Camp 2005 -- Pot Luck Saturday

Camp finished yesterday with a breakfast "pot luck." This isn't your traditional pot luck where the guests share their favorite dish. At our camp kitchen, the pot luck is designed to empty the refrigerator so that we can go home.

You might say that each staff member is the kitchen was given a chance to show off his or her favorite dish from the week. According to my inventory as we emptied the contents of the walk-in onto the center table, we had no less than 17 items to dispose of. I recorded this inventory in my notebook as we emptied the reefer.

The center table about half-way through our unloading operation.

Here's the tally:

1. A 2-inch full-sized hotel pan of lasagna from Wednesday dinner.
2. A half-sized hotel pan of Thursday's brown gravy.
3. Two soup bowls of ground cooked beef.
4. 39 grilled hamburgers from the All-American BBQ Friday.
5. 23 grilled hot dogs from the BBQ.
6. 8 pounds of raw bacon.
7. 10 pounds of raw sausage links.
8. 14 baked potatoes.
9. 15 pounds seasoned cooked diced chicken from quesadillas Friday (I purchased too much pulled chicken meat).
10. 10 dozen flour tortillas.
11. 8 dozen eggs.
12. A full 4-inch full-sized hotel pan of baked beans from the BBQ.
13. 13 pounds of shredded cheddar cheese.
14. 1 quart of barbecued pulled chicken from Thursday's lunch.
15. A small pan of sauteed onions and bell peppers.
16. A 2-inch full-sized hotel pan of sliced tomatoes from the BBQ.
17. A 4-inch full-sized hotel pan of braised red cabbage from Thursday's roast pork loin dinner.

I'm sure that your mind said, "Breakfast burritos!" as you browsed the list. We prepared 100 breakfast burritos from scrambled eggs, seasoned diced chicken, torillas and cheese. They've become a Saturday morning tradition at our camp. I would've made salsa from the tomatoes, but I didn't have enough hot peppers.

From left to right: sausage bacon, hot dogs and bacon; lasagna; barbecued chicken; and SOS.

After making the burritos, we heated everything except the red cabbage and placed it on the tables in the dining room. My staff wouldn't let me serve braised red cabbage for breakfast. (Instead, several of us took it home -- I have two tubs in my home freezer!)

Some of the items were well accepted, burritos included. After a 30-minute meal from 9 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., we found that the bacon, sausage and hot dogs were fast sellers. The kids attacked about half of the lasagna, a few hamburgers, some of the SOS (brown gravy and crumbled beef), all of the fried potatoes (remember the baked potatoes?) and about half of the barbecued pulled chicken.

We saved the Cocoa Puffs and Cocoa Krispies for Saturday because they're so popular. One of the drawbacks of buying the Kelloggs and G.M. variety packs is that the campers tend to favor the sweeter breakfast cereals. They shun healthy cereals like Total, which we also saved for Saturday.

The rest of the meal consisted of dry cereal and milk (we had to buy seven gallons Friday night), fresh fruit, orange juice cartons and a coffee cake made from biscuit mix and canned apples.