Flyin' Flapjacks's topics - tribe.net

2008

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:22:39 GMT

I sent in the permit and have someone lined up to shop and bring supplies. I don't know how much we used last year. suzizzle said there were around 200 people served last year so I think 20lbs of pancake mix, 3 gallons of syrup, 5lbs of coffee and 10 gallons of juices and two big cans of Pam might be right. I'll order this unless someone thinks it's way off or has a better idea. Also, do I need coffee filters? If so what kind?

The cooking supplies are still on playa? Butter or no butter?

And shout out if you wanna volunteer. I'll be posting a volunteer request at the airport.

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 1 reply

2008 Pancake Plans

Jhim — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 01:33:17 GMT

I have already told Tiger Tiger that I will not be going to the Playa this summer. If anybody wants to pick up the spatula and ride herd on the pancake breakfast this year, please let me know. Yes, I know it is only January, but it is amazing how fast the months fly by.

Let me know, either by PM or the FF list.

Jhim

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 0 replies

Another one down

Jhim — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 05:05:14 GMT

Thanks to everyone that came out to help pull off another successful pancake breakfast. Suzizzle, Eva, Julia, Kelly, Pat, Ed, Edie and all the rest - plus those who came eat. Our trimmed down, greener approach worked well, generating a fraction of the waste we have in years past. Stick around and see what next year brings.

Jhim.

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 1 reply

All is set

Jhim — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 04:40:08 GMT

I heard from Lissa today as she was heading out that we have the breakfast fixin's and we are cooking pancakes.

I will post info in the bulletin board at the Ministry of Customs about getting together to pull this off again.

See you all soon...

-J

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 0 replies

Health Permit

Jhim — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 01:24:07 GMT

The State of Nevada says its a go! We have our health permit for 2007. Who's left around here that is planning to be on the Playa and willing to help make this happen? We need folks on site as well as somebody able to play Quartermaster and help pull some things together ahead of time.

Step right up...

-Jhim.

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 1 reply

NV Health Permit link

tiger_tiger — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 05:09:06 GMT

http://health.nv.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=471&Itemid=978

This is the current link to the Nevada Health department for a "temporary food establishment".

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 3 replies

Urgent! New Flapjack Commander needed

Jhim — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 06:35:08 GMT

Hi Folks,
We need somebody to take over the pancake breakfast operations this year. I will not be able to do it. I plan to be there and can help out on site but will not be able to do the advance prep or go shopping for suppplies. If somebody here is able to take that on, please let me know as soon as possible.

thanks,

-J

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 0 replies

Looking back

Jhim — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 05:45:34 GMT

It was another great year for pancakes at the Airport. A lot of people made it a success. Ed, Dan, Jen, Julie, Eva Marie, Suzizzle (on her birthday, no less) Doodlebug, Brian and several others that jumped right in to do whatever needed to be done. Thanks to you all.

We don't have an exact count of breakfasts served, but judging by the quantity of fixin's we went through, I am guessing it was close to 400.

For those that didn't notice, the State of Nevada had their health inspectors on site and we were inspected. He only had a couple of things to mention. The first was that I had negleted to 'prominently display ' the health permit. I had it with me and took care of that. The other thing was that the paper towels for the hand washing station were moved to the cooking table. Again, an easy on-the-spot correction. These and a few other things will be easy to correct ahead of time next year.

Thinking of next year, a couple of us went out to check out some of the other pancake breakfast operations on the playa to see how they are doing things. The Pancake Playhouse has been doing this thing for a long time on a larger scale than ours and have things down to a nice system. The first thing I noticed was that they were mixing their batter in 5-gallon buckets and then filling several pitchers at a time. They were cooking on griddles set on 2-burner stoves, pretty much like we had. Instead of cooking oil, they were using Pam spray, which seemed to be faster, easier and probably more effective. None of the other pancake operations we saw were using margerine and I am thinking that we won't bother with it next year. It is the only ingredient we had that needed to be kept in coolers with ice, starting with when I left Seattle on the Friday before. Squeeze bottle Parkay may be just too much of a luxury to deal with in the future.

All but one of the other pancake places we saw expected folks to bring their own plates, cups and utensils in the interest of reducing garbage and waste, not to mention the cost of putting it on. That one was serving their pancakes on 'souvenir' BM06 frisbees, so they weren't really contributing to waste either (I brought mine home with me).

I'd like to hear any comments, suggestions of observations about our breakfast this year. If we capture them now , before all the dust gets washed off, we can be sure to make FFIII even better.

Jhim

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 1 reply

excellent work!

squeeky — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 18:07:19 GMT

thanks so much for the pancakes. was a ton of fun. lots of people came out and everything grand!

xo

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 2 replies

Status

Jhim — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 07:57:37 GMT

Lissa suggested that we might be able to do breakfast for 500 this year. We have the mix and fixin's to do it. We also have enough grills and griddles to set up at least 10 cooking stations. Keeping the batter flowing through that many griddles will keep at least one and maybe two people busy full time. Altogether, I think we may have jobs for 20-25 people to pull this off, but I think we can do it. Keep an eye on the bulletin board at Customs for the where and when notice on our on-site planning meetings.

Jhim

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 3 replies

A thread for to bump....

suzizzle — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 14:47:03 GMT

Free advertising in the BM tribe is fleeting. The front page fills up quickly.

I keep bumping this thread but if you wanna help:

http://bm.tribe.net/thread/c2df0974-5bb9-4dd7-b434-759ae716d9d3

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 0 replies

Advertising Poster needed

tiger_tiger — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 04:51:33 GMT

We need a poster at the Airport to let everyone know about the breakfast. Can someone make one in advance? Or handletter one on the playa early in the event? Check with Jhim to confirm exact times, but Thursday, August 31 is the date, and the Port of Entry aka the Airport is the place. If you do this, make sure that THURSDAY is prominently featured in the design. Some thought last year it was a daily event.

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 3 replies

Its Official

Jhim — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 04:07:09 GMT

Our official health permit from the State of Nevada arrived yesterday. That is a requirement from Nevada and Burning Man if we are serving food to the 'public', or anyone not associated with the camp.

No that is out of the way, we need volunteers to help out with a number of areas.

Setup.

Kitchen - hand washing station
dishwashing station (both according to health department specifications)
Cooking area - a circle of griddles
Batter prep - we learned last year that this can be a dedicated job all by itself

Juice / fruit
Basically opening cans, but there are a lot of cans.

Coffee/ tea
Hot water goes fast

Clean-up.

If this year is anything like last year, we can keep a dozen people running from start to finish, probably more.

Let me know if there are any particular things you feel you'd like to do.

more soon,

Jhim

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 0 replies

Fire up the griddles

Jhim — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:51:14 GMT

We are doing it again. Flying Flapjacks II is on the calendar for 2006, starting at 9:30 Thursday morning, Aug 31.

Who's still here that wants to help make it happen? We learned a lot last year and can make this one even better. I will be sending in the health permit info pretty soon. It needs to include menu details and I wanted to talk about that a bit here first before I fill it out and send it in.

Jhim

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 4 replies

The Coffee Shack

tiger_tiger — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 19:59:50 GMT

One of the planned improvements for the Port of Entry this year is an upgraded Coffee Shack. We have a tall wooden crate that just fits a small table. Three sides and top shield the propane grill from the wind and dust. The plan is to make this a self-service hot drink facility during the week for Customs Agents and other Airport staff.

The Coffee Shack would also be used for the breakfast, but would have to be "staffed", not self-service, and with much larger quantities of hot water, etc. We'll also have a gray water disposal tank for dishwashing water. Yay! The black basin that we used last year worked pretty well as an evaporation pond for the dishwater and coffee dregs, but oh, cleaning out the remaining scunge the following week was one of the nastiest chores ever.

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 0 replies

Thanks to everyone

Jhim — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 07:05:43 GMT

Thanks for all the help with the pancake breakfast. We served over 300 breakfasts in record time. We also learned a few things and next year will be even better.

I hope everyone made it back to the Default World safe and sound. It is cold and wet here in the upper left hand corner and it feels like a long time until the man burns again.

see you then,

-J

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 3 replies

On the home stretch

Jhim — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 05:37:50 GMT

Time is counting down. Most of us will be on our way in two weeks.

I have a Coleman 2-burning gas stove, one or two drip coffee makers, spatuals and a couple of large pitchers for juice.

We need more stoves than that and a few griddles. Who has equipment that they can bring to help round out the inventory? I don't know how many are flying in and would have limited capacity for gear.

Let me know who will be bringing what and I will do what I can to fill out the rest.

-J

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 3 replies

Counting down

Jhim — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 06:12:24 GMT

Lissa and I have been making our lists and checking them twice and it looks like we are pretty close to having everything lined up for our pancake breakfast.

The big thing we need now is labor. We have 10 cooking stations to keep running.

Here are some of the other jobs we will need to fill...

Prep folks to keep the supply of batter flowing

Folks to help on the distribution side. That may include keeping an eye on the plates and cups as well as making sure that the syrup, butter and whatever else is in order.

Someone to handle the drinks, coffee, juice and hot water for tea.

Set up and clean up, including the manditory hand and dishwashing stations.

Avoid the rush and sign up for anything that strikes your fancy. At full capacity we may have enough to keep 20 people busy at any one time.

see you there,

-J

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 1 reply

Menu planning

Jhim — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 06:08:04 GMT

The next thing that the health permit requires is a list of what we plan to serve. We have to certify that anything we serve is either prepared on site or from a licenced food establishment, which means no home-made brownies. This really shouldn't be a problem. There is another specific regulation that states that Ice which is intended for human consumptino or which will com in contact with food or be used as a source of refrigeration be obtained from an approved source. Again, I don't think that will be a problem.

OK. For the menu. Here is what we have so far:

Pancakes. This will be easy. We can get 'complete' mix such as Krusteaz and just add water. Each 10 lb bag should serve around 80 breakfasts.

Syrup. Again, this should be easy. We have had several offers from folks volunteering to bring their favorite syrups. That is great, but I think we will also have a volume purchase from Costco or some place like that.

Coffee. We went through a lot of coffee last year and probably wiped several camps out of their supply of grounds. This will be another item on the Costco shopping list.

Tea.

Juice. Anything that is to be served cold needs to be kept at 40 degrees or colder. I'd like to be able to serve real juice and not have to mix up something on site. Does anybody have any suggestions?

Bread. We have several options here, including bagels or english muffings. I have served toast on the playa several times over the years and I can tell you that it doesn't take too many toasters to out pace a small portable generator. Pancakes are bread. How much more do you think folks will want?

Fruit. Fruit on the Playa is always a special treat. We have had fresh oranges and canned peaches. They all went over well. What else would you like to see?

What else?

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 11 replies

Cooking equipment

tiger_tiger — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 05:20:12 GMT

The Airport owns two barbecue-sized propane tanks and one 2-burner propane stove (maybe two). We can run several burners on one tanks using splitters or use the small bottles running one burner per bottle. I found a refill device that will allow us to refill and reuse the small bottles. I like that the best. It gives us the convenience and portability of the small bottles without the waste.

But how many burners do we need? This depends on how long it takes to cook one serving of pancake and how many servings per hour we want. Someone needs to do a test case and tell us how long it takes to cook pancakes.

Just for an estimate, let's say it takes five minutes to cook one serving. If we had 6 burners, that would be 72 servings per hour. That's not nearly enough. Let's say it takes half that time to cook one serving, which makes 144 servings per hour, which is still a little low. Ten burners at 3 minutes per serving, makes 200 servings per hour.

Sometime in the next few weeks, we need to find out how long it takes to cook pancakes.

Coffee is the other big problem. We need to make large quantities, and we may also want to call on Airport residents to help out with their stoves and coffee making equipment. We can provide plenty of grounds, but how do we process it into coffee?

Big electric percolaters take a long time and are expensive. We do have a generator to power it. Dripping through a filter takes a long time. Do we just get great big pots and dump the grounds in when the water's hot? Thermal storage for finished coffee would be great, so that the pot and burner can start heating the next batch. But maybe the coffee will go so fast, that we don't need to keep it hot.

It's $11 for a single unit burner at Harbor Freight. I'm thinking that the single units would be better, because you can't fit two large pots or two skillets on one burner anyway.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=44893

I may also get one of these nicer ones for use all week long in the Customs Office for making coffee every day for on-duty personnel.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=35560

Propane griddles are more rare. I see really nice 2x4 foot party griddles for RENT for $50-$100 per day. Coleman makes a camping propane griddle for $60, but wouldn't we need at least five to equal ten burners with skillets? Can we make our own big griddles? A big slab of steel on legs supported over the appropriate number of burners?

Here's a link for the Coleman griddle.
http://www.coleman.com/coleman/colemancom/detail.asp?product_id=9931-750&categoryid=21505

Oh, oh, oh, I found a Coleman hot water on demand system while looking for the griddle. Look at this:
http://www.coleman.com/coleman/ColemanCom/detail.asp?product_id=2300-700

Hmmm, wonder if it *really* makes water hot enough for coffee?

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 2 replies

Permit update

Jhim — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 08:14:05 GMT

Hi Team,

Our application and fee are on their way to Carson City. I added a series of images to the picture area to give an idea of what we just agreed to.

Selftest1, 2 and 3 make up the food inspection that we perform on ourselves - or for a NV food inspector should one show up.

Handwash describes the kind of handwashing station that we need to construct.

Laws1 and Laws2 list some of the codes that apply to the kind of setup that we are having.

Assuming that the State of Nevada has no further questions of concerns, we should be good to go with the rest of the planning.

I have a swag at our shopping list from Costco and think we should be pretty good on that front.

What I am less sure of at this point is our physical environment and equipment. I don't know how many grills we should plan to keep running at a time. I have one 2-burner propane Coleman stove. I think we had two going last year, mine and one other and that wasn't quite enough to keep up with demand within the camp. We were also using frying pans rather than a grill. If anybody has one, that would make things a lot better, I think. We also had one burner dedicated to hot water for the coffee. That couldn't keep up with demand either.

The next step is probably to nail down the number of cooking stations folks think we need. With that, we can start rounding up stoves and grills and people to run them.

more later,

-J

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 3 replies

First things first

Jhim — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 05:31:56 GMT

There are only a couple of things that we need to nail down before the healt permit application can go in. The first thing is to set the date. I asked Lissa and Lissa asked me. If I were to pick a date out of the air, I would go with Thursday morning. Does anybody see a reason why that would not be a good day?

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 5 replies

Where we are

Jhim — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 06:01:34 GMT

At this point it looks like we have everything we need to finish the application for a health permit, a date and a menu. I will get that wrapped up and sent in. I think it will be adequate to specify things like 'fruit' and 'juice' on the application and deal with the details like 'canned peaches', 'fresh oranges' and whatever else between now and Playa Time.

Once that is out of the way we can focus on some of the other things that we agree to with that application such as the dish and hand washing stations. I'll see if I can scan some of the diagrams, self-inspection check list and other paperwork I got from the State of Nevada to let everyone know what we have agreed to.

Speaking of pictures, check out the picture gallery and let me know if you'd like anything else set up as the main group picture. The one I set up first is of a Chance Vought (or Zimmerman) V-173 prototype fighter made for the Navy in the 40's. It was known as the "Flying Flapjack" or "Flying Pancake" and that seemed like a good enough reason to me to choose it as the main picture. Anyway, take a look through the rest of the pictures and see if you like any others better - or add one of your own. My second choice after the V-173 would be the one of a youth group fixing pancakes. For some reason, that one just makes me smile.

Onward and upward...

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 0 replies

Joining this tribe

Jhim — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 06:50:16 GMT

Thanks for everyone's patience on getting brought into this tribe. I think I am getting this thing figured out.

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 0 replies

Facilities

Jhim — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 06:21:54 GMT

There are two main things we need to plan for regarding facilities. The first is the food preparation area itself. As far as I can tell, the main thing there is the floor. I think we can get away with a two or three sheets of plywood under the table with the stoves and food prep. They also want the food prep area protected from insects and dust(!). I have a 15x17 walled canopy that I think will serve as a kitchen area.

The other area that gets a lot of attention is the Manditory Handwashing Station. It consists of:
Water container with warm water and continuous flow spout
Waste water catch bucket
Liquid soap
Roll of paper towels - secure to keep from falling on the ground
Table or stand to make hand wash station easily accessible to all workers.

"Gloves and hand sanitizers do not take the place of this required hand washing statino at any temporary food booth. This is the first thing you should set up and the last thing you should take down in your booth."

We can talk more about who might have what that they can bring for these things.

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 0 replies

This Sub-Tribe

Jhim — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 05:06:53 GMT

This is a Sub-Tribe of the Black Rock Spaceport. It was set up simply for the discussion and planning of the Airport Camp Pancake Breakfast in order to take that traffic off-line.

posted in Flyin' Flapjacks - 0 replies