Culinary Curtis Cooks in Camp

First off, the praise to a truely great worker to work with. This is Curtis, everyone say HELLO to Curtis:

Why do I praise him? well, he has got to be one of the best cooks that I have had the pleasure of working with in camp. He is extremely outgoing and talks with pretty much everyone in camp. He does the sort of joking and ribbing that Ron used to do to people but everyone would smile and laugh with Ron when he did his jokings but would go to Tony and complain that Ron was insulting them and all. Curtis has a natural friendly charm where he can joke and kid with everyone and not make it seem like he is berating or making fun of them but just having a good time.

Also, he is a great cook. He isn't like some of the cooks in the past that always had to put some freaky stuff on food to add 'flair' or sauces that make you go "what the heck???" All of the sauces that he adds are really just basic down to earth sauces that no on really does a double take on. Basic cheese and butter sauces are his main items that he puts on his food and they all are really good. I guess my judgement is also sort of biased because he lets me do things like this:

It started as a joke a couple months ago when he was cooking and we were having ham that I asked if he was going to add some pineapple and cherries to it. We laughed about it for a bit and then not much more was said until the ham came out of the oven. As he was basting and checking it he kept making a comment of 'boy, all this ham needs now is pineapple' or 'wow, cherries would definitly be a good addition to this ham' and I said that the next ham he did I would add some pineapple. So this morning when I was making my salads he said "so you going to light up the ham before I put it in?" I accepted the challenge and was going to cut some fresh pineapple but since we had only enough to last till grocery day, I had to settle for canned pineapple. So just before he put the ham in I speared it with 20 pineapple slices and cherries and he basted it with his glaze and baked the sucker all day long. When it came out the pineapple was delicious and the cherries were glazed hard on the outside with brown sugar and sweet and juicy on the inside. So, I like working with Curtis because he lets me do funky stuff that really is only cosmetic but is enjoyable and fun to do.

Funny story also about the pineapple and cherries. Duanne came through while I was pulling the pineapple and cherries off the ham (we slice the ham and put it on the line in serving trays so no one really got to see the ham in its pineappley glory) and I mentioned that he would help me eat the pineapple. So he had a ring and a couple cherries and walked away happy. About 15 minutes later, Stephanie came in to the kitchen while I was pouring hot water out of the steam kettle and said "Duanne said there was sweet stuff...where is the sweet stuff?" Of course, still on my amusement high from the pineapple and all I instantly turned towards her with my arms spread open wide and said in my best Leisure Suit Larry Lounge Lizard pick up voice "here it is baby, have all that you like". Of course, her reaction was to roll her eyes and mutter "I should have known better than to ask". We both had a laugh and I told her the pineapple was on my shelf and she went away looking for the 'sweet stuff'. About 20 minutes after Stephanie left, Duanne came back to the kitchen laughing about how this story was told to him by Stephanie and he thought it was hilarious.

Another reason I like working with Curtis is how helpful he is in giving advice or teaching me things. For instance, when I ask Tony 2 for some advice about cooking I usually get a shrug of the shoulders or a grunt going "not really sure, trust your taste" and he walks away. The only time he gives me hints or warnings is after I am done and somehow managed to screw it up and then he goes "yeah, you might not want to do it this way or that way". However, with Curtis, he gives me about 4 different plans or suggestions on what can be done and once I pick a course of action he helps out with the execution of the plan. Today I was making quesadillas for lunch and Tony 1 came by and asked "do you know how to make them?" and I replied with "sort of, just winging it" and he walked away. I suddenly got nervous so I went up to Curtis to double check about how I was going about doing it. He confirmed my plan and then suggested I do it on the grill instead of the oven. He gave me tips and pointers, explained how to do it and then even offered to give me a hand on cooking them to get them out on time. All the while we are making lunch he is offering suggestions on how I could make this a one man production, do certain steps ahead of time and some steps to miss out completely to make the operation move much smoother.

The only down side I see for Curtis is that we probably won't have him in camp for much longer. Camp life seems to have a certain luck with cooks as friendly and as good as he is. They come in, work for a bit and then go on to bigger and better things whereas only the really crappy and horrible ones seem to hold on here. Which makes me realize that Tony 2 and I will be here forever. Oh and speaking of crappy cooks hanging around till the day they die, I have a sneaky suspicion that Big D will be returning to this camp in 5-6 weeks once the DEW line is finished.

So yeah, everyone say hello again to Curtis and let's all hope that he sticks around for a long long time.