COMMUNITY & CAMP FOOD

I spent last week at a camp, and while it wasn’t a fitness boot camp, it kind of felt like one - my hamstrings are still suffering from a game curiously entitled Jug 'n' Jog, where there seemed to be a lot more desperate sprinting than jogging, and the only jugs I noticed were the ones being adversely affected by the jogging/sprinting. So excuse my ignorance, but I would appreciate it if any game know-it-all can shed some light on the origin of this name.

Camps are always interesting in terms of food. Throughout my teenage years, a good mate and I busied ourselves in summer, and sometimes winter at Lake Yellingbo teen camp in Gippsland. Among various wild and woolly memories of those camps, I have some good ones of spaghetti bolognaise, tacos, roast beef and plenty of seconds and thirds, served up on unbreakable plastic crockery. Camp food can be the greatest (eg. after much jug 'n' jogging) or it can be abysmal (who can forget the processed sinew masquerading as chicken schnitzel a couple of years back at a nameless campsite. Or the laxative cordial, now that was interesting). But whether the food is good or bad, one thing remains the same on camps for people such as myself, and that is the niggling anxiety that what you will be eating and how much of it you are allowed to eat is in someone else’s hands for a whole week, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And just to heighten the anxiety, access to food becomes a competition - you have to sing or answer trivia or make faces or any other fun thing you can think of before your table is given permission to receive their ration of fried camp meat delight surprise. Very stress-inducing.

The theme of the camp was community (specifically Biblical community) and one of the places you see community in action is around the table, especially at camp. It’s not considered the norm in any culture really to eat alone when you can be eating with others, which is odd because watching someone else eat can be pretty gross, and it’s disconcerting to have someone watch you eat, especially something like spag bol or a drippy falafel. And you can’t talk while your mouth is full (well, you can) so the act of eating is really a hindrance to conversation. But despite these things, eating remains a communal activity in our culture and I wonder if the reason for that is that eating is one of very few things we all have in common with everybody else.