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Chitty and Audrey are your kitchenistas! We have downsized to a realistic goal of three communal camp meals. The proposed menu is vegan, and promises to be an excellent, all-inclusive camp experience:

MEAL ONE: Penne Pasta, Chitty's Homemade marinara sauce, (plus for non vegans) grated Ricotta Salata cheese MEAL TWO: Linguini, aglio e olio sauce, Broccoli MEAL THREE: Potstickers, Rice, Green Beans

The Kitchen

• Buys and transports food to Burning Man
• Buys and transports enough water for everyone
• Provides a clean space, equipment and food/ingredients for individuals and small groups to cook other meals for themselves
• Cooks three large communal meals

What you can do for the Kitchen

• Volunteer to perform one or more of the chores listed below
• Pay your camp fee
• Let us know what sorts of tasty things you would like to eat in the desert so that we can plan to please you.

Planning

Chores

We need volunteers for dish duty after the three communal meals. Chitty and Audrey will be gifting the camp with the preparation of a hot meal. As Mama Chitty (Chris Chitty's Mom, who will be on the playa this year) always says, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. If your heart strings are tugged, volunteer for dish duty on one of the communal cooking nights.

The Dish Crew should gift their skills at getting sexy and sudsey at the kitchen sink after communal meals. We will need three crews of three people each.

Volunteer

Please volunteer for a chore below by clicking "edit." Everything is nicely annotated on the edit page so the table should be easy to understand.

Communal Food List

Many are content to live on MTR for the week, but you may have other ideas. Add whatever you'd like to this list and our Kitchenistas will make sure it appears on the playa. Please note that this list is for communal food items to be cooked and consumed by anyone at their leisure.

• MTR
• Instant Rice
• Coffee
• Soy milk
• Cucumbers
• Sugar-Free & Regular Red Bull
• cabbage (lasts forever and, when uncooked, is a good substitute for lettuce in salads)
• carrots
• avocados
• apples
• pine nuts, almonds, peanuts and other delicious nuts
• Cheez-Its
• Bagels & cream cheese
• Hummus and pita chips
• Bacon -- lots and lots of bacon!
• Pre-mixed eggs
• Beef jerky
• Butter, bread and cheese (grilled cheese sammiches, yo!)
• Bananas
• Tortillas
• canned beans
• Shredded cheese
• Salsa

Equipment

Items to Borrow

Please write your name next to an item if you have one we can use for the week:

• stove
  • Tasty Noodles has a two burner stove, 5 gal. propane tank and a hose attachment.
  • I'll be bringing a one-burner stove with propane, but not til Tuesday. --Erin
  • see Discussion
• Solar cooking kit http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/CooKit (Purchase for $25 http://65.108.108.197/catalog/solarcookerskits-c-1.html)
• coffee-making device
  • i have a french press -brian
  • I can bring a french press too -chris
• coolers
• sturdy folding tables
• A white-board or chalk-board paint and cardboard on which we can write announcements, chores, a dinner menu, etc...

Items to Buy

• cheap, yet sturdy plastic plates and silverware to reuse during the week.
• [If you use paper plates you can burn them! No dish washing required. Save time and water.]

Planning Schedule

These are important deadlines to keep in mind if you are involved in the kitchen. They'll help us keep it together while remaining flexible enough both to accommodate everyone's different tastes and to scale everything up or down as the date approaches.

6/1-8/1 - Kitchen soliciting input on food items to purchase
7/1 - All Volunteer Chefs Signed up
7/15 - Preliminary menus due
8/1 - All Online Dry-Goods orders will be placed. Everyone who has not signed up for a Kitchen chore will be assigned one.
8/15 - Final shopping list deadline. If you are in charge of a communal meal you must have submitted a final list of ingredients to Nick.

Menus

MEAL ONE: Penne Pasta, Chitty's Homemade marinara sauce, (plus for non vegans) grated Ricotta Salata cheese MEAL TWO: Linguini, aglio e olio sauce, Broccoli MEAL THREE: Potstickers, Rice, Green Beans

Discussion

Plates and Utencils

• Just a suggestion -- why don't we have everyone bring and be responsible for their own reusable plates and utensils? --Kurtz
• While ideally everyone would be bring their own dishes and washing them after every meal, we've found over the last few years that this never actually happens. Instead people with their own dishes seem to say "oh, I'll leave it for later" and the kitchen gets filled with dirty dishes which to everyone appear as simultaneously 'disgusting' and 'not theirs'. Having 50 or so sets of identical plates, silverware, etc. not only allows people to pack less, it disillusions people of the concept of a 'private' (and thus postpone-able) mess. When you are living in such close quarters there is no such thing. Instead of relying on a general responsibility of each individual for their own mess (a default decency we should expect of ourselves but not count on in others) we are delegating (for any given limited period of time) a specific responsibility to two particular individuals for everyone's mess. Less philosophically, it's easier and faster to wash all the dishes with 4 hands rather then having everyone get in line to use in our tiny dishwashing system (we can only use as much water as we can evaporate). Also, identical plates stack better and take up less space. -macri
• Chitty proposes an alternate universe in which people are held accountable. Burning man is about radical self reliance and respect of community. In that vein, aside from the three communal meals, people MUST do their own dishes. No one should have to watch the kitchen like a hawk every day at burning man. I know I don't want to. Enforcement is easy.
• Tara agrees that everyone should do their own dishes and bring their own dishes.

The kitchen will provide each camper with his or her own plate. The kitchen will write that person's name on his or her plate in big black block letters. If that individual leaves his or her plate in the kitchen or common areas for someone else to clean up there will be communal shame. Everyone will know who the messy one's are. Maybe someone else will wash that plate for them as a gift, but if it's still dirty when the communal meal is served, they might not have anything to eat on. A special award will be given at the end of burning man to the two biggest communal kitchen pigs ---next year's dish duty!--- -Chitty

• Use paper plates and burn them to save water. Everyone bring their own paper plates. Set up a burn box for those plates. Marcy

• Solar Cooking Kits - http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/CooKit

Purchase for $25 here http://65.108.108.197/catalog/solarcookerskits-c-1.html -Marcy

Dish Washing System

I've thought about this a little bit, but haven't gotten anywhere. What did you guys do last year? -macri

we largely relied on the goodwill of bamboozled. -vinay

Refrigeration

how many coolers? how long will ice last? Ice can be purchased at center camp -- randall

Stove

how many burners will we need? How much fuel?

• Tasty Noodles has a two-burner stove, a 5 gal. propane tank and a hose attachment.
  • Sweet. Will this be enough?
  • We've never had to cook for so many people so I'm not sure, but I imagine a couple more would be very helpful with the speed at which meals are produced.
• Mike Z can bring a second two-burner stove.

Counters

We need some prep-space, but we don't want our tables to become places for people to pile dirty dishes and uneaten food. How many tables should we have?

A Tent

Ginger is organizing shade structures and we will have one large 10 x 10 enclosed tent for food storage and food prep in incliment weather. The stove area will be outside the tent.