Colorado Progressive

Chef Sally Ayotte in Antarctica

Last Friday’s Denver Post featured a quick piece on cooking-from-scratch training and tips for food directors in Colorado’s public school districts. How to turn out fresh meals for thousands? The weeklong summer bootcamps sponsored by LiveWell Colorado address the issue head on.

One thing the Post article does not mention is that bootcamp chef Sally Ayotte cut her chops, among other places, at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station. There, she oversaw the kitchen and served as many as 1,200+ hungry staffers, scientists, and visiting dignitaries up to four meals a day during the research station’s peak season.

I asked Sally about Antarctica and the bootcamps.

[Antarctica] has well equipped me to talk with food
service directors about quantity food production of good-tasting and
high-quality food under challenging circumstances!  I share with them
ways to produce large volumes of sauces and casseroles made from
scratch.  I wonder if you knew the McMurdo kitchen produces almost
everything from scratch.

As a matter of fact, I did not know that most of what we ate on the Ice (as it’s affectionately called) was from scratch. Having weathered both the elements and the fare at McMurdo in 2004 and 2005, I can attest that Ayotte is in a pretty good space to whip up fresh solutions for Colorado schools. And at least here she has the benefit of grocery stores, farmers markets, and regular Sysco deliveries to keep school chefs armed with fresh ingredients–and fresh ideas–to feed Colorado’s kids.