In the Navy: Cooking for 4,400 mouths

If you think preparing Thanksgiving dinner is a chore, take a moment to imagine the culinary muscle required to feed more than 4,000 hungry U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen. All at once. Every night!

Tougher still, the galley crew's goal is to serve the time-strapped future naval officers within five minutes, so they can get to extracurricular events and study hall after less than half an hour at the tables.

"I've never seen people eat faster than here," said Midshipman Andrew Poulin, a senior from Boxborough, Mass., who also expresses awe at the scope of the food services. "It's just unbelievable how they do it."

The group meals are considered part of the school's efforts to foster a culture of unity. Last year, Vice Adm. Jeffrey Fowler, the superintendent, raised the number of meals at which attendance is mandatory.

It takes a powerful kitchen to handle that kind of cooking, plus a brigade of 80 fast-moving cooks and 100 servers to roll out the chow. One meal takes 12 cooks and eight food service workers to load carts and help clean up. And how's this for a grocery bill? The government spends $43,000 every day on all this food for the Naval Academy.

Need a ton of French fries? The academy's pair of 30-foot deep fryers can blast those out in an hour.

"We can do 560 turkeys at a time," said Dan Eytchison, the general foreman who runs the galley.

On a recent evening, cooks prepared 500 gallons of chili for dinner. The meal required 1,600 pounds of ground beef, 35 cases of kidney beans and 17 cases of canned chopped tomatoes. It was all wheeled up to 120-gallon steam kettles, and a three-person team cracked open the large cans and dumped in the ingredients. It takes a stir paddle the size of an oar to mix it.

The galley is dormant for about six hours a day — between 9:30 p.m. and 3:45 a.m. The rest of the time, it's in high gear, cooking for about 4,400 midshipmen.

While galleys on aircraft carriers also feed thousands of hungry men and women, the academy galley is different because the meals happen all at once.

"The unique challenges at feeding everybody at one time is just keeping it hot and fresh," Eytchison said.

Midshipmen eat about 4,000 pounds of meat and 2,000 pounds of vegetables a day. The academy goes through 1,200 pounds of bananas a day, as well as about 200 pounds each of apples and oranges. The galley also has a bakery, and Starbucks coffee is offered at breakfast and dinner, although only about a quarter of the midshipmen drink coffee.

As dinner looms, the midshipmen file in from four directions inside the vast T-shaped King Hall, which was first built in 1909 to feed 1,800 students. A $21 million renovation this year, the first in 53 years, added skylights to the 65,000-square-foot hall. Flat-screen televisions were added so people in the far ends can see people making announcements.

There are 388 tables, with 12 seats each, and members from all four classes are mixed together at a table to talk about their day and bond. They switch every semester.

"It is a more family-like atmosphere, and it's just something that you can share, kind of practice your leadership — another avenue to do that, so I think it's definitely helpful," Poulin said.

The chatter is boisterous as midshipmen enter at 6:30 p.m., but they quiet down as they gather at tables to hear a dinner bell ring, sitting in unison at the command: "Seats!"

When it's all over, the dirty dishes require the quick work of cleaning crews and 25-foot dishwashing machines.

Food at the academy can be a touchy issue. School officials and members of Congress got an earful last year when the additional mandatory meals and the renovation work caused brief food shortages.

On the whole, though, midshipmen now give the grub a big thumb's up. They even have input through a Menu Review Board, which includes 30 midshipmen twice a semester. The midshipmen recently pushed successfully to add pork chops with bones to the menu.

"It's more to get some new items on the menu," said Midshipman Janyse Jones, a senior from Pascagoula, Miss., a board member.

There are some exceptions to the mass, sit-down feed. For instance, seniors have the hall to themselves for a special dinner the day they learn their post-graduation assignments in the Navy. And on the night most of the midshipmen had chili, the football team ate steaks, a gift from the Naval Academy Athletic Association.

By 7 p.m. each night, the huge dinning hall is nearly empty, except for the cleaning crews who clear the tables and haul away about 120 bags of garbage.

"I'm still kind of in awe," Poulin said after dinner. "But I think, if I had the choice, I'd still go back to Mom's cooking."

Photos: Getty Images

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Comments

[Adam]

Okay, not what I thought but the article was actually fascinating.

[Roger]

Let's remember the Navy's dirty little secret. I mean all Navy's, Canada's, US and all the allies (and probably the 'enemies' too). If you were found out to be a cocksucker the usual course of action of the other sailors was to throw you overboard to drown at sea, even if some of those sailors received your cocksucking. It was not very safe to be a cock sucking sailor back in the day. Also the derogatory term "gearbox" can be directly related to the armed forces, it being an insinuation that a gay sailor (soldier) was nothing more than a gear box (for sex). Of course this is all in the past (we hope) but I think worth a mention in light of this article.

[splashpont]

Oh, brother! That was a misleading gay.com link. (Though, the article was interesting.)

[Mike]

C'mon gay.com, you don't need to use such tacky titles to get us to read your articles. Show some class.

[Tom]

Oh come on, that was funny. I didn't catch the correct spelling of seamen until after I clicked through. Very clever.

[SN Andrews]

Ok with a title like that, maybe the writer should have done a story poeple who sign up for the adopt a sailor for the holiday program. Here it is thanksgiving, and i am sitting in my barracks alone because not enough people participated in the adopt a sailor program. Just and ideal for next year.

[gay.nasty.com]

Obviously the gay.com authors picked this topic solely for the nasty play on words and not a sincere interest in the Navy or Thanksgiving. I guess if it isn't about sex or Liberal rants, gay.com doesn't care...

[Opinionator]

I just thought it was smart the way gay.com lure the uber-sexual gays to read some thing beside celebrities. **Chuckles while claps**. Now, if only you provide us with more info about the Army, the Air force, the Marines (especially!), and the history leading up to "don't ask, don't tell". And please, try to make it more international since your chat rooms reflect as such. A well-informed gay gentry is a good one, even when it's just looking to get laid.

[Adam]

Oh please, like you guys would have stopped to read this if they didn't put a title on it like they did. You would have simply gone right past it on your way to the chat rooms. Get real.

By the way, did you read the articles on Don't ask, don't tell on here? I'm guessing not. How about the articles on HIV activists? Guessing you missed that too. You loud mouth queens are never pleased are you?

I for one would like to thank this site for putting up interesting articles. Granted there is some cheesy shit on here from time to time, but lately I've noticed a shift in the stories. Not as fluffy or insipid as it once was. What changed? Keep it up despite what these idiots have to say.

[xander2011]

SN Andrews... how do you adopt a sailor?

[Gary]

ya this seemed to be a sensationalized fluffy article about gay navy and thanksgiving. Felt more like it was written by Paris Hilton

[Dave]

mmmmm. lol. i'm in the navy, i found this article fun to read. Lame cause its what i see everyday, and to the 1st comment left on this, no they won't throw you overboard when the find out your gay, they get annoying and ask if it hurts when it gets put it in. welcome to 2008 almost there 2009. :)

[Roger]

Thanks Dave! That's good to know!

[southpark070]

well i am also in the navy and its true they don't throw u over board but it's not some thing many of us that are gay go and tell our shipmates

[Roger]

I would just like to mention that the "oral" history I posted about above dates to World War II. I wasn't referring to recent.

[evilsdesign]

really such mental testing is not required, such ways of deception are unworthy of the standing, if you continue to mislead those persons of interest, you will lose your membership.

[Neal]

This is just too funny. The title of the article was right on.

You prissy little queens need mature a little bit. Everything on this site doesn't have to be about sex. There are more important things in life.

Like the SN stated, there are a lot of members of our Military that will spend the Holidays alone. Find out a way to help someone else out and stop being so damn self absorbed.