more limited.

Breakfast so far has been cereals, fruits, as well as a main like scrambled eggs, baked beans, or fried eggs on toast.