Letters to My Readers: Camp Food

July 18, 2006

Dear Readers,

Camp is so much fun! I have done horseback riding, archery, swimming, challenge tower, and canoeing. The food here is not so great, though. Since there are over 125 campers, none of the food is made from scratch. All of the food is bought in gigantic packages from SYSCO, so most of the food is not organic or health food. But I didn't come here for the food.

The food here okay; it is not very healthy or gourmet, but it is not supposed to be. It is being served to kids and not professional chefs or food tasters. The food fits to whom it is being served. Here are descriptions of some of the food:

For breakfast: a sad excuse for toast that was hard all the way through with a bit of crunch, eggs that were sitting in a pool of water, tasty plain grits with a bit of butter, soft French toast that was slightly rubbery and not very toasty, and delicious soft fluffy biscuits, and grayish white gravy with greenish, brownish gray chunks in it.

For lunch there was my personal favorite- turkey/ham and cheese sandwiches. Other days there were fried ground chicken patties (that had the texture of breaded and fried cardboard) sandwiches, taco salad, hamburgers, French fries, seasoned curly fries, potato chips, Cheetos, and Fritos.

For dinner there are different things on each day: lasagna, mushy garlic bread and salad; soft fried chicken tenders, canned green beans, baked potatoes, and dinner rolls; mini pizzas, corn off the cob, dinner rolls and salad. And desserts are okay: so-so chocolate cake, soft and chewy toffee cookies, tasty apple turnovers, and my favorite, dirt cake. Dirt cake is not really cake but chocolate pudding with Oreo crumbs on top with gummi worms in it.

Since this camp is for girls about my age, from 10 to 15, there is always an option for picky eaters and vegetarians, a cart where they can make themselves a pb&j (but only once did I see whole wheat bread on that cart), and a salad bar with all of the classic salad bar toppings, cottage cheese, canned peaches, iceberg lettuce mix, bacon bits, ranch dressing, shredded cheese and shredded carrots… but other than that, you get what you get and you don't pitch a fit.

There is usually no vegetable at lunch (only the salad bar and apples and oranges) except potatoes. There are French fries or curly fries with a majority of the lunches; other sides include potato chips, Fritos, or Cheetos. At breakfast there is always the option for cereal -- Froot Loops, Golden Grahams, Honey Nut Cheerios, Rice Krispies, and Special K Red Berries.

The dining hall here is like a cafeteria with tables with attached benches that fold in half to be stored vertically for using the room for group activities. There is a cafeteria-style steam table with two lines and two cooks who serve the food. In each line there are gigantic trays of the food. You get your food from the cafeteria lines for breakfast and lunch and during dinner each table of eight eats family style.

I don't particularly like the food here, so when I come home I want a nice cold glass of skim milk and a good healthy dinner of pasta with sautéed kale, bell peppers, yellow squash, and chicken, with a big salad. The food is not horrible though and after a few days you learn to talk to friends at meals to help you keep your mind off the food if you can help it.

I think that the activities are better than the food but I didn't come for the food.

I can't wait to come home to some real food!!

Yours truly,

Isis

P.S This summer I am going to two sleep-away camps. The first is a Girl Scout camp in Armuchee, Georgia, and the second is a Quaker farm camp in North Carolina. Each camp is very different and I assume that the food will be also, so I thought you might enjoy some letters from camp.

Isis (not her real name) is fourteen years old and is really interested in food because her dad is a good cook. She was practically raised in a Vietnamese restaurant, and as a baby ate her first solid foods there, which were rice noodles. She tries most foods that are offered to her and her parents urge her to also. For example, when she was 7 years old, she was at a French restaurant and her parents were having snails and they easily talked her into trying them. They ended up being pretty good! Isis takes ballet, plays soccer, sings in a choir, and loves to travel. Isis went to Italy for two weeks and when she came back she went on and on about the food, especially the gelato. Isis thinks that if you are going to eat, why not eat well if you can? There seems to be no reason not to.

Email questions or comments for these two young women to webmaster@drgourmet.com.