Photo By Sgt. Christian Palermo | Chef John Deflieze prepares a Thanksgiving meal for service members on Kandahar...... read more read more
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URUZGAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Take a deep breath, can you smell it? That sweet and delicious aroma of oven-roasted turkey, ham, potatoes, stuffing and all the fixings fill the air, stimulating olfactory senses across the camp.
Holidays away from friends and family can be difficult; for deployed service members, the holidays can be especially difficult. However, a few chefs and restaurant personalities decided to volunteer their professional skills to help prepare a special Thanksgiving meal as an expression of their gratitude to the men and women who serve America.
As part of Operation Celebrity Chef, five chefs traveled to Afghanistan from Nov. 21-25 to bring a truly unique American holiday to service members deployed with Combined Joint Special Operation Task Force-Afghanistan.
John Deflieze, Denis Foy, Jeff Hinton, Andrew Hunter and Amy Sacco, all well-respected and world-renowned chefs in the culinary industry, participated in Operation Celebrity Chef.
Their goal was to provide CJSOTF-A with a Thanksgiving holiday meal, build morale and supply food-service service members with some professional culinary experience.
For Amy Sacco, who went to Camp Ripley, this experience meant a lot.
“When I was asked by my mentor Denis Foy to be part of Operation Celebrity Chef, it was such an honor and I was enthused,” Sacco said. “This to me is the best way to spend Thanksgiving. The most important reason for me coming out is that you guys [service members] deserve some cheer over the holidays. I just wanted to do my part and show that people really appreciate the sacrifices being made.”
To show that she cares, she wants to bring that little bit of home over to Afghanistan.
“When I think about the happiest times in my life, it is when I get together with my family and friends; we eat and socialize all day, and I wanted to bring that with me here,” Sacco said. “There are a bunch of super hungry guys here, all of them missing home. Hopefully this operation brings some of that charm, holiday spirit and feeling of home.”
With the constant coming and going of personnel, it seems hard to do anything social, Sacco noted.
“There is nothing more fun to me than entertaining,” Sacco said. “I see this meal and the other meals being cooked by the other chefs across the country as a great way to have a social event and break the monotony of a deployment.”
The chefs depended on their professional experiences to help them overcome this Thanksgiving challenge. But Sacco and the other chefs did not do this alone; they utilized and relied on the experience of the kitchen staffs at the bases they worked at.
“I started working with Denis Foy when I was 16,” Sacco said. “He was in the military and ran a very military-style kitchen. You can go into any kitchen, especially professional kitchens, and see that style. Everything is very organized, there is rotation and everybody has a duty and a mission; much like a military unit. Working here was great, it seemed as if I had half the Navy at my disposal.”
Sacco’s previous experiences have taught the Camp Ripley kitchen staff some lessons as well.
“She taught us a lot,” said Navy Culinary Specialist 2nd Class Jeremy Smith. “Her professional experiences taught us the importance of organization, planning and workflow. All of this will help us in the future.”
But Sacco and the other chefs came across some unanticipated challenges in the preparation for the meal.
“We all wanted to make menus, but we had no idea what we would have to work with when we got out here,” Sacco said.
“Thanksgiving is a pretty basic meal, but I have never worked with already cooked or half-cooked food before. It has been a real learning experience, definitely learned on the fly. I had to go to other camps and barter for some fresh ingredients.”
Smith said he could see that Sacco was impressed with everything they do in the kitchen.
“With Amy coming from a professional kitchen, she has everything as far as ingredients and equipment at her disposal,” Smith said. “Here we do not have all of the right appliances and utensils, but we are still able to put out great food and feed all of these people.”
Navy Culinary Specialist 1st Class Jessica S. Foster, the galley manager, also felt Sacco learned a lot about the kitchen staff and what it means to be a military cook.
“She saw that, as whole, we don’t have much compared to what she is used to. But what we don’t have in equipment or ingredients, we make it up with a lot of heart,” Foster said. “We love our job and we have a real appreciation for the people [we serve].”
What the cooks do day-to-day with the materials available impressed Sacco.
“These cooks are really great; they have a lot of potential,” Sacco said. “They cook meals without recipes and make do with the ingredients they can get to make some delicious dishes. It really makes me appreciate the food I get to work with at home. I was really inspired by the motivation of the cooking staff here. It has been an amazing experience to work hand-in-hand with the staff here. We really learned a lot from each other.”
During the course of the meal, Cmdr. J.R. Anderson, commander of Special Operations Task Force South East, expressed his gratitude and thanks for the kitchen staff doing such a wonderful job on the meal. The galley broke out in applause and the looks on the kitchen staff’s faces showed their appreciation for the overwhelming gratitude of their satisfied customers.
“When the entire galley started applauding the staff, I got emotional,” Foster said. “The applause came out of nowhere. It showed people really appreciated the hard work we, as a staff, put into this meal.”
Foster said the day was a success because of the teamwork.
“Normally people come in, eat and leave,” Foster said. “Today, I had to ask people to leave so everybody could sit down and eat. People wanted to sit down and socialize; it was like Thanksgiving at home. I heard so many people comment on how delicious the food was and that made me so proud of all of our hard work. We all came together and planned and we executed it very well.”
The success of the day and the experience of working with service members wasn’t lost on Sacco.
“This has been such a great experience, I wanted it to last longer than it did,” Sacco said. “It has been such a joy to be here. Everybody has been so appreciative of the small thing we are doing in just cooking a single meal for Thanksgiving. It has been so lovely to be so welcomed and appreciated by everybody.”
“Hopefully, after the success of this event, we will be able to garner more support back home and make this better for meals to come,” she said. “We are all happy to be consultants; we can test recipes for large-scale production and provide excellent meals for upcoming meals.”
The meal ended and only scraps remained; there was just enough food to feed the camp. Satisfied service members wobble away, stomachs full, belts undone. Some venture off to their rooms for their obligatory turkey nap, others go right back to work and the lucky few get to enjoy another Thanksgiving tradition; watching some football.
| Date Taken: | 11.25.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 11.28.2011 10:57 |
| Story ID: | 80614 |
| Location: | URUZGAN PROVINCE, AF |
| Web Views: | 339 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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