Army cooks putting their best food forward
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
Schofield Barracks will put on a traditional Thanksgiving spread with all the trimmings. And when they say trimmings, they mean it.
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Rolls and fruit will cascade out of 4-foot-long dough cornucopias colored with browning and seasoning sauce and airbrushed to bring purple grapes and green vine decorations to life.
Pfc. Mike Neil creates a turkey basket out of dough while Spc. Kristy Ratliff and Sgt. Juan Aguilar, background, work on other centerpieces that will grace the Army's dining facilities on O'ahu during Thanksgiving.
There's a dough-sided three-masted Santa Maria in the works (seaweed for sails), 3-foot white-chocolate pig, and 6-foot-tall American eagle ice sculpture taking wing.
And that's just what the cooks are letting on for now.
"There are always surprises" the day of the Thanksgiving meals, said Chief Warrant Officer 3 Alberto Sanchez, senior food service adviser at Schofield.
Last year, cooks Rico Pascua and Cliff Lariosa carved 12 big blocks of ice into fruit baskets, eagles and cornucopias. A cake featured a bald eagle, an American flag, the World Trade Center's twin towers in the background, and a tear on the eagle's face.
Your father's Army — and "chow hall" — it's not.
"As we incorporate culinary talents and schooling, the (food) product gets better every year," Sanchez said. And Thanksgiving is the biggest holiday there is for cooks to shine.
"This is the one time of year the food service folks really distinguish themselves, and the one time of year everyone kind of looks at you a little differently because you put in so many long hours for one meal, and it's for the soldiers," Sanchez said.
That last thought — that it's for the soldiers — never seems to be too far from the minds of the food service staff, especially with continuing uncertainty about what may lie ahead with the possibility of war with Iraq.
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On Wednesday for three dining halls and on Thursday for six others, the Army estimates it will serve Thanksgiving meals to 4,000 service members, their families and guests at Schofield Barracks and East Range, Fort Shafter, Wheeler Army Airfield and Helemano Military Reservation.
Spc. Kristy Ratliff finishes grapes on a cornucopia while Spc. Daniel palumbo, Sgt. Juan Aguilar and Pfc. Mike Neil work on other centerpieces at Schofield Barracks' Culinary Academy.
Many will be single soldiers. Married service members tend to celebrate Thanksgiving at home, officials said. Preparation for the big day, meanwhile, starts about a month out.
"My thinking is, for whatever unit I'm with, to give them 100 percent so we can provide the best meal for soldiers away from their homes," said Sgt. Jose L. Hernandez, a shift leader. "You never know if this is going to be our last Thanksgiving with other things going on in the world."
Further fueling that sense of teamwork is the culinary competition that goes on between dining facilities. All are competing for best-on-installation awards.
Spc. Yvette White, 31, who works on the serving line in the A-Quad dining facility at Schofield, said the competition is a big thing.
"All the cooks want to be better than all the other cooks, so yeah, we do put our best foot forward to be better than the other dining facilities," she said.
On Friday, food service specialists worked on the dough cornucopias and bread baskets that will be on display at all the dining halls. Closer to Thanksgiving, they split up and work on their own special creations for their hall.
Among those offering guidance was Hernandez, 31, from East Los Angeles. Nearby, a dough basket in the shape of a turkey with hundreds of dough "feathers" attached was under construction.
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"Simple ingredients," Hernandez said. "It's just the imagination of the soldiers."
"You never know if this is going to be our last Thanksgiving with other things going on in the world," said Sgt. Jose L. Hernandez.
The Thanksgiving feast is used to nominate cooks for another cook-off in February. From there, a team of 15 cooks is selected to represent the division in a prestigious culinary arts contest held every year at Fort Lee, Va.
The main Thanksgiving courses are traditional — items like roast turkey, ham, cornish hen, fried shrimp, mashed potatoes, dressing and vegetables. It's the decorations, pies, cakes and pastries where the cooks really strut their stuff.
Spc. Kenneth Hartley, 23, who works in military intelligence, said he's not real big on the decorations, but the food is great.
"The Thanksgiving meal is probably the best meal of the year — it seems like there's two dozen different types of desserts," Hartley said. A single soldier from Michigan with no family here, Hartley celebrates Thanksgiving with buddies from his unit.
Officers usually do the serving at the meals, and Hartley said "that's nice to have, because normally, it's the reverse and we're running around doing stuff for them."
Sanchez said the Thanksgiving spreads get more grandiose by the year. Last year, in a tribute to Sept. 11, one dining hall fashioned a 3-foot-tall firefighter in chocolate holding an American flag with a soldier rising up from below to take hold of the flag.
Two dining halls this year ordered suckling pig and plan to use them in their presentation.
"We try to make it special for the soldiers," said Sanchez, who joked, "We're still trying to figure out a way to import snow."
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.
