Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Globalization


Now that the holidays have passed, the camp employees have resumed their regular schedules, including in the kitchen. We've shared lunch with the trail-building construction crew, retired townsfolk visiting the amphitheatre they're helping fund and most recently, 70 overly-enthusiastic Cal-Poly students training to welcome next year's freshman. This afternoon we'll meet a bunch of 5th graders up for life science at the beach and community building over tomorrow's pancake breakfast.

Camp food is delivered in an enormous refrigerated truck. It takes at least an hour to unload the 7-pound cans of beans and cases of red delicious apples. Behind closed doors, the generic foods take a turn for the better. Green beans with red peppers and a touch of something sweet- apricot? Roasted vegetable soup with extra garlic. The lemonade, always the same, is mixed in a 5-gallon bucket.

The lunch bell doesn't startle me anymore. Last week's california rolls did.
I watched Theressa pat rice onto sheets of seaweed. My spanish is lousy. Her english marginally better. It took a while before I understood. She learned to make sushi working as a cook at Walmart* in Mexico.


*Our appreciation of avocado/cucumber rolls should NOT in any way be seen as an endorsement of Walmart, its policies, practices or world-wide evil-doing.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you still going to Texas? Because if you are, you could stop in Tucson, Arizona, and see Lucy at Small Planet Bakery and the ladies at Women Build Houses. And BICAS, of course. There are lots of snakes and lizards in Arizona. I miss Tucson. That is one cool ass city. It snowed again here in Seattle. Oh, and IH*TEWALMART!

Anonymous said...

You know I'll be asking about all your sw connections! Just as soon as we take care of some van issues. We're looking forward to Az and NM...
Texas is still in the mix. We're looking at doing some work near the Neches River in Houston Co. Could be March before we get there!

love from Los Osos, 65 degrees.

Anonymous said...

Hey, we just ate some yummy tacos at the King Street dance. Keep posting about your food experiences--always a topic of great interest to our family!

Anonymous said...

mmm...tacos. I'm looking forward to next year's extravaganza already!

Nice to hear from you, JT. Hope the family had fun dancing and visiting!

Anonymous said...

Just gotta respond to your WalMart comment! You will be discouraged to know that a second (yes, #2) WM has opened in Fed Way. I drove by it the other day--the amount of traffic was incredible: it took 4 light changes to turn L off of 16th onto 348th (by Enchanted Village) so I could get on the freeway and go home! I know that not all of the congestion can be attributed to WM--but they didn't help solve the traffic problem. lLove, Mom

Anonymous said...

Maybe you'd like to suggest to walmart that they address the traffic issues by building a bicycle parking lot, funding bike lanes throughout the city and promoting anternative transportation.
I hear they're quite progressive now, getting in on the organic movement and all. (Of course there's that small issue of commiting fraud and intimidation as they do...)
;)