The Kitchen
“Eva, what’s for dinner?” is the most common phone call made to the community kitchen. This awfully annoying sound that makes cooks go, “My goodness, I’m not answering the phone again.” But what can you do. People are hungry and want to know what meal we’re having.
Most of the colony meals are prepared in the Community kitchen. This building is one of the oldest buildings on the colony and has needed many repairs. The kitchen includes a basement with 6 storage rooms and a walk-in freezer. The main floor has 2 storage rooms, a cooking area, the bakery, and the two diners- the adult diner, and the children’s diner.
The outer appearance of the kitchen makes the kitchen look really old. The walls are yellow and white, which originally was brown and white. However, about a year ago, the carpenters and the “diene” set out to repaint the inside of the kitchen. First they replaced the ceiling, and then they repainted the walls.
As the population increases, we have to prepare more food for more people. Still we are fortunate to be fed three healthy meals a day. Eva Hofer has been the head cook for approximately two years and is responsible for the kitchen work. Eva gets up at about 6:00 in the morning and gets ready to start another day. Each week 2 different ladies help Eva cook in the kitchen. All women in Springhill between the ages of 17 and 45 pair up for their cook week. There are 11 cook weeks so each cook cooks every 11th week, roughly 5 to 6 times a year. “I feel that my job gives me more interactions with people,” explains Eva, “and that makes me happy… the worst part of my job is that it’s constant and needs a lot of planning ahead.” Trips are also hectic because she has to make sure that everything is prepared for the next day and that the things needed for the meals are also done. For example, food from the freezer has to be defrosted. “I have to say, I love the trips but the preparations are not fun.”
Several new pieces of equipment have been added to the kitchen, which puts Eva and the cooks in high spirits. A new Cumby was recently installed. The Cumby is mostly a combination of steam and bake. It is ways more accurate than the old Cumby oven, and has more program options to choose from. For instance if you want to make vegetables, you can program the setting and save it so that next time you make vegetable you just press a preset button. They find that the new oven is very handy and is much superior to the old one. “It makes cooking much easier and is a major improvement to the kitchen. The Cumby is something that is being used everyday explains Lorna, “And it’s a benefit if it’s bigger and has more options then the old one.”
“The fact that the Cumby cleans itself is very awesome, because the old one had to be cleaned by hand which was just more work and made the day longer,” remarked Lorna who has used the Cumby a few times and really appreciates it. The new skillet also gets the cooks jumping for joy. It was installed before the Cumby and is also something that just has to be in the Kitchen.
Forty years since the community kitchen was built, this building is still in pretty good shape and is one of the buildings that is used every and all day. This is a place that builds up communication and most importantly, community!
Janice Wollmann
