Kentucky Fried un-Chicken

So I might have mentioned in a previous blog that back in December Tom asked Bro and I if we’d come back to Cloudbridge in January to cater (yes cater) for a school group of 15-18 year olds from that world-renown land of carnivores, Kentucky….and it needed to be vegetarian. We perhaps foolishly agreed, as we would be doing it with two of our fave volunteers from Cloudbridge-Anna and Alan, who not only were vegetarian, but can also cook. We, however are neither vegetarian, nor can cook, but we decided it would be a challenge, and definitely something new, and aside from that it meant coming back to Cloudbridge after our Xmas trip away which we were more than happy to do.

Alan and Anna on a Team Cook walk (and very chilly swim!) to a near-bye waterfall in Cloudbridge

So after a lot of meetings in December (aka drinking lots of coffee, whilst chatting about food), and a LOT of emails over xmas, we arrived at The World’s Longest Shopping List. To give you a taste, it included 371 eggs, 270 tomatoes, and 120 bananas, and took me about 3 hours to compile once we had our recipes. It also involved A Shit-Load of beans, as Tom was pretty adamant that we pack everything full of protein. This was going to be epic!

And so on the 4^th Jan we arrived back in San Isidro to meet Tom, Anna and Bob to unrdergo the Mother of all shopping trips….and thus (with a 6-hour supermarket sweep) we began our week as amateur chefs.

So!!! How did it go?!!...

Well….it turns out 16 year old Kentuckyians don’t like beans. Or lentils. Or tomatoes. Or anything that is a ‘meat substitute’. Or anything not ‘American’. This meant that our veggie burgers, homemade baked beans, lentil shepherd’s pie and local-style gallo pinto went down like a led balloon.

However…our desserts went down a storm, as did anything involving cream, curry or anything that did not include the categories mentioned above. So I’d say it was a mixed bag….the Cloudbridge and Teaching staff loved it, and were absolutely genuine in their praise, and we four all thought it tasted great. We gave the students evaluation forms, and it turns out one of them ate nothing but the spaghetti and pancakes in the whole week (serves her right for being fussy), we apparently made far too large portions, and as one of them so aptly wrote “you looked after us extremely well, and the food was wonderful. I just didn’t appreciate it all as I’m American and therefore don’t have a palate!” I think they have the Kernel to thank for that.

My google search history from this week goes something like this….

“can you really be allergic to only soy, apples and carrots?”

“how many cups of dry black beans do I need to make 12 cups of cooked black beans?”

“What’s the difference between an American ‘cup’ and a British ‘cup’?”

“Why the f**k are we using cups to measure everything?!”

“what the bajeezers can I feed 16 year old carnivores with an aversion to vegetables, beans, lentils and rice?!!!”

…OK maybe the last two were made up, but you get the gist.

It was a really interesting week though, and I for one certainly learnt a great deal, and I’m hoping that I will now be a little more confident in the kitchen as a result. We were immensely proud of ourselves -we were up at 4.45 each morning, we worked long hours (sometimes 12 hour days), we worked extremely well as a team, without a cross word between us, and I think we did a bloody good job. Everyone certainly seemed pleased anyway, and despite the few dishes that didn’t go down quite so well, everyone seemed to think we’d looked after them well. And at the end of the day….no-one died! Happy Days.

Adding “Vegetarian chef” to my CV….tick!

Looking very un chef-like in the kitchen! (I stole this piccie from Linda's blog-thanks Linda!)