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CHEF'S CORNER

Recipes provided by the chef's at Athabasca Catering.
To view each chef's recipes, click on recipe link below:

Niels Kjeldsen - Divisional Manager, Rabbit Lake
Recipes
Mexican Chocolate Marinated Roast Pork
Grilled Tarragon with Paprika/Bacon Sauce

Ray Edwards - All Sites Manager
Recipe - Single Batch Bannock

Gordon Pope - Divisional Manager, Cigar Lake
Recipe coming soon

Frank Tecklenburg - Divisional Manager, McArthur River
Recipe coming soon

Randy Jones - Divisional Manager, McLean Lake
Recipe coming soon

SPECIAL EVENTS: LONG-SERVICE AWARDS

Unlike many companies in the food service industry, Athabasca has managed to foster a high degree of employee loyalty, and this is a major reason why the company decided to initiate a program of long-service awards. This program began in early 2006 with the first round of five-, 10-, 15- and 20-year awards, and on June 9, Danchuk presented the last of approximately 40 awards to employees at four mine sites. He also received his own 10-year award up at Rabbit Lake, after starting as a camp chef 13 years ago before moving into management. (He jokes that “they must not have liked my cooking, because they promoted me pretty quick!”) Promotion from within is an important concept at Athabasca. This year’s 20-year award recipient, Michelle Ballek, started with the company as a 19-year-old, and she is now the housing manager at Cigar Lake, filling a role that Danchuk describes as “one of the toughest in the whole organization” due to the range and scope of duties they fulfill.
	Pictured above: Athabasca Catering general manager Kevin Danchuk (far left). Kitsaki president Chief Tammy Cook-Searson (in black jacket), and divisional manager Ray Edwards (far right) presented long service awards to employees Lillian Kinal, Brenda Charles, Ruby Kote, Mary Spence, and Glenn Brown at the McArthur River mine site.
The awards were presented by Athabasca Catering management and Chief Cook-Searson at Key and McArthur and by Chief Victor Fern at the far north camps. Lac La Ronge band members receiving awards include Bella Roberts, Helen Ross, Rose Lundgren, Susan Roberts, Miriam Charles and Rose McKenzie, who all received 10-year awards. Five-year awards went to Mary Spence, Travis Sanderson, Lydia Ratt and Brenda Charles. Since the food industry tends to be very transient, any company that has a high percentage of long-term employees, as Athabasca Catering does, is doing well.
“This (accomplishment) says, number one, we must be a pretty good company to work for, and two, that these work environments must be awfully good,” Danchuk said. “The week-in, week-out is a great schedule, but if you’ve got young kids at home, it’s a tough schedule. So we just thought we would recognize the sacrifices that a lot of our employees go through to maintain this type of schedule.”	Pictured above: Kevin Danchuk and Chief Cook-Searson (back row) also traveled to Key Lake to present long-service awards to Mick Reynolds, April Klassen, Rose McKenzie, Rose Lundgren and Ray Edwards.

As well, he said, “we still have a high turnover of the initial entry-level employees, so when you have these other (experienced) employees that are mentoring them, it just makes things better for everybody.” Athabasca also makes a point of recognizing their employees’ potential, and encouraging development not only through promotion, but through management training and apprenticeship.
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