Meals minutes: 2017-03-06

Minutes:

Great Oak Meals Committee Meeting Minutes
3/6/2017

Present: Yi-miau, Elph, Catherine, Mary K., Wendy from Touchstone Meals
Committee

AGENDA
Meal program Inquiry- farm-to-table meals in 2017?
Combining head/assistant cooking shifts--next steps
“Mini meal skills” for kitchen redesign
Scheduling-related projects as needed
Timely menu posting
Spring/summer work season preparation
Monkeys -- embrace things as DONE

*SPECIAL NOTE: Thanks to Dale (and anyone else who helped) for ordering a
new case of tall glasses and and engraving them with Great Oak logo.

MEAL PROGRAM INQUIRY--FARM TO TABLE
Does the community have enough willing head cooks to offer another growing
season’s farm-to-table meals in 2017?
Last year we got a wholesale price on CSA food for common meals. The farmer
would coordinate with the head cook each week with $75 worth of local
produce and the head cook would provide the rest of the food necessary for
the meals. We want to find out if we have head cooks with enough interest
in doing this again. Tevah, Tammy, Sarah, Sharon and Jennifer all did it
last year, along with Rae and Brian, who won’t be around this summer. We
will need more people who can do it.
We also could look for ways to ease the burden on the head cook for these
meals. In the past people offered to help with tasks such as going to the
store for the head cook.
We can ask the people who’ve done it before, and also put out the word to
the community to recruit new people, particularly people who have been able
to cook on Wednesdays.
Meals would organize two cooking demos during summer alternative meetings
Mary will email the cooks who did Farm to Table meals last year.
DONE Catherine will email Emily, the farmer, to find out whether there are
enough households signing up for CSAs for Great Oak to run the Farm to
Table meal again.
Mary will check with Tevah to find out whether she is willing to be the
contact person again for the Farm to Table program.
DONE Catherine will email Process to ask about making Summer alternative
meetings into the cooking demos -- 2 or 3 meetings. July and August
preferably


ANNOUNCEMENT/INSTRUCTION FOR COMBINING HEAD/ASSISTANT COOKING SHIFTS
For Head Cooks who’d like to be their own assistant cook(s) for
Spring/Summer season. AKA: combining head/assistant cooking shifts. To let
people know that the option is available and how to request it so that the
meals scheduler has the info they need in time to act on it. Also, to
include the details of what we are looking for from people who choose this
option: not to have cancelled a meal in the past year, and have been
cooking in the past year. Meals will consider each request and make the
final decision. We would really like to support the head cooks who would
like to do this.
Elph will draft the email.

“MINI MEAL SKILLS”
Mini meal skills, discuss essential kitchen skills based on brief/scenarios
(https://goo.gl/PgAeT8)
Do we want to set up training situations for assistant cooks? Perhaps on
Sundays? This would be useful for preparing for head cook emergencies. We
would be developing a strategy and menus for being able to get meals put
together when a head cook can’t make their meal. We could also train
assistant cooks at this time. We need to explore whether this idea works in
terms of availability and who needs training.

After consideration, we realized that what we want to do is separate out
the emergency menu part and and the training component. We will bring this
item back for further discussion/fine tuning.

SCHEDULING RELATED PROJECTS
Placeholder for the committee and the meal scheduler to problem-solve any
scheduling-related issues/projects (hold for March/April).

TIMELY MENU POSTING
Timely menu is posted 10 days prior to the meal.
Mary--Sharon, Eric March 26, Sharon April 4
Yi-miau--March 20 Elisha, March 27 Kelly, Jennifer April 3
Elph--Willie, April 9 Hope
Catherine--Kelly, March 21 Yi Miau, Rae March 29, Pam April 2

SPRING/SUMMER work season preparation--next meeting, please come prepared
to say whether or not you will want to continue on the committee next work
season.



MONKEYS -- NEW
Mary will email the cooks who did Farm to Table meals last year. (Tevah,
Tammy, Sarah, Sharon and Jennifer)
Mary will check with Tevah to find out whether she is willing to be the
contact person again for the Farm to Table program.
Catherine will email Emily, the farmer, to find out whether there are
enough households signing up for CSAs for Great Oak to run the Farm to
Table meal again.
DONE Elph will draft the email about head cooks combining assistant cook
shifts.
Yi-miau will follow up on the drinking glasses with no logo
Mary will send out an email to the community about the white board when it
is purchased
Yi-miau will add dish counting job to workday spreadsheet


MONKEYS FROM PREVIOUS MEETINGS -- embrace things as DONE
DONE Yi-miau will talk to Debbi about buying more dishes at the outlet
mall. (Aslo salad bowls)
DONE Yi-miau will ask Dale to buy more drinking glasses
DONE Mary will ask Jim Graham to purchase a white board for signing out ch
kitchen items
DONE Elph will purchase the new table cloths for the serving tables.
DONE Catherine will ask Sarah and Kate L. to write up and share via email
what they’ve done when they can’t be present for a head cook shift.
Mary will send out an email to the community about the white board when it
is purchased
DONE Yi-miau will ask Gayle if she is still willing to take food inventory
job for the first work season, and create the protocol.
DONE Catherine will talk to Willie about the number of meals for next work
season (for entry by Feb. 20.)
DONE Yi-miau will add pre-assignments to the work survey
DONE Each of us have some cooks to support regarding posting their menus


Next Meetings 4/2, 5/1; 7pm at GO sitting room.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gocoho.org/pipermail/meals-minutes_gocoho.org/attachments/20170314/dd7731e4/attachment.html>