What's New?

Our 2010 Dining Hall and Kitchen Expansion

Including Increased Staffing, More Food Education, an Enlarged Garden, and a Greenhouse!

 

We re-invented our foodservice in 2009: hiring top chefs, redesigning our menu, planting a garden, emphasizing local and sustainable ingredients, adding food education to our curriculum, and emphasizing sustainability in all areas of the camp.

 

For 2010 we will continue to put great food at the top of our priorities by adding a 24' x 110' addition to the current facilities, effectively doubling our dining area, and nearly tripling the size of our kitchen; the largest expansion at Ballibay since the construction of the new camp office in 1996.

 

We will be nearly doubling our food-related staff as well, adding both full-time kitchen staff and foodie-counselors who will spend part of their days in the kitchen and garden. And with more gardening staff we are pleased to announce we will be doubling the size of the garden as well, and adding a greenhouse!

 

Our expansion plan is multi-faceted: A two-story storage area with an additional walk-in cooler and new walk-in freezer will enable us to use our existing space more efficiently, and keep a much larger supply of fresh produce in stock on a day-to-day basis. The additional food preparation area will allow us to prepare in larger quantities, work on several tasks at once, and have more staff in the kitchen simultaneously. A large area of the expanded kitchen will be set aside for educational use during much of the day as we increase the number and diversity of our food education and culinary programs. Our expanded dining area will make for a very open and pleasant feeling during meals, as we will not increase the camp population for the summer of 2010 (we are building only one four-room staff quarter for our additional foodservice staff). A re-designed dish room will speed up meals and ease labor.

 

Although we do plan to modify the menu and service as well, its basic "kid friendly" philosophy will not change; primary menu items each week will include burgers, pizza, mac-and-cheese, tacos, pasta, grilled chicken, the baked potato bar, and the other favorite meals. But we'll also be trying new things, and returning to some of last summer's successful experiments, such as the Korean-inspired "rice bowls," which seemed to be the most popular meal of the summer judging from parent and camper feedback.