Cookout
What is cookout? At camp, the boys cook at their campsite 2 days a week. Cookout is an important part of our program. The boys not only learn cooking skills, but also menu planning and budgeting skills.
Planning the menu
The first step is planning the menu. Each camper writes up plans for one meal. The mission: plan healthy meals using the four food groups (fruits & veggies, grains & starches, proteins, and dairy).
Budgeting
Once they decide what they want to make, they begin to cost it out. Using an ordering booklet from the camp, they write out the grocery list with the prices. There’s quite a lot of math involved - they have to figure out the total cost of the meal they’d like to make, along with the cost per person. Their budget is $3.25 per person.
Sometimes one camper wants to make something more expensive for his meal. He can negotiate with his group. If they save some money from breakfast, they can afford a more expensive supper.
This is one page of our order booklet, just so you can see what it’s like:
Here’s an example of the menu planning sheet the campers use:
The supervisors check the menus and once they are approved, they are submitted to the kitchen staff. The kitchen team buys the groceries and packs a cooler for each meal.
We aren’t going to name any names, but last Hallowe’en, the boys decided to see if they could get away with ordering full-sized chocolate bars with both breakfast and lunch. The supervisors must have been concentrating on the math, because the boys snuck that one by!
Generally, we like to let boys experience the natural consequences of their choices, within reason. So they didn’t actually get chocolate bars with breakfast, but they did for lunch. The staff explained to the campers why eating chocolate bars with a breakfast of pancakes wasn’t the best nutritional plan. There was a fair bit of giggling over that one.
Cooking
The boys pick up the prepared coolers for every meal. The boys take responsibility for their meals, prepping the food they planned for their group. They practice and learn cooking skills as they go.
Then they all get to enjoy the fruits of their labours!
