The Evolution of Greystone Food
When anyone mentions Greystone food, the greater camp community perks up and immediately thinks of mouth-watering bread pudding, three-inch thick French toast, and chocolate (or lemon) stacks. We all remember it as some of the best food ever! And while the meals are memorable, these delicious eats are the product of the people who built the community and the culture of the Greystone Kitchen: Plato, Faye, Starr, and Gervais. Each of these Kitchen Directors ran Greystone’s food operations for many years (some for decades) with the help of their trusty kitchen crews, including camp legends like Betsey Burdett, Lell Harboe, Alli Hundley Kilby, and many, many more. For generations, these Greystone cooks have been keeping Greystone campers and staff happy and full.
Kitchen History
From the beginning, Greystone has always served the very best food. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, Greystone’s Sparks magazine often mentioned the Kitchen’s top of the line equipment and how the facility would earn the NC State Board of Health Certificate of Approval each year. Girls have loved Greystone food from the earliest days, as the Sparks so comically explains: “the Greystone camper gain[ed] from ten to an unmentionable number of pounds” each summer.
The Kitchen Program
The Kitchen we know today really developed when Starr Teel took the helm in the early 1990s. Known for his mouthwatering Shepherd’s Pie (and his sometimes unripe plums offered for dessert), Starr was pivotal in creating the Kitchen Staff Program. For the first time in Greystone’s history, he hired teenagers and young adults to wash dishes, cook meals, and experience camp life during the summer. Hiring these young staffers was based on Starr’s desire to offer teens a great camp experience while they also learned life skills and developed their work ethic.
When Gervais Hollowell took over as Kitchen Director in 1997, he took Starr’s staffing vision and continued to grow it year after year. Gervais now teaches teens how to prepare delicious, healthy food, while also helping his staff develop both a personal work ethic and a teamwork mentality. Still leading the Kitchen today, Gervais nurtures the program and focuses his efforts on hiring young teens (which then gives these workers a long tenure in the Kitchen before getting a “real world job”). Gervais’ staff has grown from 26 in 1997 to 42 today.
Going Local
Over the past decade, the Kitchen has transformed its food options, focusing on health and sustainability. While hard sauce and biscuits were beloved food staples for alumnae, the Kitchen now serves many well-balanced, healthy, and homemade options. Under Gervais’ leadership, the Kitchen focuses on its social responsibility, sourcing ingredients and services locally whenever possible. With the large scale of the camp community, this can sometimes be difficult! But with hard work and lots of research over the years, Greystone has found local sources to provide many of its food needs, including purchasing meat from a local butcher, finding produce in Asheville, sourcing tomatoes and corn from a local farm in Hendersonville, and even supporting the local Chick-fil-A and Krispy Kreme with treats for the campers every once in a while.
Composting
In 2014, Gervais and the Kitchen Staff decided to experiment by weighing every ounce of waste coming out of the Kitchen. The results were shocking: 95% of the waste was either recyclable or compostable. This inspired a big change in both the Kitchen and Dining Hall: it was time to start composting.
In the summer of 2015, a wood chipper (affectionately named “Bearcat”) joined the Kitchen crew. Greystone switched all paper and plastic products to 100% compostable items, purchased green trash cans, and began to educate the Kitchen Staff on how to properly sort the waste into three categories: recyclable, compostable, and trash. That summer, the Kitchen crew shredded what was compostable and mixed it with horse manure from the Barn, creating a beautiful compost heap (that successfully decomposed over a winter to became nutrient-rich soil). However that year of composting made one thing clear: it was not practical for the Kitchen Staff to continue composting in-house. In 2016, Greystone hired Atlas Organics, a Spartanburg-based company, to haul off our compostable waste three times a week. We now send over 20,000 pounds of waste to Atlas Organics to be composted each summer!
An Evolution of Food
When camp remodeled the Kitchen and Dining Hall in the early 2000s, a Salad Bar room was built to house three salad bars and the Silver Cow, a milk dispenser accessible to the campers. One of the main reasons for this addition was food allergies. Over the years, food allergies had been steadily increasing, and for many campers, these food allergies could be life threatening. Greystone began a true food evolution, changing the way and manner that food was prepared and made available.
In the 1990s, Greystone elminated peanuts in camp (no more peanuts dropping from helicopters for Evening Program!), making Greystone one of the very first camps to switch to peanut-free cooking. Then over the years, more campers started coming to camp with gluten, dairy, and egg allergies. These types of allergies posed a challenge for Gervais and the Kitchen Staff as they had to develop recipe alternatives to match what was being served to the camp community. Today, the Kitchen Staff tests Greystone favorite recipes (often many times) to make the alternative versions as tasty as possible so that no one misses out on the fun. Campers visit the door between Windows 1 and 2 (known as the “Allergy Door”) to grab these allergy-friendly foods that they need.
While vegetarians in years’ past would just have to “make do” at camp, these Dining Hall updates and food changes paved the way for Greystone to offer food variety to suit many needs. Today, the Salad Bar offers your basics (lettuce, sliced veggies, olives, pickles, croutons, ginger dressing, ranch, pumpkin seeds, and so much more) as well as a vegetarian version of whatever meal is being served to the camp community. Campers can often find vegan dishes on the salad bar, such as Quinoa salads or stuffed avocados. Camp’s picky eaters now have a great variety of options during each meal. There really is “something for everyone” coming from the Greystone Kitchen!
Greystone Food Today
Over the years, the basic principles of Greystone’s meals have stayed the same. Each meal consists of a protein, vegetable, starch, bread, and small dessert in addition to the salad or fruit bar. Today, camper’s favorite meals include the BLT sandwiches, homemade pizzas, Oreo Cream Pie, Bread Pudding, and any of our themed meals.
Other “food traditions” have been added to provide the campers with even more sustanance throughout the day. During 3rd period, Laura and Gervais drive around camp in a golf cart to deliver apples to the hungry girls. And, after Rest Hour, campers swing by the Dining Hall to grab a slice of watermelon before their afternoon classes.
It’s hard to imagine that a camper could possibly be hungry with all of this delcious food, but to ensure campers receive ample fuel each day, Jimboy installed three Ice Huts throughout camp in 2015. Each Hut serves pellet ice and provides a water spigot for filling up water bottles. Campers can also grab a string cheese, individual bag of Beanitos chips, or a granola bar (all for free!).
The Future of Greystone Food
Looking ahead, the Greystone Kitchen is especially excited about collaborating with the expanded Farm & Garden class in 2021. The campers will be planting and harvesting lettuces, bell peppers, green beans, squash, zucchini, blackberries, watermelon, and fresh herbs for the Kitchen to use on a daily basis. Greystone will finally be our own source of local fruits and vegetables!
