Grub Master 201
Written on September 2nd , 2024 by Mr. Ryan
Now that you have read the Grub Master 101 post, it’s time to get practical and do the work!
Planning
The first thing you will need to do is to work with your patrol to develop a meal plan using the Patrol Menu Planning Worksheet or the simplified Weekend Camping Meal Planner. This meal plan must take into account allergies, food preferences, and the various likes/dislikes of the members of your patrol.
Once you have your menu planned you need to determine what cooking items/tools you need. You will be responsible for collecting those items to take to the campout, so keep a good list! Remember, items may be in the Troop closet, trailer, or in your patrol’s wampum box so check before you buy new items!
Recipes and Ingredient Lists
Let’s say that your patrol decided on vegetarian lasagna for dinner. Yum! Now you need to find a recipe. The Troop has a cook book with some recipes that you can adapt or you can research online. Once you pick a recipe that meets all the requirements you need to determine how much of it to actually make. Most recipes will tell you how many servings they make. This is a good guideline but a patrol of hungry scouts may eat up to 1.5 servings each depending on what side dishes, snacks, etc. that you have planned.
I’ve found planning on 1.5 servings per scout to be a good general guideline for any entree. We now need to use some math to figure out how many multiples of the recipe we need to make. For a recipe that makes y servings and you want to feed x scouts we’d use:
\[\frac{1 recipe}{y\ servings} * \frac{1.5 servings}{1 scout} * \frac{x\ scouts}{1 patrol} = \frac{1.5*x}{y} recipes\]Once you know the number of recipes you need to make, simply scale all the ingredients by that number to get the proper amount of each to purchase.
Shopping
One or two days before the campout you’ll need to go grocery shopping. In general you will want to shop at a low cost store or choose store-brand items where possible. You are limited in how much you can spend per scout (typically $20 for an entire weekend of meals) and you need to be careful not to exceed that amount. To make things easier you can frequently “go shopping” in the Troop’s pantry to find items like crackers, marshmallows, chocolate bars, and graham crackers. If possible buy items that are on-sale and try to only buy what you actually need. If you find you have spent too much consider trades that you can make. For example instead of buying BabyBell individual cheeses maybe you can get away with store brand shredded mozarella. Make sure to save about $3 for a big bag of ice for the cooler.
At the checkout line make sure to get a reciept so that you can be reimbursed by the troop.
You then need to safely store all the food until the campout.
During the Campout
Bring your recipes, food (stored properly), and gather any tools that you will need prior to leaving for the camp-site.
As Grub Master you are responsible for ensuring that meals get cooked safely, on-time, and cleaned-up properly. That doesn’t mean that you have to do all those things, in fact you should be leading and delegating tasks to your patrol rather than doing the work yourself.
Make sure you know how long it takes to prepare each meal and plan on it taking even longer than you expect. Start prep work early!
After the Campout
Turn in your Reimbursement Form or Credit Card Reimbursement Form and all reciepts to the Scout Master responsible for the event. They will work with the treasurer to get you reimbursed.
