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It’s Thursday in Unity, the night before the MOFGA Common Ground Fair opens, and already Barbara MacLennan and her kitchen crew are preparing to feed a small army. Six giant pots bubble away; prep cooks chop great mounds of onions, carrots, apples, and squash; and a seven-foot convection oven is fragrantly full of baked goods.
MacLennan calmly stands in the midst of the whirlwind as kitchen volunteers race up to her with a bewildering array of questions: “How do you know when lamb is done?” “Should I use pastry flour or bread flour for the crisp recipe?” “Four gallons or five for the Beyond Coffee mix?”
Already, there are some 50 hungry volunteers lined up near the Common Kitchen tent for a dinner scheduled in half an hour. If MacLennan’s worried about the impending deadline, she doesn’t let on. She appears to be the rare cook that thrives working on a grand scale.
“I love working in bulk,” MacLennan admits during a lull in questions. “I love getting my hands into four-gallon drums of beans!”
She’s in the right place. MacLennan is one of a handful of kitchen coordinators charged with feeding over 1,000 volunteers during the annual three-day organic food festival. These chefs must transform heaps of donated local produce into tasty meals that can satisfy the fair’s diverse crowd of omnivores, vegetarians, vegans, and the food-allergy sensitive. The crowd comes to the fair each year specifically to enjoy the non-mainstream food offered; this is probably one of the only fairs in Maine where it’s easier to find Indian food and whole-wheat funnel cakes than hot dogs and cotton candy. Still, MacLennan’s team must make the food tasty enough to keep people coming back for more, since a meal at the Common Kitchen tent is one of the chief incentives for volunteering at the fair.
The frenzy of tonight’s kitchen activity is nothing, MacLennan admits, in comparison to what will come on Saturday, the busiest day of the fair.
“Saturday is kind of a blur,” she says.
MacLennan’s equipped for the challenge, having worked in pressure-cooker kitchen environments in New York City in the 1970s, including the famed macrobiotic/vegetarian restaurant Angelica’s Kitchen and a catering company that serviced Bloomingdale’s. Now, she works as a crisis-management social worker for the state of Maine and only volunteers her cooking skills at the fair. But other volunteers say MacLennan’s crisis-management skills come in handy.
“Barbara is bad-ass,” says Madeline Cantwell, another kitchen coordinator who will serve up hundreds of meals the next day. “She’s the only one that can do Saturday.”
MacLennan has two aces up her sleeve for making great food for thousands. The first is ample ingredients. Just outside the kitchen, a volunteer categorizes the cornucopia of donated organic fruits and vegetables onto makeshift shelves: boxes of tomatoes, buckets of apples, bags of onions, and rows of squashes. Inside the kitchen, there also is a walk-in freezer and pantry filled with ingredients.
Most of the bounty is the result of fair coordinator Bill Whitman’s collection efforts. Each year for the past 20 years, Whitman has driven over a thousand miles throughout Maine collecting donated organic food. In a typical day, Whitman collects 250 dozen eggs, 200 loaves of bread, and crates of mustard, beef, and apples before heading off for a few hours sleep. As organic farming has expanded in Maine, Whitman says, it’s been easier to find a wide array of food for the fair. “The worst gardener in the world always has extra stuff,” he says.
Barbara MacLennan’s second ace in the hole is her motivated crowd of volunteers. Some have cooked before, some haven’t—all are willing to help how they can. A teenage volunteer slowly saws through stacks of bread while shyly stealing glances at a quicker volunteer’s cutting technique. Such scenes are typical in the kitchen, MacLennan says.
“We use the buddy system,” she says. “We’re always in educational mode.”
But many working here tonight are Common Kitchen veterans whom MacLennan can trust to make good food, like Rebekah Parks, a volunteer from Massachusetts who is directing others in the art of rolling peaches in phylo dough.
“Barbara gave me some frozen peaches and told me to do something with them,” Parks says, laughing.
The atmosphere in the kitchen is festive and volunteers laugh a lot while they work. The line outside has grown longer, but it’s far from belligerent. For a while, some of the waiting volunteers sing “We Shall Overcome,” perhaps in reference to their fainting hunger. Then, without warning, the entire crowd breaks into the Wave.
When volunteers begin to scurry out of the kitchen with dishes full of food, there is a palatable sigh of happiness from the crowd. Dinner is served and the crowd devours everything at the serving tables like a genial swarm of locusts.
Common Ground Stuffed Peppers
Serves 50
25 peppers
16 cups brown rice
24 cups water
2 Tbs. salt
1/4 to 1/2 cup of olive oil
2 lbs. onions, minced
2 cups sunflower seeds, pan-roasted
1 cup nutritional yeast (also called brewer’s yeast)
2 Tbs. garlic powder
1 Tbs. black pepper
1/2 Tbs. fresh minced savory or sage
1 Tbs. ginger powder
Wash and split the peppers and scoop out the seeds. Blanch peppers in salted boiling water for two minutes, then set peppers on baking sheets with hollow side up. Combine rice, water, and salt in large pot and set to boil, uncovered. When boiling, reduce heat to very low and simmer for 50 minutes or until done. When rice is done, turn out into large bowl. Drizzle 1/4 to 1/2 cup olive oil to separate the rice. Combine remaining ingredients into rice bowl and mix. Stuff pepper halves with rice mixture until they are heaping, but still manageable to serve. Garnish top with additional chopped peppers. Bake at 350° for about 30 minutes.
MacLennan calmly stands in the midst of the whirlwind as kitchen volunteers race up to her with a bewildering array of questions: “How do you know when lamb is done?” “Should I use pastry flour or bread flour for the crisp recipe?” “Four gallons or five for the Beyond Coffee mix?”
Already, there are some 50 hungry volunteers lined up near the Common Kitchen tent for a dinner scheduled in half an hour. If MacLennan’s worried about the impending deadline, she doesn’t let on. She appears to be the rare cook that thrives working on a grand scale.
“I love working in bulk,” MacLennan admits during a lull in questions. “I love getting my hands into four-gallon drums of beans!”
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She’s in the right place. MacLennan is one of a handful of kitchen coordinators charged with feeding over 1,000 volunteers during the annual three-day organic food festival. These chefs must transform heaps of donated local produce into tasty meals that can satisfy the fair’s diverse crowd of omnivores, vegetarians, vegans, and the food-allergy sensitive. The crowd comes to the fair each year specifically to enjoy the non-mainstream food offered; this is probably one of the only fairs in Maine where it’s easier to find Indian food and whole-wheat funnel cakes than hot dogs and cotton candy. Still, MacLennan’s team must make the food tasty enough to keep people coming back for more, since a meal at the Common Kitchen tent is one of the chief incentives for volunteering at the fair.
The frenzy of tonight’s kitchen activity is nothing, MacLennan admits, in comparison to what will come on Saturday, the busiest day of the fair.
“Saturday is kind of a blur,” she says.
MacLennan’s equipped for the challenge, having worked in pressure-cooker kitchen environments in New York City in the 1970s, including the famed macrobiotic/vegetarian restaurant Angelica’s Kitchen and a catering company that serviced Bloomingdale’s. Now, she works as a crisis-management social worker for the state of Maine and only volunteers her cooking skills at the fair. But other volunteers say MacLennan’s crisis-management skills come in handy.
“Barbara is bad-ass,” says Madeline Cantwell, another kitchen coordinator who will serve up hundreds of meals the next day. “She’s the only one that can do Saturday.”
MacLennan has two aces up her sleeve for making great food for thousands. The first is ample ingredients. Just outside the kitchen, a volunteer categorizes the cornucopia of donated organic fruits and vegetables onto makeshift shelves: boxes of tomatoes, buckets of apples, bags of onions, and rows of squashes. Inside the kitchen, there also is a walk-in freezer and pantry filled with ingredients.
Most of the bounty is the result of fair coordinator Bill Whitman’s collection efforts. Each year for the past 20 years, Whitman has driven over a thousand miles throughout Maine collecting donated organic food. In a typical day, Whitman collects 250 dozen eggs, 200 loaves of bread, and crates of mustard, beef, and apples before heading off for a few hours sleep. As organic farming has expanded in Maine, Whitman says, it’s been easier to find a wide array of food for the fair. “The worst gardener in the world always has extra stuff,” he says.
Barbara MacLennan’s second ace in the hole is her motivated crowd of volunteers. Some have cooked before, some haven’t—all are willing to help how they can. A teenage volunteer slowly saws through stacks of bread while shyly stealing glances at a quicker volunteer’s cutting technique. Such scenes are typical in the kitchen, MacLennan says.
“We use the buddy system,” she says. “We’re always in educational mode.”
But many working here tonight are Common Kitchen veterans whom MacLennan can trust to make good food, like Rebekah Parks, a volunteer from Massachusetts who is directing others in the art of rolling peaches in phylo dough.
“Barbara gave me some frozen peaches and told me to do something with them,” Parks says, laughing.
The atmosphere in the kitchen is festive and volunteers laugh a lot while they work. The line outside has grown longer, but it’s far from belligerent. For a while, some of the waiting volunteers sing “We Shall Overcome,” perhaps in reference to their fainting hunger. Then, without warning, the entire crowd breaks into the Wave.
When volunteers begin to scurry out of the kitchen with dishes full of food, there is a palatable sigh of happiness from the crowd. Dinner is served and the crowd devours everything at the serving tables like a genial swarm of locusts.
Common Ground Stuffed Peppers
Serves 50
25 peppers
16 cups brown rice
24 cups water
2 Tbs. salt
1/4 to 1/2 cup of olive oil
2 lbs. onions, minced
2 cups sunflower seeds, pan-roasted
1 cup nutritional yeast (also called brewer’s yeast)
2 Tbs. garlic powder
1 Tbs. black pepper
1/2 Tbs. fresh minced savory or sage
1 Tbs. ginger powder
Wash and split the peppers and scoop out the seeds. Blanch peppers in salted boiling water for two minutes, then set peppers on baking sheets with hollow side up. Combine rice, water, and salt in large pot and set to boil, uncovered. When boiling, reduce heat to very low and simmer for 50 minutes or until done. When rice is done, turn out into large bowl. Drizzle 1/4 to 1/2 cup olive oil to separate the rice. Combine remaining ingredients into rice bowl and mix. Stuff pepper halves with rice mixture until they are heaping, but still manageable to serve. Garnish top with additional chopped peppers. Bake at 350° for about 30 minutes.
