Despicable Me - I Have Minions!

Boy, ignorance really is the night of the mind. In the beginning, I didn’t have cooking assistants for our kid’s camps. Enrollment was low because we were just getting started and, with four or five kids, I didn’t really think about it. But going it alone was pretty challenging.

But after our second summer, enrollment picked up and I was exhausted at the end of each camp. Because I was very territorial about my culinary domain, I stupidly fought the idea of having anyone in there working with the kids. After suffering from prolonged whining, Chuck made some convincing arguments in favor of kitchen help vis-a-vis time management, physical wear-and-tear, and the pitfalls of hubris. ("But it's only hubris if I fail, right?"). So, bowing to (instead of laughing at) the superior intellect, I invited one of my students who had “aged out” of the kid's classes to assist. Instant success! The little kids loved working with a teenager – it’s way cooler than having an adult breathing down your neck. One adult for every four kids is the general rule for this kind of thing, and it's a good one. The drive to defend my territory against interlopers evaporated. And so the tradition of having young cooking assistants has continued for subsequent camps.

Now  our summer camps are big and busy and we have some really terrific assistants again this year. They, too, came up through the ranks, as it were, starting out in the first camps as students. They are familiar with the kitchen, the equipment, the techniques, and the routine. Working together is a kind of poetry, especially as they anticipate my needs or simply take the initiative. Best of all, they are incredibly cheerful about the dishwashing aspects of the job! They even get the little kids stacking the dishwashers, with minimal grumbling. Bliss, pure bliss.