In the kitchen
When it comes to feeding a crowd of people, planning is everything.
It is a matter of setting a menu, getting supplies and then staging everything so that the pancakes and bacon are ready for breakfast, the soup is hot at lunch and that steaks sizzle over glowing coals for dinner.
Last weekend, the Medford Curling Club hosted its 15th annual alumni bonspiel. Like so many events in the past year, it was touch and go for a long time if the tournament would be held or if people would stay away. As it was, team entries were down by about a third and many past volunteers decided to take a pass this year for a variety of personal reasons. Fortunately, the dynamic duo of Ryan and Jackie Lemke stepped up to chair the event this year.
It is not surprising that Ryan stepped up to the plate, he takes after his father and grandfather in not being deterred by challenges and instead finding solutions to make things happen despite restrictions and limitations.
What this meant is that those of us who are club board members who are neither alumni of Medford Area Senior High School, nor particularly stellar curlers were of better use helping out in making sure things ran smoothly.
For me, it meant spending more hours in the kitchen, preparing food, serving it and cleaning up than I care to think about. After serving food and snacks into early morning, I went home and got a few hours of sleep and rest before heading back to start the next round.
In between serving and helping clean up, I would get a glimpse or two of my children competing with their teams on the ice cheering them on from inside the kitchen.
As anyone who has worked in a tavern or restaurant knows, there is something strangely peaceful about walking inside in the early morning, flipping on the lights and bustling about to get ready for the day. There is an expectant calm, similar to watching a toddler sleep, knowing that when it awakens things will be exciting once more and you had better be prepared for it. For me, getting prepared involved getting the bacon and sausage from Black River Meat Market in Medford in the ovens, mixing up the pancake batter and setting up the serving area.
For the first few hours while the competitors were sleeping off hangovers, the only other person in the building was Mitch Mertens working his magic to make the ice perfect to play on making pass after pass with the scraper until it was to his exacting standards.
Over the course of a few hours, others would begin to trickle in. Curlers, supporters and other volunteers came streaming in seeking coffee, breakfast or Bloody Mary’s and swapping stories about shenanigans from the night before or from past events.
The kitchen crew made the transition from breakfast to lunch, keeping the food flowing as people came on and off the ice for their draws. Some would grab only a bite or two before going to compete asking if we would still be serving when they got done. It seems that only moments later, it would be time to start prepping for dinner and then making sure everything was cleaned up and ready to start all over again the next morning.
It is weirdly satisfying to watch a giant roaster filled with soup go down one bowl at a time until there is nothing left. Ideally this will be timed with the last person coming through line, but it doesn’t often work out that way.
Any event takes a small army of volunteers to make it happen and it was great to be part of the crew that pitched in and got something done in what has turned out to be a crazy year.
Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.
