152nd cooks compete for coveted Connolly

Photo By Staff Sgt. Angela Parady | Soldiers from the 152nd Component Repair Company help themselves to salad after picking up a hot meal prepared for them by four cooks within the unit striving to move on to the national level for the Phillip A. Connolly Competition. Even though the unit is a component repair and maintenance company that works primarily on electronics equipment, light-medium tactical vehicles and heavy equipment, they still have to have the capabilities to feed their soldiers. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Angela Parady)  

AUGUSTA, ME, UNITED STATES

06.07.2014

Story by Sgt. Angela Parady 

121st Public Affairs Detachment

AUGUSTA, Maine - “Today we have a pretty decent sized menu,” said the staff sergeant. “We have spaghetti and meatballs, and my personal favorite: chocolate pudding. There is salad, fruit, apples, some parmesan bread. It’s a pretty decent meal for being out in the field."

Soldiers from the 152nd Component Repair Company, Maine Army National Guard are competing in the 47th Annual Phillip A. Connolly Awards Program. As part of the competition they have to prepare a meal in a field environment. Which means setting up stations where hands can be washed, soldiers signed in, meals eaten, utensils washed and a fully functional kitchen is present.

This is the Army’s ultimate cooking competition, which began in 1968 and is one of the few competitions where all Army components, active Army, Reserves, and National Guard, compete against one another. Mess sections from units across the country compete in order find the best Army cooking operations, and this time it’s the 152nd who are being put on display.

“We are putting together food for 60 soldiers to simulate an event where we were on alert and facilities were not available,” said Staff Sgt. Crystal Ryder, an administrative sergeant, tasked with heading up the field sanitation team for the event. “So we are setting up for that, we’ve got our finest cooks cooking the food out here and our sanitation team working the safety side of it, ensuring the cleanliness of the food going in and out.”

Sgt. 1st Class Tom Gordon is the food operations sergeant for the 152nd. The Waterville native emphasized that even though the unit is a component repair and maintenance company that works primarily on electronics equipment, light-medium tactical vehicles and heavy equipment, they still have to have the capabilities to feed their soldiers.

“We have to be able to feed our soldiers so they can continue the mission,” he said. “A hot meal sustains them. It gives soldiers a good break in the middle of their day to collect their thoughts and to get together and see how things are going. On a hot day like today, it gives them the nutrition to replace things like salt and what not they may be sweating out, and it’s good for morale.”
Ryder, who lives in Augusta agreed, and praised the four cooks who had been sweating it out on the first 90-plus degree day of the year, in the kitchen for nearly two hours to get everything ready for the soldiers.

“If soldiers aren’t fed, they aren’t going to work,” she said. “That’s just how it is. I think these guys are doing an awesome job, a terrific job. They are using the resources they have and putting a great meal together. I know there are some people out there who can’t cook in their own kitchen anything as good as some of these meals will be. Soldiers need their energy, and they need their food. Without food, they don’t have energy, and we need energy to be mission capable. Food is very important.”

The soldiers, who will cook the same meal as other units competing for the Connolly Award nationwide will be tested on their ability to meet field food safety requirements, the accuracy of their headcount, the appearance and attitude of the food service personnel, and timeliness. According to Gordon, that’s not all.
“We have to follow the recipe cards to standard, start at the times we say we are going to start, use the ingredients we say we are going to use. The sanitation tent and food service tent all have to be set distances from each other. And the food has to be good.”
The June event was the first step in a long road to the national level competition. Judges will base their decisions off of the Joint Culinary Center of Excellence standard, and rank the 152nd amongst all of the other competing teams. A success will move them to the national level competition.

Regardless of what the evaluators come back with for the soldiers who worked hard for this event, Ryder said she thought that the day’s competition was a worthwhile exercise.

This program was named after Phillip A. Connelly, a leader in the Food Service Management Corp who worked diligently and earnestly throughout his life to promote professionalism in food service, in both the civilian and military services.

• Date Taken: 06.07.2014
• Date Posted: 06.13.2014 10:56
• Story ID: 132994
• Location: AUGUSTA, ME, US
• Hometown: AUGUSTA, ME, US
• Hometown: WATERVILLE, ME, US