by TresHappy 50 Replies latest jw friends
Nowadays most of the food is purchased. Cheaper to buy than grow the food. The organic concept was a myth, an urban legend.
I can remember working in the vegetables and wearing special gloves to protect my hands from the fertilizer and pesticides.
Blondie
I ate at Bethel many times and thought the food was top notch. Really good.
Dave did temporary work for two weeks, three times, and he always raved about how good the food was. They even had steak, as many as you wanted...............he said they were New York steaks. (between '89-'94)
My favorite was the hamburgers. They even made their own buns. Pizza night was really good too. Home made pizza! Yummy.
One of our closest friends was a cook at WT Farms and he used a lot of his own recipes there.
When I was at Bethel, they were going through the big transition from "farmed" food to foodstuffs bought from various suppliers, most notably Sysco. The freedom given to cooks and bakers to spruce up their recipes were being severely cut back as well, so all in all the quality of the food suffered. For example, all recipes were standardized throughout all 3 North American complexes, so even though you could have a very experienced baker who knew the tricks of the trade and had recipes that he could make that were practical and cheap, he was still at the mercy of the culinary-school-trained idiot upstairs who's job it was to concoct and test the recipes based on cost/benefit analyses. At one point, they even removed the cayenne pepper from the kitchen warehouse because they were afraid the cooks were getting to creative and altering the recipes too much.
Basically, there is/was a general push to standardize food and recipes and procedures, saving money, but at the same time making things taste more bland.
With that in mind, the food was not bad. What sucks was the fact that the variety was really lacking. And hope to god no one tries to do anything too "ethnic," because these yankee newboys can't make a burrito worth shit.
One thing I thought was done well, though, was the cheese. All the different kinds of cheeses made a the farm were fantastic. But of course, they have eliminated that department as well. About steaks; they only have 'em twice a year now - Gilead graduation. They are not that great - kinda dry, I thought, because they have to cook so many of them they do it in rotating convection ovens about 8 feet tall. One time they experimented with eggs out of the carton instead of using eggs actually broke by kitchen staff - tasted like crap of course. All of these things were actually quite demoralizing. No matter how submissive and humble the long-time Bethelites tried to be, they voiced their dissatisfaction vehemently when it came to bad food. So between that and the fact that the suits are trying to pinch pennies everwhere, no one is satisfied, and you're left with bland, cheap, uncreative dishes.
shovel it in and run, is right. Now if you have visions of people lounging around discussing Jehoober while enjoying a casual meal with conversation
FORGET it!!!
Here's how it goes:
Food is brought out
Prayer is said (drones on far too long)
Several people get black eyes as soon as the prayer is over because they got in the way of a grabbing Bethelite.
They have about 15 minutes maybe 20 to eat lunch.
As I recall, they had one hour for lunch but had to run and change and then run back.
The details are foggy except for the fact that if you were visiting Bethel, even if you were a young sexy THANG like me LOL you took a second seat to the food. Who cares if it was bad. They work folks like slaves picking cotton.....those young men need to eat! to keep up.
Nothing relaxed about it. Everything is very rushed. Think of a tornado.
Lisa
My memories are from 73-75 in Brooklyn and until 76 at WT Farm.
I thought the food was good. Not like a fancy restaurant but kind of like eating at a good buffet.
Some memories: when we had fish it usually was on Friday. Perhaps that had something to do with purchasing? Was the secular food market geared to offer cheaper prices for fish for Friday consumption? Don't know...but we used to wonder about that.
When we had baked fish we called it "faked bish."
When we had hamburger gravy at breakfast we called it "gravy train." (I actually liked it!)
We would call "shirred eggs" (baked in a dish) "vulcanized eggs." (I did NOT like those!)
The lowest turn out for the noon dinner meal was for liver and onions. The best dinners were held for Gilead graduation and usually included standing rib roast. It felt very much like Thanksgiving or Christmas. We usually got some extra time off for the noon meal.
It was at Bethel that I learned to eat grits. Not too bad if you put some butter in them (or jelly!)
On Sunday mornings they had cheese out for you to make sandwiches. There were often prunes, too. Kind of like poison and antidote. Cheese to clog you up and prunes to get you going again.
I did not like that there was no dinner on Sundays, however. Guess the guys in the kitchen did need the day off. I just got tired of those sandwiches!
Cabasilas
One thing I thought was done well, though, was the cheese. All the different kinds of cheeses made a the farm were fantastic. But of course, they have eliminated that department as well.
If they weren't such a bunch of bean-counting, cost-cutting, lawyer dominated pansies, they could really get some serious stuff happening on that farm of theirs. If they started making a line of farmhouse cheeses and wines (or something more conducive to upstate New York, like mead), like many religious order in Europe do, they could have a nice little money spinning operation going. They'd probably have to get over their aversion to taxes and decent pay for the workers, but over time the money haemorhaging problem could be reversed, and if they offered proper training and apprenticeships, sending their workers to trade school, recruitment wouldn't be a problem. They'd lose the "leave Bethel and you've got nothing" stick that they wield as "motivation", but they'd gain a decent trades base across the org.
Imagine the Dubs leaving a legacy to society, like shaker furniture, or benedictine liqueur, or Dom Perignon champaign rather than the only emotion expressed at the 'Tower's demise being a collective sigh of relief.
I was head waiter at bethel for a couple of years, and the overseer at the time used to pride himself on how much he reduced the average cost per meal by. It ended up at 90cents per meal (69cents US). Needless to say they were tastless and boring, with the curried sausage stew being quite unpopular. Occasionally there was a good meal, people used to love the spaghetti and salad days. Breakfast was good, better than I normally get time to cook for myself.
I have heard that of more recent years the new overseer improved the quality. They hired a food technologist as a lot of people left Bethel with sicknesses such as chronic fatigue and they thought it may have been the food.
wines (or something more conducive to upstate New York, like mead),
lol.....NY is actually the 3rd biggest producer of grapes/wine among the US states.
I never ate at NY Bethel but a friends husband was cook at Canadian Bethel in the early 70's. The night we ate there an assistant cooked. It was a weekend, I believe, and very casual. I cooked for them in their room the next day!
On Sunday mornings they had cheese out for you to make sandwiches. There were often prunes, too. Kind of like poison and antidote. Cheese to clog you up and prunes to get you going again.
*SO* old-fogey-ish!
When is the last time you heard young men clamoring for prunes?!?!?
