Adhisthana, August 2025 |
I arrived on the first hot day of a hot week, put up the tent, and was allocated a hot room sharing with another volunteer who had been here for a while. The window blind had broken and fallen off, but she had rigged up a semi-opaque substitute until it was fixed. Jumping ahead to that first night, there was snoring inside the room and also coming through the wall from next door - I had earplugs so not too much of a problem - but it was still hot, and not very dark. After that I slept in the tent, where it was quiet, dark and cool.
Given my history of regular volunteering and particularly my experience of cooking for people with restricted diets, this year I accepted the sole responsibility for the special diets kitchen during the busiest period of about 10 days. This event is so big that the special diets can't be accommodated alongside the regular cooking, especially with the risk of cross-contamination for the people with proper allergies (the principal one being coeliac disease), so preparing the restricted diet food gets a kitchen all to itself, and I would be in charge of it, with the support of the kitchen manager.
So on my first working day I found that I'd be working with her on the admin for the rest of the week. "Surely we don't need a whole week of admin," I thought. But we did. She'd already come up with the menu for the six meals she was going to cook in the main kitchen, and then identified all the people who wouldn't be able to eat them, and started listing where each of those people should go for each meal. I finished compiling the list and created a matrix so we could see how many non-standard meals were needed each day.
It would be impossible to create one meal that would meet all the different dietary requirements, so the idea was to produce a buffet with each item clearly labelled so people could pick out what would suit them. The whole site would be 100% gluten- and wheat-free, and in my kitchen the main intolerances would be excluded - no beans, alliums or chilli. The main kitchen would be soya-free, so we could offer tofu as well as nuts and seeds for protein. Unfortunately, someone indicated that they couldn't eat salt, and along with intolerances to so many flavourings and spices this food was going to be very bland. I planned to rely on herbs, and also encourage people who could tolerate it to add spice and seasoning.
I spent a long, long time coming up with suggestions, and the kitchen manager very sweetly tempered my ambition with realism until we'd reached something that was going to work. It would be the same menu for every meal except for different choices of roast vegetables and steamed vegetables, different carbohydrates and different tofu flavourings (one being utterly plain). Then I carried out a check on all the food supplies in the various store cupboards and pantries to make sure we hadn't run short of anything without noticing, which also gave me the confidence to locate everything I'd need. I started checking out the kitchen I'd be using, and listing all the equipment I'd need. We talked about practical matters: who would do the washing up, how would we make sure utensils were returned to where they were needed, did we have enough large pots, could we get a second shelf for the oven?
Meanwhile, all the other volunteers were cleaning the place up - weeding, dusting, polishing, cleaning stained mugs, cleaning windows, getting the barn ready for mass catering, deep cleaning the main kitchen, and more. The resident team were collating all the bookings, counting how many extra bedframes, mattresses, pillows, pillow cases, sheets duvets and duvet covers would be needed, working out where people would sleep. The contractors who were going to put up the marquee arrived at the crack of dawn (7.30am) and started driving in the large pegs with some sort of mechanical hammer and had to be asked to stop until the morning meditation had finished at 8.30am.
All the volunteers and the resident Operations team were meeting daily after morning tea break to check that everything was on track. The kitchen manager kindly bought snacks not usually available at the retreat centre - biscuits, nuts, crisps - and I stepped in and chopped up carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes so I wouldn't feel too left out.
It was noted that last year nothing was organised for volunteers in the evenings, so there was a program of events, including a film night, talks, ritual, a tour of the library, attending the local group, and a communal fire. I was either too tired to attend, or had something else to do. One evening I had to go back home to lead my local group because everyone else was even further away than I was; another evening I actually went to play badminton at a local club (which I'm planning to do again).
In the last few days of lead-up to the event there was a massive chopping exercise to get vegetables prepared for six meals for more than 300 people. The carrots alone weighed more than I do. Then I gathered two reliable people and we started setting up the Restricted Diet kitchen in earnest. We calculated portion sizes and with limited storage we worked out some priorities, then they started chopping and I foraged for all the equipment we needed - serving dishes, oven trays, blue plasters, tongs, a colander, plates and cutlery, serving spoons. And then I collected my friend T from the station, because she was coming to work with me for nearly a week, and it was Thursday evening, and time to get started on the first meal!