Team Days are a great way for our team to spend time together away from our desks. We’ve had three Team Days so far, and they’ve all been so much fun! If you missed out on our previous team days, the first one planned by Colbi and the second by Holdt, be sure to read about them. It’s so special that we can all be together during these days filled with laughter and smiles. Our most recent Team Day planned by Gina was at Storm King Art Center followed by a surprise activity at TinkerBox.
Like our prior Team Days, we’ve continued the surprise element of Team Day. Without knowing about what we’d do during the day, we all met up at Peekskill’s train station in the morning. Once we were all gathered at the station, Gina revealed that her Team Day would begin at Storm King Art Center. We were all so excited and pleasantly surprised by the weather. The forecast was rainy but the sun persevered during our time at the sculpture park.
Storm King Art Center is a 500-acre outdoor museum located in New Windsor, NY. Some of us have been before but for many of us it was our first time at the museum! We decided on some must sees including Maya Lin’s Storm King Wavefield , various Mark di Suvero sculptures, Andy Goldsworthy’s Storm King Wall, the Three Legged Buddha by Zhang Huan, Suspended by Menashe Kadishman, and of course Richard Serra’s Schunnemunk Fork, which provided inspiration for Mitchell Hills.
We walked around together and often hypothesized how certain sculptures were made or how they’re balanced. For example, some of us wondered what was happening underground at Suspended by Menashe Kadishman to create such a gravity bending piece. We also made sure to take a mirror selfie at Alyson Shotz’s Mirror Fence which was slightly more challenging than we had anticipated. We had to make sure we lined up each one of our faces on each plank of the fence.
Thankfully the weather was on our side as it only started to rain once we finished our large loop around the park. We took a quick snack break by our cars and then headed off to TinkerBox. We traveled with anticipation wondering what awaited us there – it was (to no surprise) a surprise!
Once we all arrived, Gina revealed that we would be cooking pasta from scratch! Gina took on a twist to our traditional pasta salad Team Day lunch by putting us to work and making the pasta ourselves. We split up into 5 groups and each made our own dough. Some of us had prior experience making homemade pasta while majority of us had not. It was so nice to share this first moment with others on our team.
Gina instructed us to take two cups of flour, carve out a crater in the flour mound, and then pour in 2 eggs and 3 egg yolks. We then mixed the eggs and slowly added more and more flour from the edges. We were all then left with a dough that we kneaded. Some of us struggled at this point (myself included) as the flour began to toughen up. We played it by touch and texture to see if we needed to add more egg whites if needed. After much needed kneading (very corny I know) we set our dough aside to rest and soften for 30 minutes, and continued to snack on fruits and chips as we waited.
Once we got the green light from Gina, each group took turns with the pasta machine to flatten and stretch the dough to the required thickness. Some of us made incredibly long sheets of dough which required many hands and forearms to hold it as it went through multiple passes on the pasta machine (of course very entertaining for all of us to watch). Reflective of our team’s diverse creative expression and thoughts, we produced a range of pasta shapes. Some shapes included fettuccine-like thick pastas, tagliatelle, and even super thin angel hair pasta.
With fresh pasta, the cook time is only around 2 minutes. Gina was glued to the stovetop cooking all of the different kinds of pasta shapes as the sauces were warming up. Since we followed a recipe with many egg yolks, the pasta came out deliciously rich. Gina brought homemade vodka and alfredo sauce as well as some basil pesto, squash, chicken, parmesan, and fresh basil and parsley.
Everyone scarfed down their first portions and were ready for seconds! It was so rewarding to enjoy something we all made together. With flour on all of our bellies, we had so much fun sharing stories, laughter, and hard work to create a delicious linner (lunch/dinner).
Thank you Gina for such a fun and hands-on Team Day!
