Ascension Kitchen at Sedona Stargate
It is no secret to the readers of this blog that I enjoy cooking a lot. Though enjoy is not exactly the right word ~ cooking is less hobby or interest and more soul expression and spiritual practice to me.
So when I was asked whether I could image taking over the catering for the Openhand retreat near Sedona, there was no long weighing up of choices. Or even a short one.
The answer was an immediate YES.
And so I set out, two weeks ago, to travel to the US for the first time, to take over the cooking for 12 people for roughly six days.
I'd never cooked for such a big group or such a long period of time before. It was an adventure!
A Kitchen Adventure with Joy, you might say. And you would be right.
Here's some of the adventures had, the magic that happened, and the food that was created.
The retreat started Monday, September 14th, with dinner. I'd been busy since about midday in the kitchen ~ the morning was spent on the last grocery run. And by the time the group started arriving around 4pm, I was pretty well on track to serve the first dinner + dessert:
Chickpea pasta with a potato-based cheeze sauce - aka not-mac-n-cheese à la Joy - with a side salad for dinner, and a blueberry & cashew cream for dessert.
It was well received, so I felt confident and off to a good start.
Day 2 started throwing me challenges ~ the timing for lunch didn't work out, I was finished way early and the group came late from their session. So lunch was cold ~ but since everybody thought it was meant to be a salad, anyway, it all worked out.
Vegan chaufa arroz that ended up a rice-quinoa-lentil-and-veggies salad. Tasty, though!
Dinner then presented me with an equipment challenge: The big pot was not nearly big enough to fit all the ingredients for the soup in! No idea how I was meant to add one more litre of broth AND a litre of soy milk into that pot!
But for all that, dinner was well received, and I rather enjoyed the soup as it was. Dessert's shortbread crunch was a bit too crunchy, I felt. But it came with chocolate, so:
Misostrone ~ a mix of minestrone and miso soup that shouldn't work but does ~ and shortbread crunch with mixed-berry-almost-sorbet and pomegranate seeds from a tree in the garden.
Day 3 was a day of experimentation, because neither lunch nor dinner came with recipes. I'd had an idea, a plan, and went for it.
Lunch went extremely well ~ so well I don't even have a picture, because people ran away with the plates before I had the time take one. (Guess everyone was pretty hungry?) So here's a screenshot from the camera pointed at me while plating:
I am very focused on the task of distributing this Green Thai Chickpea Curry fairly!
Hilariously enough, this one was the meal where most people asked for the recipe. There isn't one! I made it up almost entirely; yes, okay, there once was a recipe that was kind of the foundation, but I changed just about everything except the green Thai curry paste, so - no recipe.
... hmm, I might have to write one ...
Dinner was an epic challenge, which I had expected, because the idea was pancakes. But then it became an even bigger challenge when none of the pans available in the kitchen wanted to make cakes! Not a single non-stick pan in the house! So I had to change direction ~ and found out that yes, one can make pancakes in the oven:
(Green-ish) Oven-baked pancake with wilted-spinach-topping and another side salad.
The no-bake vegan brownie went the same way as lunch: gone too fast before I could take a picture. I was extremely good, though, and I will have to make it again. Hopefully next time with photographic evidence!
The next day, Thursday, the group went out for the day. I'd baked a gluten-free bread from buckwheat flour for them to make sandwiches. Added rosemary this time to the dough, and that elevated the bread to incredibly yummy. Another thing I will have to make again ...
So, while everyone was away, I had the place and the kitchen to myself. Time and space for some therapeutic stabbing aka making dessert.
You see, I'd been asking people to not just randomly grab things from the fridge or the kitchen except the breakfast counter, because likelyhood was: I need them. So when one participant grabbed a bunch of strawberries I needed for dessert to pack for the day, I was ~ quite honestly ~ furious.
Hello, buttons that I hadn't even been aware of existed! Thanks for making yourself known! (Thanks to the participant for pushing them, too!) Because there was quite a bit of "What do I have to do for people to take me seriously?" going on emotionally and that? Hadn't shown up before. So: evolution!
And also therapeutic stabbing.
So here is dinner + dessert:
A sweet potato soup with extra red lentils and peanut butter ~ and rainbow fruit kebab for after. Yes, these six have strawberries ~ but there were 24 kebabs to make with only 17 strawberries.
Well, I had a lot of blueberries left, so I adjusted.
(The inner prefectionist was not happy about that, though! 😆)
Next day, Friday, was a full day in the studio again for the group, and here's what they got to replenish themselves after the hard work they'd done:
Lunch was make-a-bowl: The group got each a bowl of rice with quinoa, and then there were a whole lot of toppings and sauces to create their own bowl. Pictured here is mine, with some delicious and unexpectedly spicy peanut sauce.
Dinner was a creamy corn chowder with a no-bake gluten-free banoffee pie à la Revice Cafe (I got the recipe from cookbook #4). It didn't turn out quite as pretty as the one in the cookbook ~ I'd left it in the freezer too long, so it froze entirely and became somewhat soggy when thawed.
Not that anyone complained! 😆
Saturday closed with one last breakfast ~ baked coconut-chocolate oats, no photographic evidence like with all other breakfasts, and then the closing lunch was had at a café. Where I didn't have to cook.
(Though that pasta sauce was a disappointment, I could have done better.)
And with that, we were on the way back to Phoenix and the airport, and my very first adventure as retreat chef came to an end. I was ready for some rest, too!
Though, to my own, surprise, not for long ~ after two days of not running around in a kitchen, I was ... kind of really wanting to run around a nice big kitchen again to cook for people.
So all in all, with all challenges, adventures, frustrations, and explorations ~ it was a fantastic experience that I enjoyed and yes, want to do again.
If you are looking for a retreat chef who does plant-based, gluten-free and sugar-free? Get in touch! 😃
(Yes, that is absolutely meant seriously.)
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