Communal Meals

Meal Teams / Menu

We cook for each other as a gift to the camp. From Sunday—Saturday each camp member will make dinner for the entire camp one night. Seven meal teams are created and will have around 4 people on each team.

  • The meal team is responsible for: buying / shopping, preparing, serving, and cleaning up that meal.

  • Cater to dietary needs. The roster also has dietary needs for the entire camp. It is mostly GF and vegetarian options would be needed.

  • Frozen and premade meals are recommended.

  • Clean up after yourself. Do not leave a leftover mess for the breakfast crew to clean up.

  • Minimize leftover food: it is best to serve everything that day to minimize leftover food storage. If additional portions are still frozen, keep them frozen to eat on the last day. Also, people walking by and our neighbors love eating our meals.

  • It is also OK to lend support to an event week meal team if they are not on schedule.

Build Meals

From Reno through build week (through Saturday night), all meals are paid for from our budget. Members from the build team will occasionally serve a meal. We are usually all working during build and the division of labor levels out. This is also a great time to practice your egg cracking skills for the upcoming communal breakfasts.

Communal Breakfast

We budget for 2 weeks of breakfast service from build through event week. Everyone should contribute time helping to prepare and clean up these meals.

Typical Menu: (amounts TBD)

  • Eggs (2)

  • Bacon, pork (2)

  • Pancakes (1)

  • Gluten Free Pancakes

  • Coffee (1 big maker)

Equipment

We use propane burner cooktops, a small oven, a pizza oven, and additional propane burners to prepare our meals. e.g. If your meal needs a waffle iron to prepare, speak to the kitchen team to ensure your needs are met.

BYO Mess Kit

Please bring and use all your own dishes and utensils. Everyone should have a plate, bowl, mug, fork, knife, and spoon. We have some for sharing in a pinch but we expect self-reliance in bringing your own.

Supplies

Fuel

We use approximately 15 gallons of propane over 2 weeks.

Ice

Large plastic drinking water containers are used to make ice blocks. These are then placed in ice chests / coolers to keep our produce cool. This minimizes bacteria spread as no ice water will have direct contact with food. The water containers are re-frozen in the large chest freezer. We also store bags of cocktail ice in the chest freezer. For cocktail ice serving, we use a smaller cooler for distribution so that we can keep the freezer closed as long as possible.

Coolers / Cooler Management

Freezer Management

Weekly meal team will store their meal on one shelf in the tall vertical freezer. These meals can be frozen and brought to San Francisco where the tall freezer is loaded and brought to Reno and then BRC.

Dish Area

Golden Rules: Do not put excess food waste in the dish cleaning area. Clean your dish.

  1. Eat everything you served yourself, clean your plate. OR talk someone into eating it :)

  2. Use a food scraper (not a paper towel) to clean all leftover bits that might exist from cooking pans, serving dishes, plates, bowls etc. into the Compost Area

  3. After all visible food scraps have been removed from your plate a spray bottle with soapy water and sponge can be used to finish removing all food particles into the compost area.

  4. The first dish tub has hot soapy water with a splash of bleach, use this to finish cleaning your plate and utensils. Steps 1-3 are to ensure this tub stays clear of food waste. If you are caught putting food scraps in this tub, public shaming will ensue and you may be tasked with cleaning this tub daily. We don't want to create excessive gray water and it is easy enough to follow steps 1-3. This is how communal effort works.

  5. The second dish tub has regular water and is used to rinse the soap off.

  6. The third and last dish tub has a splash of bleach in it. This is to kill off anything left that might cause trouble.

  7. Put your dishes back in your personal area, please do not leave them in the drying rack / area.

Waste Management

Onsite Compost and Recycling

Processed via Compost Camp

Registration form: 2024 Registration for Playawide Compost Project

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BurningManCompostProject/   

2024 Playawide Compost Project: Registered Camps

Compost Collection Locations 

🏝Ocean Beach at 4:00 and D

☠️ La Calaca at 3:45 and E

If you did not participate in the build, this is a job for you. When the morning worksop returns, take the BAT over to drop stuff off. Use leftover cardboard to collect compost and let it dry in the sun. Burlap sacks or other cotton based items can be used for drying. Ideally only dried compost will be delivered to the compost camp. How compost is stored on the BAT and delivered is TBD—help figure this out. Also bring the aluminum cans to Recycle Camp.

WHAT CAN BE COMPOSTED

See composting Rules

Aluminum Cans

Take the aluminum (not steel) to recycle camp in the back of center camp at 6:00 / A

  • Free of garbage and your cigarette butts should be empty, crushed and put in one container. 

  • When processing the aluminum, you will look cool if they don’t find any garbage.

  • You will have to take any garbage back with you.

Offsite Recycling

Plastic

Not to be recycled in BRC

  • Plastic that can be recycled should be crushed and placed in one large plastic bag. This should only have plastic in it. These bags are put near the uhaul when full and are recycled in San Francisco.

  • Reuse the drinking water containers: Do not recycle the drinking water containers used to make ice blocks. Keep using them throughout the week to make more ice blocks.

Glass

  • Please do not bring glass containers. They can break and damage our trash workflow.

    • If you plan on bringing a case of wine, please keep your box for bottle recycling, don’t burn it.

    • Please do not bring out glass bottled beer.

  • If we do have them, package them up for recycling in San Francisco:

    • If we have empty glass wine bottles, please keep them in cardboard boxes and neatly organized so that they won’t break.

    • Full boxes of organized empty glass bottles should be sealed, labeled GLASS RECYCLING, and placed near the uhaul. They are recycled in San Francisco.

Trash: A core principle of Burning Man is to Leave No Trace. We can

  • We will minimize all trash when possible: 

  • Excess packaging materials should be removed before coming to BRC whenever possible.

  • Used paper towels and excess cardboard is placed in the burnable barrel.

  • All tobacco smokers who camp with us are responsible for any cigarette butt found around camp. These cannot be put in a beer can or glass bottle. They must be managed and disposed of properly.

  • Any trace left will impact our standing within the event

    • We will do MOOP sweeps as part of Strike.

    • The camp’s reputation affects placement, availability of services, and ability to recruit