Secret Recipe Revealed: Camp's Famous Oatmeal

Oatmeal is one of my favorite “breakfast” foods. I’ll eat it just about any time of the day. So, I was quite delighted to find out the oatmeal is a breakfast staple at camp. There are huge pots of it at the end of the buffet line at every breakfast camp serves. And if I’m around for breakfast, that’s usually what I have: a bowl of oatmeal with fresh fruit on top. Yummy!

Ironically, oatmeal is the favorite of just about everyone at camp – from the six year old Adventurer campers to Mrs. Stone who is 95 and comes to Senior Week. I have parents ask all the time if our oatmeal will be served the week their kid is coming because that’s all the kid wants to eat for breakfast. And the ladies that come to camp ask Jim, our chef, for the recipe all the time. So, in the Camp Bell (our camp newsletter) this month, the secret of our famous oatmeal was at last revealed to one and all:

One of the frequently asked questions of the Camp cooks is "How do you make your oatmeal?" Some, of course, would think this a silly question since, really, how many ways are there to make oatmeal anyway? But Camp's oatmeal is, indeed, different from what you make at home for one basic reason: the water.

When we make oatmeal at Camp Lebanon we use only water from the very deepest part of Cedar Lake. That's right! Each morning the scheduled cook rows a boat out to a special secret spot and drops a bucket down to the very bottom, drawing up the clearest  and coldest water that Cedar Lake has to offer. This pure elixir is then carefully and secretly transported back to the kitchen where it is poured into waiting double boiler kettles.  Rolled oats are added and cooked slowly for over one hour. The result is the creamiest, most delicious oatmeal in Central Minnesota, and to hear our guests talk, maybe even in the whole world.

An element of difficulty is added during the cold winter months, when the assigned cook must strap on a headlamp and snowshoe out to the secret spot to auger the hole even in the fiercest of conditions. The risk of life and limb is of no bother, of course, for no amount of difficulty is too much for our beloved guests.

Now, will that be one scoop or two?