A Week at Tahlee

Well, I am back from a week at Tahlee!   It was a busy, but thoroughly enjoyable time.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera so I have no pictures to share with you all.  So you will have to imagine what the kitchen looks like:

The Tahlee kitchen is a commercial kitchen, with one main island bench running nearly the full length. At both the short ends of the rectangle room, there are sinks, and a commercial dishwasher (one minute cycles are the best!) Along one of the long sides there are two double gas stove tops, and two commercial ovens.  The other long side is used up by a storage bench and the double opening doors onto the dining room.

Then there is a small pantry, where cooking staples and dishes are kept.  Opposite to this, there is a corridor of fridges - two four door fridges, and on the opposite side are freezers.  And then there is upstairs, where a table is set up for extra preparation or eating area, and a laundry around the corner.  The cool room is also located upstairs - a massive, walk in fridge, which opens into a walk in freezer (which is pure torture in winter  :P)  Then if you continue, and head outside, there is a two roomed pantry and separate equipment pantry.

The dining room is a heritage building, and can seat up to about 120 people.  It is wood paneled, from floor to the high ceiling, and has two marble fireplaces, one of which is in use.  Above the mantle, there are mirrors which reach up to the ceiling.  There are four double french doors along one side, which open up to the veranda.

Hopefully that made sense....  I tried to draw up a map on Paint, to depict the kitchen, but it is much harder to draw a to scale floor plan than one would think.  So here it is.... roughly drawn to scale

So we had a school group of 50 people in from Wednesday lunch to Friday afternoon tea.  Breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper.  And then while the school group was still in, another two camps also entered, one group of 27, and the other of 15.  Thankfully, they only overlapped for one meal...lunch.  But they all had lunch at different times.  One group was at 12:15 pm, the school was at 12:35, and the third group at 1:00 pm.  To help with all the different times and amounts which we needed to cook, I wrote up the schedule on the wall with whiteboard marker, as it just wipes off at the end of the day.  It worked really well, and I ended up writing the menu, numbers, dietary requirements, times, etc for every day.

The menus differ between the kids and adult groups quite significantly.  The school had meals like pizza, chips and salad for lunch, and spaghetti bolognese for dinner, while the other groups had soup and salad wraps for lunch and roast chicken and vegetables for dinner.  It made me wonder at what age kids stop liking 'kids food' and start eating the more 'grown up' food, like curry and corned beef.....

Cooking for that many people mean long hours in the kitchen.  We started at 6:30 in the morning, and sometimes didn't get a break until 2:30 in the afternoon, breaking only until 4 where the dinner shift would continue until about 8 or 8:30 at night.  Despite the fatigue, and aching feet, there is a lot of reward and satisfaction in feeding 60 plus people.  And I think that my favorite times are before breakfast, because it is quiet and is your chance to set up the whole day in being prepared, and then after dinner, when four or five of the staff members come in and help clean up the kitchen. The laughter and the fun we have while doing hundreds of dishes is quite amazing.  :)

And doing the afternoon teas, the morning teas and the suppers are the worst meals to do because you have to bake something, plate different snacks, and most of the time immediately after you just fed everyone a substantial meal.  And making enough piklets for 50 plus people is a really slow, boring job.  Just saying. ;P

But I really have no complaints.  Being there is like being at home, and I can't wait to go back for the next camp.