[Sca-cooks] OT - Somewhat amusing in light of recent healthyfoodrants

[Terry Decker]

My response to parental culinary madness was to learn how to cook so that I 
could prepare what I liked.  That led to a stint as a staff cook at a Boy 
Scout camp and sustained me through twenty-odd years as a bachelor.

I have to agree with your ES about the veggies.  Too many "cooks" don't know 
how to prepare them or hold them.  I have also encountered the infamous 
"mystery meat" hidden in gravy or ground into croquettes (as I am sure most 
of us have) and amazing cardboard steak (a Sunday staple of the OU 
cafeterias).  I think the bad food may be a plot between the Dietician and 
the cafeteria staff to save money for next year's raises.  I think I might 
have preferred Jamie Oliver's fare to what I actually got.

Bear


> It was very instructive to discuss this the high-school-aged Evil
> Spawn. He's not really a serious food maven, but his tastes are
> pretty darned eclectic (given what his crazed parents tend to serve,
> he'd have to be, or starve), and he had some very specific ideas as
> to what is wrong with the food in his school cafeteria, and how he
> would go about fixing it, and it seemed like a pretty dispassionate
> analysis, too. Mainly he said that the single best way to screw up
> any agenda for healthier food is to treat vegetables as badly as
> school cafeterias tend to do. He specifically said he's gathered that
> there are certain vegetables that will stand up to repeated re-
> heating or being held for a couple of hours in a steam tray, and some
> that won't, and that nobody who can't figure this out and act
> accordingly should be trying to serve vegetables to children in whom
> it is in our best interest to instill and encourage a liking for
> vegetables. Well, that was the gist of it... ;-)
>
> Adamantius