The Council Room

[David Bentley]

So, here it is, the day after the traditional Sunday turkey meal (even though it was served on Thursday under the guise of Thanksgiving Dinner) and I am wondering how many of us are going to have turkey soup for supper today?

If memory serves me correctly (and who knows these days), way back when Joe and Mrs Morin were running the kitchen (that would be Mrs Morin of chocolate cake with white icing fame, not to mention her fabulous rolls) I seem to remember that Joe cooked the turkeys by boiling them in large stock pots. Since they were cut up and served on serving dishes to the tables the visual of a nicely roasted, browned, turkey wasn't the object - getting them cooked and served promptly was more to the point. I never had an official tour of duty in the kitchen or dishroom (except pre- or post- camp duties) so I can't speak with surety to the technique of boiling several birds in large pots, but I am quite sure that was his method (probably somekthing he took with him from his Navy days).

In any case, and not withstanding any of the above, I sincerely hope everyone had an enjoyable day, had some family time, and took time to remember that giving thanks is not limited to just one day in November.
_________________
C-1 49 J-7 52 S-3 55 J-10 58
C-7 50 J-7 53 S-2 56 J-8 59
C-8 51 J-4 54 S-7 57 (JA) J-8 60 - 64
1965 - 1968 Military service
Pine Cone 68 - 75 (with wife,Sherry,
and daughter Tracey)
Wolfeboro - full-time since 1997

[Mike Freeland]

Hi Dave, and all,

I don't go as far back as Joe Morin, but I sure remember Mrs. Morin. "Mrs." was her first name, I believe. And yes, her desserts were without parallel, one of my favorites being her peach cobbler. It had a shiny, glazed crust and had little pockets of great gooey stuff. It was warm, too. I loved coming into the dining hall after Taps and finding a flat of chocolate cake with white icing waiting for us, along with a few bottles of milk.

When I started at Wyanoke in '56, Phil Hodgson was the head chef, and if my memory serves me, he roasted several turkeys for Sunday dinner. Wasn't there stuffing in them? Boiled stuffing would have the consistency of tapioca and wouldn't be all that palatable, at least to me.

Monday's turkey soup was always villified, but I've never understood why. I loved the stuff, even though it was a little watery. I forget now, was that served for lunch or dinner on Monday? I'm thinking lunch because Monday night was Parade, and there was some sort of cosmic imperative that mustard be used in the meal before parades because of all the white shirts. That meant cold cuts or hot dogs and brown bread.

Funny you should mention Mrs. Morin's rolls. For a long time, I experimented with those, and finally perfected them. At least I'm done with the experimenting. I've served them at my Thanksgiving dinners for years now. You have to be really careful with them because they'll burn on the bottom if you let them bake for even a hair too long. And, you can put too much goo on the bottom - they're best when the goo is really light and buttery.

I suspect that hers might have been better than mine because she made the dough from actual flour and stuff. I use those Rhodes dough balls.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Mike
_________________
'56-C-9 C. Mosher '57-C-9 Bill Feaster
'58-J-14 H. Peavy '59-J-11 G. Wood, C. Duncan
'60-S-8 R. Leavitt, D. Hemphill '61-S-1 E. Slocum
'62-JA-1 H. Dunbar '63-C-2 (JC)
'64-C-5, (JC) Councilor
'65-C-9 '66 - '72-J-8
'73-JA1 '75-J-6

[Jim Culleton]

And who could forget her warm apple crisp with vanilla ice cream? I could be wrong but I'm sure we had vanilla ice cream with it . . . . . . . . or maybe it was my wishful thinking of how great that combination would taste!

I loved the Monday evening turkey soup. I could never get enough of that stuff served with those oyster crackers to help sop up the soup. Were parades on Monday nights . . . . . . . . . I forget?? I know Saturday was a parade night/campfire, Tuesday was "movie night" and Thursday was "cookout" with Kurley Kate! Darn I miss those westerns while sitting on those wooden chapel chairs!

I hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving and wishing each of you a Merry Christmas! I have already put in my request for Christmas dinner . . . . . . . . NE Boiled Dinner, Wyanoke style, avec Grey Poupon!
_________________
'56 - J-9 J. Moulton
'57 - J-11 J. Moulton
'58 - J-4 E. Web Dann, S. Hood
'59 - S-6 P. Leavitt
'60 - S-2 F. Avantaggio
'61 - JA-1 RK Irons
'62 - C-9 JC with P. Freeland
'63 - C-1 JC with S. Borger
'64 - C-6 Councilor

[David Bentley]

I believe Monday nights were for Aides and JAs to go to Town, Tuesdays were for movies, Wednesdays were for parades, Thursdays were for cook-outs and Red Roof Party, Fridays were unscheduled, Saturdays were for beans and franks complete with BOTH ketchup and mustard and brown bread preceding parade followed by campfire, and Sunday was unscheduled.

Anybody remember stewed tomatos and saltines, not to be outdone by chocolate pudding with a 'skim coat' of solidified pudding?
_________________
C-1 49 J-7 52 S-3 55 J-10 58
C-7 50 J-7 53 S-2 56 J-8 59
C-8 51 J-4 54 S-7 57 (JA) J-8 60 - 64
1965 - 1968 Military service
Pine Cone 68 - 75 (with wife,Sherry,
and daughter Tracey)
Wolfeboro - full-time since 1997

[Mike Freeland]

Ahhh, right you are Dave, I forgot about the JAs going to town (How coould I possibly have forgotten that?!). Parades Wednesday and Saturday.

OK, did Cold Cuts alternate with franks 'n' beans on Saturday nights? We kids used to make thick sandwiches of just about everything on the table: potato chips, peanut butter, cold cuts, lettuce, mustard, jam - you name it. I think there was bug juice instead of milk with the cold cuts, right?

Yep, I remember the chocolate pudding. I used to like that hard(er) pudding crust. What I didn't like was that little slimy skin that formed over the hot chocolate.

Phil used to put bread in the stewed tomatoes, a mouth-feel I just couldn't abide when I was a kid. I love stewed tomatoes now, but I had a hell of a time gagging them back in my cmper days. How 'bout Welsh "Rabbit" and saltines? Now there was a meal packed with nutrition!
_________________
'56-C-9 C. Mosher '57-C-9 Bill Feaster
'58-J-14 H. Peavy '59-J-11 G. Wood, C. Duncan
'60-S-8 R. Leavitt, D. Hemphill '61-S-1 E. Slocum
'62-JA-1 H. Dunbar '63-C-2 (JC)
'64-C-5, (JC) Councilor
'65-C-9 '66 - '72-J-8
'73-JA1 '75-J-6

[DavidAyars]

The challenge of preparing a Thanksgiving meal for a gathering of six to twelve people is daunting enough, but imagine trying to have turkey off the bird simultaneously ready to serve 200 people. Was the kitchen staff really roasting or boiling whole turkeys? Did they have enough oven or burner space to do that?

I don't remember seeing that anyone took any photos inside the camp kitchen here on the website--it's the kind of shot you don't think to take at the time but wish you had later. I remember the Morans in the kitchen staff photos that in many summers were taken by Bud when the tent group and section photos were taken. Is there a camp kitchen (equipment) photo in the Gallery here?
_________________
Camper: J-8 1965 (Kevin Ryan), J-8 1966 (Mike Freeland), S-6 1967 (Russ Hatch), S-3 1968 (Jeremy Cripps), and JA-2 1969 (Dan Mannis).
JC: J-2 1970 (Bill Bettison) and J-3 1971 (Gene Comella). Councilor 1972, J-5 1973, and JA-1 1974 & 1975

[Mike Freeland]

I don't think there are any shots of the kitchen in the galleries. There's one of the kitchen crew (Phil, Mrs. Morin et al.) in there, but that was shot in the dust outside the kitchen in front of the dining hall. It would be neat if there were some good pictures of the the kitchen, walk-in refrigerator (I've been in there once or twice) dining hall duting a meal, or even one of BMB up by the slides making announcements.

I usually figure 1.5 pounds per person in buying a turkey. I had 10 for TG last week, a 17-lb turkey, and there were virtually no leftovers. That means that if there were 200 people at camp, they'd need to roast (or boil) 300 pounds of turkey - 15 turkeys if you figure 20 pounds apiece. That's a boatload or turkeys to wrangle and carve.

Boiling a bunch of turkeys would produce a LOT of turkey stock - maybe that's where the soup came from.

Don Risser was in the kitchen at least one summer (he's the one who posted the kitchen staff picture). I'll send him an email and see if he can shed some light on this mystery.

Stay tuned.
_________________
'56-C-9 C. Mosher '57-C-9 Bill Feaster
'58-J-14 H. Peavy '59-J-11 G. Wood, C. Duncan
'60-S-8 R. Leavitt, D. Hemphill '61-S-1 E. Slocum
'62-JA-1 H. Dunbar '63-C-2 (JC)
'64-C-5, (JC) Councilor
'65-C-9 '66 - '72-J-8
'73-JA1 '75-J-6

[David Bentley]

I think the beans and franks and brown bread and chocolate ice cream was a staple of Saturday nights; but the homemade self-designed Dagwood Destructo sandwiches must have been a Monday night meal to go with the turkey soup.

The ovens in the kitchen were pretty big, big enough to hold 6 turkeys each, and there were at least two of these ovens.

I think the 'bigger' of lunch or supper was served at lunch in order to allow digestion time and exercise to work their magic as opposed to eating and then pretty much going to bed on a full stomach.

The menu was worked out pretty carefully with some meals repeating weekly, and some every two weeks, year in and year out. Even though this may seem boring, many seem to remember certain meals on certains days (a la Mike and his yellow mustard fix preceding Saturday parade.) Over the years I don't remember Edna researching meals at other camps. I do know that when the State came to inspect Camp they did ask for a discussion of the food service.

And yes, who cojuld forget the Curly Cate to scrub the cook-out fry pans. I remembver going on a Soac trip with Henny Knowlton and he used to submerge the fry pans in the soft sand of the river's edge and then shuffle it around as if panning for gold. This would loosen up the cooked on whatever and then a quick swish with the Curly Cate and the job was done. The trick to avoiding a case of "Saco River Revenge" was to final rinse the pan in screaming hot boiling water to remove any remnants of grease.
_________________
C-1 49 J-7 52 S-3 55 J-10 58
C-7 50 J-7 53 S-2 56 J-8 59
C-8 51 J-4 54 S-7 57 (JA) J-8 60 - 64
1965 - 1968 Military service
Pine Cone 68 - 75 (with wife,Sherry,
and daughter Tracey)
Wolfeboro - full-time since 1997

[Mike Freeland]

No, the "Cold Cuts" supper wasn't in addition to the turkey soup. That meal was just the soup and those incredible rolls, and maybe some oyster crackers(?). I think, though, that the franks/beans/brown bread/chocolate ice cream (I completely forgot about the chocolate ice cream - note that none of those things is white, to go with my shirt) might have alternated with the Cold Cuts meal. The hot dogs were, in my fading recollection, less often served than the Cold Cuts.

I often wondered why the hell hot dogs weren't the default cook-out meal. What a great idea:

* No prep time. (I watched someone - Phil was on his day off - use an ice cream scoop to make gobs of ground beef onto a long rolled-out sheet of waxed paper, cover the gobs with another equally long sheet of paper, then walk from one end of the table with a can of pineapple juice, banging it down on the gobs, making instant hamburger patties. Splatties?)

* The kids could cook their own with a hemlock twig. (Hoo boy!)

* There would have been less chance of everyone dying of salmineo or salmonella or escherichia coli, which nobody knew about, which, I'm convinced, was enough to remove the threat from them. I'm thinking that we didn't often cook those things entirely to uniformly gray throughout. (Hoo Boy again! )

* NO Curly Kate necessary!

And, I aver, the potatoes should have been raw. Or at the very least, we should have been instructed to NOT try to fry them. Turn them into baked potatoes or au gratin or scalloped with a bit of ham, or perhaps incorporated into a delicious open-fire clam chowdah, ANYTHING but frying them in butter. Curly Kate required.

And speaking of Curly Kates, did you ever notice that those things were just as abrasive to the hands as they were to the pot?

Anything to reduce the clean-up time and get the Free Evening started. Did anyone else enjoy free evenings as much as I did? It was such a great opportunity to schmooze with your tent group after cookout, looking for crayfish or just burning off the ends of (hot dog) sticks in the fire.
_________________
'56-C-9 C. Mosher '57-C-9 Bill Feaster
'58-J-14 H. Peavy '59-J-11 G. Wood, C. Duncan
'60-S-8 R. Leavitt, D. Hemphill '61-S-1 E. Slocum
'62-JA-1 H. Dunbar '63-C-2 (JC)
'64-C-5, (JC) Councilor
'65-C-9 '66 - '72-J-8
'73-JA1 '75-J-6

[David Bentley]

Well, Mike, I have no definitive evidence, only anecdotal, in that my Dad was an absolute fanatic over chocolate ice cream, and would eat anything served before it just to get to it, and since the meals were pretty well spaced out on a schedule, I think he would have invoked a point of personal preference and not let the weekly Saturday night meal change from the many years of tradition. My mind just can't place the Dagwoods, except, maybe, they were Sunday evening, and the T-Soup was Monday evening.
_________________
C-1 49 J-7 52 S-3 55 J-10 58
C-7 50 J-7 53 S-2 56 J-8 59
C-8 51 J-4 54 S-7 57 (JA) J-8 60 - 64
1965 - 1968 Military service
Pine Cone 68 - 75 (with wife,Sherry,
and daughter Tracey)
Wolfeboro - full-time since 1997

[David Bentley]

I got it !!..My wife and I just went to dinner with Tom Falcon and his wife, and I posed the "sandwich" question to Tom. Without hesitation he said the "Dagwood Delights" were on Sunday evening, since we had already had a 'real' meal at noon. Case closed on Tom's authority? Secondarily, he brought up stewed tomatoes and Welsh Rarebit.
_________________
C-1 49 J-7 52 S-3 55 J-10 58
C-7 50 J-7 53 S-2 56 J-8 59
C-8 51 J-4 54 S-7 57 (JA) J-8 60 - 64
1965 - 1968 Military service
Pine Cone 68 - 75 (with wife,Sherry,
and daughter Tracey)
Wolfeboro - full-time since 1997

[don166]

Since he thought I might be able shed some light on turkey prep, Mike e-mailed me for my two cents. Sorry to disappoint, but after cleaning up after 20 meals/week for eight weeks in the dishwashing area adjacent to the kitchen, I have no clue how the cooks actually prepared all those meals, including Sunday turkey. It would seem that boiling would be the most efficient way to cook a turkey meal for 200+ people. And who are you going to complain to if it turns out a bit less tasty than Mom's cooking back home? But I really don't remember what Phil did.

It's not surprising I'm drawing a blank here since we "kitchen" boys didn't get on all that well with the cooks. Very little interaction -- as long as the pots and pans were clean, they were happy. But the assistant cook that year, Ed Pickford, was very kind to us. He'd let us borrow his car occasionally to go to Wolfeboro or Weirs Beach to spend some of the $15/wk we earned. He even bought us beer now and then. Otherwise we pretty much kept to ourselves with virtually no adult supervision, amusing ourselves with such character-building pursuits as throwing ice picks on the back porch for cigarettes.

Don
_________________
Don Risser
1955 C9
1956-58 Jrs
1959-60 Srs
1962 Kitchen

[Mike Freeland]

Thanks Don,

Sounds like an amazing summer. These days, leaving an ice pick on the dining hall porch with a block of lake-ice probably wouldn't be a good idea. Back in our day, no one would think to use it for anything but picking ice (or throwing for cigs), and the kids would leave it alone, except for Chros Gill, who used to get me iced coffee at lunch. He was really good with an ice pick. These days, though...

Dave, I wrote a response to your previous post, quasi-remembering that Dagwood Delight (listed on the blackboard simply as "Cold Cuts") was indeed on Sunday nights, not alternated with Monday Franks, but somehow the post never made it up. So I agree. Tom's right.

So, when was Welsh Rarebit?
_________________
'56-C-9 C. Mosher '57-C-9 Bill Feaster
'58-J-14 H. Peavy '59-J-11 G. Wood, C. Duncan
'60-S-8 R. Leavitt, D. Hemphill '61-S-1 E. Slocum
'62-JA-1 H. Dunbar '63-C-2 (JC)
'64-C-5, (JC) Councilor
'65-C-9 '66 - '72-J-8
'73-JA1 '75-J-6

[David Bentley]

Good question, Mike, I don't really know. I think Welsh Rarebit must have been an evening meal because it doesn't seem to be "hearty" enough to be the noon meal. So, Monday was turkey soup and Mrs Morin's famous rolls; Tuesday was some type of pasta, albeit, with apologies to true aficionados; Wednesday was ????; Thursday was Cook-Out; Friday was ?maybe a casserole; Saturday was hot dogs, beans, brown bread, and chocolate ice cream.

The whole 8-week menu repeated, some weekly, some alternately, but still in a pattern. I have no records of any of that stuff.

Okay, some of you regular eaters, chip in with fill -in - blank.
_________________
C-1 49 J-7 52 S-3 55 J-10 58
C-7 50 J-7 53 S-2 56 J-8 59
C-8 51 J-4 54 S-7 57 (JA) J-8 60 - 64
1965 - 1968 Military service
Pine Cone 68 - 75 (with wife,Sherry,
and daughter Tracey)
Wolfeboro - full-time since 1997

[DavidAyars]

Chip in??? Is that a sneaky way to work Chipped Beef on Toast into the dinnertime conversation? Or my favorite (NOT): Creamed Tuna, the only camp meal I can remember just skipping. I remember liking the turkey soup Mike liked, too, but it wouldn't have polled too high, and yes, I think it was a Monday night frequent flyer.

On the other hand, I think some of these such as Welsh Rarebit (which would now be listed on a menu board as Fondue du fromage with points of sweetbread) were only served at a couple of dinners a summer at most, and some such as Creamed Tuna I believe made their last appearance sometime in the 1960s, either because of a change in chef, or because of a 67% return rate to the slide, or perhaps because someone at the corner table on the porch said, Uh, there will be no more of that, thank you.

Campers used to give the kitchen boys static in returning trays of food and plates to the slide when it was a meal they didn't like, which of course made no sense.
_________________
Camper: J-8 1965 (Kevin Ryan), J-8 1966 (Mike Freeland), S-6 1967 (Russ Hatch), S-3 1968 (Jeremy Cripps), and JA-2 1969 (Dan Mannis).
JC: J-2 1970 (Bill Bettison) and J-3 1971 (Gene Comella). Councilor 1972, J-5 1973, and JA-1 1974 & 1975