Olympic Spanking

OK, so today was an Olympic culinary spanking as we quickly learned about feeding 1600 with 4 cooks is a real challenge, and on top of that we still had to do the prep for the next day to do it all over again. I added a photo as Michael had 12 sub recipes to make one Korma Chicken Recipe. The Chicken was awesome but super labour intensive.

Last night was the final securty sweep for the athlete's village site, I've never seen so may RCMP in one area and not one donut on the menu. Getting in and out is now a major issue as we try to go through all the security checks on our way to and from work. It's good to see Canada's finest at work keeping us safe.

Olympic Chef Bill Pratt

First Real Feeding

Today will be the real test as we prepare to feed over 1600 meals today for the workforce. Yesterday was a crazy day of prep trying to figure out recipes. The food is good but one recipe may have 4 sub recipes to make it and we're quickly learning how much streamlining we're going to need to do in order to make it more efficient. We still don't have cooks to help us yet so as we try to get food in, figure out routines and do the prep for the next day, we can't forget the fact that we have to serve meals as well. I've cooked for years but following a recipe simply slows us down. It's vitally important that we follow these recipes because the nutritionals for the athletes are linked to it so they know there daily caloric and nutritional intake. Standby for tonight's Blog, I'll let you know how it went :-)

Bill

More Pictures

Day 3 for me on the ground and we managed to get our culinary teams figured out on how were going to feed 12,000 meals a day in 9 food stations. Tomorrow we only have to feed 170 and then it jumps to 1600 meals on Sat and up from there till we get to 12,000. The good news is that we have time to test recipes now before the athletes arrive on the 4th of Feb. Trevor our Sous Chef from Scotland is a heads down get'er done Chef willing to do what's necessary to make sure we don't fail. Michael Smith is in the lead Chef role taking the brunt of the heat as we try to adapt to routines as we all try to learn the Sodexo Policy. They are bar far one of the most professional companies I've worked for with the strictest HACCP regulations I've seen. They didn't just set these policies for the Olympics, they live them everyday and it's impressing the hell out of me the more I work with them. Imagine for a second as a cook or a chef preparing, Beef Stew, Chicken Breast and a fried egg sandwich for lunch. As you finish preparing the stew you record a temperature reading, then place the food on the steamline or in a holding hot box only to record the temp on a regular basis throughout the meal period. Now do this for the Chicken, veg, Potatoes etc and you have a mountain of paperwork for the cook to track. It's been quite a while since I followed recipes as close as I do with these but the one's I've tried so far all all really good. let's see how we do when the #'s increase and were preparing Venison Chili for 500.

Olympic Chef Bill

Bill's Arrived In Whistler

With 23 days to go till the 2010 winter Olympics begin, I've arrived in Whistler raring to go at 100 miles an hour. There is a flurry of activity within the village itself as everyone scurries around with last minute details. The kitchen is no different, just think for a moment, we have a brand new facility with all new equipment (from England with European power) we have to learn to use, then add on the fact we have all new staff who have never worked for us with recipes we've never used, work routines to figure out so we can tell people what to do when they arrive plus a 1000 other details and we have to get it right the first time right up to the last meal in 10 weeks. I'm amazed at the organization and work gone into this project so far, it's simply fantastic to be part of such a professional team.

At Present we 4 Chef's to figure everything out before the bulk of our workforce starts to arrive at the end of the month. No pressure says the boss but we start feeding over 1500 people in 3 days. Trevor from Scotland, Steven from Toronto, Chef Michael Smith from PEI and myself from Halifax and were all keen to make it work even if it means working 14-16 hours a day to make it happen. I will take some photo's once we get more things set up and will be sure to post them as soon as I can, Cheers

Olympic Chef Bill Pratt