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Chef, minister team to provide hospitality        Re-printed with permission.

8/29/2007
By Kevin Carmody, ProRodeo.com
ProRodeo Sports News

A popular proverb states that the quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Since 1998, the wife-husband tandem of Linda and Ted Wiese have taken that to heart with the Cowboy Bistro, a mobile kitchen that serves complimentary meals to cowboys and cowgirls at a handful of rodeos across the country.

Feeding stomachs is one thing. The Wiese couple takes it the extra mile. They feed souls, too.

“When you want to get close to someone, sit down across the table and visit with them,” said Ted, an ordained cowboy minister. “When we feed them, it builds good relationships. That’s what we need to do.”

At no charge to cowboys – the couple depends only on donations – Linda, a chef, prepares home-style meals from scratch, while Ted concocts his world-famous sweet tea, in addition to peach and blackberry cobblers.

It all evolved from a vision to provide a home away from home for cowboys and, at the same time, offer nutritious meals instead of candy and snacks from the concession stands. So, when Linda received certification from the CaliforniaCulinaryAcademy in 1998, the couple started knocking on doors.

By summer, the Cowboy Bistro finally convinced its first rodeo to accommodate a new brand of cowboy hospitality. Actually, convince proved to be too strong a word.

“Well, it pretty much was a no-brainer for us,” said Mike Lucke, arena director of the Reno (Nev.) Rodeo. “The cowboys seem to be really happy with it. They try to make it as much like home as you can. They (the Wieses) have quite a following when they’re on the road. They definitely had the right idea.”

That idea came, originally, while Linda was attending a professional racing event in Laguna Hills, Calif. She noticed the special treatment drivers received from the host facility.

Growing up in the South, Linda knew a thing or two about good cooking. Through her experience at Laguna Hills, she realized her destiny.

“I always wanted to be a chef,” Linda said. “After our three boys were in college, that freed me up to go to culinary school. I worked in a restaurant inCalifornia for a while, but that’s not where I wanted to be. When I saw how they took care of the racers, I knew rodeo didn’t do it like that. That’s where the vision came from.”

What started in Reno in 1998 continues in full force today, although the Wieses have in recent years pared their schedule of hauling their portable kitchen – a 20-foot utility trailer and a 30-foot fifth wheel professional mobile unit that’s pulled behind their motor coach, equipped with professional appliances to meet the job of feeding up to 400 people – across the country. The Cowboy Bistro recently spent 12 days at Cheyenne (Wyo.) Frontier Days, arriving in town a full day before hundreds of ropers would complete in slack.

But before swinging a rope, cowboys made sure to get their place in a long line that ultimately ended with a wholesome meal, perhaps spaghetti, roast beef, King Ranch chicken, or Cajun cuisine and always accentuated by Ted Wiese’s homemade sweet tea and lemonade and finished with one of many delectable desserts.

The cooking process starts well before sunup.

“For the first day of slack, I got up at 3:30 in the morning and made two blackberry cobblers and started lining the drink station,” Ted said. “When you serve 300-400, you have to be ready. We have 25 gallons of sweet tea ready at one time, and 10 gallons of unsweetened tea ready with 10 each of lemonade and water. And my integrity is on the line if coffee isn’t ready. The timer is on, but I get up just to make sure the pot came on anyway.”

The Bistro operates with much help from volunteers and the contestants who can drop a little pocket money into the donation bucket. Linda Wiese estimates that the total costs of serving contestants for 12 days in Cheyenne was nearly $4,000.

Undaunted and tired, yet feeling fulfilled from the latest endeavor, the Bistro left Cheyenne following the Wrangler ProRodeo Tour Round and headed home for Idaho. Come Labor Day weekend in Ellensburg,Wash., the Cowboy Bistro bell will ring once again.

“In the beginning, we didn’t know how we’d keep this going because we don’t get paid to do this,” Linda Wiese said. “Our supplier is God, and this is our passion. We’re mom and dad on the road, and we consider this a privilege where we can set up. All the guys recognize us now.”

Of the countless relationships the Bistro has built and fostered through the years, Linda recalls crossing paths with team roper Speed Williams, the eight-time world champion, even before the traveling kitchen came into existence.

“We stopped at a fast food restaurant in Stephenville (Texas), and there must have been a roping (competition), because all these ropers started coming in,” Linda said. “I recognized Speed, and for years at the (Wrangler) NFR, I’d take my homemade brownies to the warm-up tent. He didn’t know me right away, and I picked on him for not thanking me for helping him win his first world title (in 1997). I told him I was going to start cooking for him and asked what he liked. He said he liked hamburgers and noodles, and I thought that was pretty dull and he’d be no fun. I knew he was going to be the one very special to me.”

To this date, Williams recognizes Linda as his second mom. As it turns out, Wiese and Williams’ mother, Bobbie, have developed a strong friendship as well.

“She’s almost like my mom on the road, and they are very good people,” Williams said. “I have to pick on Ms. Linda because, if she didn’t cook so well, it would be easier to lose weight. They go way out of their way and make you feel right at home.”

Ted Wiese, a fourth-generation rice farmer from the Houston area, and Linda left their home in 1988 to follow a calling to operate a high school rodeo ministry. From Louisiana to Nevada, Arizona and California, they continued on their path. Along the way, Linda and Ted home-schooled sons Shawn, Cory and Kyle, who all later competed in college rodeo.

The hours sacrificed for their sons and ministry comes into focus in their new ministry – feeding cowboys and cowgirls and providing a one-of-a-kind environment that certainly gives competitors a sense of pulling up and eating mom’s cooking.

“We serve one meal, and we bless it and bless the cowboys,” Ted Wiese said. “We love all of them like a mom and dad do. Some of these guys, maybe their father never told them that they love them. They all need to be told that. And we do.”

A Vision Fulfilled

by Linda Wiese

“For the Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” romans 14:17

Back in 1966, a Texas rice farmer-plowboy, bullrider, married a Houston City girl and they began their great adventure. Little did they know where it would lead them. Looking back now, neither one of them would of missed this ride for anything.

When we first married, we never dreamed that we’d be living on the road planting seeds and harvesting souls instead of rice or even that I would fulfill a life long dream of becoming a chef. It all just seemed too good to be true.   

Ted felt called to preach back in 1972 about the same time he hung up his bullrope. Instead of pursuing the call and afraid of a stint in deepest darkest Africa, we both delved deeper into church life. Then in 86’ it rose up again after we had started “Bull Buck Outs and Bible Studies” at our arena on our South Louisiana farm. Rockin W Rodeo Ministry was formed in 88’ after several years of doing services at High School Rodeos. The full time call led us from farms and family to Nevada and Arizona High School rodeo circuits and eventually into California where a thriving college rodeo ministry began as well.

This is where the cooking part started. College kids will eat anything and they especially loved my Cajun food. We began having feeds at their rodeos and Bible studies and saw many more come out for the free food. About this same time, I was enjoying cooking shows on television and dreaming of my long time desire to be a chef. My daughter in law, Ann, encouraged me to pursue my dream and I began gathering information from the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. Being it was very pricey, Ted suggested I get a job at a restaurant to see if I really wanted it. So I did and it proved beneficial. In three years, I went from the “front of the house” as hostess, to the kitchen as prep chef and into banquets serving hundreds of people at a time while learning everything I possibly could in ‘on the job training’. My chef boss taught me about passion for creating wonderful food and showed me first hand that what I did not want, was to be a chef in the restaurant world. It was too hectic and the hours were late and weekends and holidays were spent at the restaurant. But yet the desire to be chef was still so strong and I was feeling guilty about my plans to attend culinary school. I kept all these feelings to myself while I went to God in prayer on what to do. Somehow I knew He knew the answer.

When it all came down and the vision was revealed, we were at the Puyallup Fair and Pro Rodeo in the Seattle/Tacoma area the fall of 1996. The friend we were with had just gone to pay his fees at the rodeo office and we were sitting on a hay bale watching all the activity when he came out of the hospitality tent with an armful of blackberry scones. Fellow contestants stormed him and he never made it to us with our scones. I saw how important it was to the cowboys to have something in the way of food provided to them and that’s when the lord immediately showed me that was where I would be a “Chef at rodeos for Him”. I still get chills when I tell this story. It all made perfect sense. My heavenly Father was totally involved in evey aspect of what I thought was my vision. He truly gives us the desire of our hearts when we delight in Him.

From there it seemed time stood still and it was two years before I started my schooling after my dear friend put the down payment on my tuition. It was a total walk of faith to proceed on toward each step. I took a ten month accelerated course and graduated with honors and a 4.0. Only by Gods grace, did I get through as it was more difficult than I expected. As this article goes to print, we have paid the last payment and that part of the vision is completed.

The fulfillment of the next part of the vision to obtain the mobile kitchen to cook out of at the rodeos is too lengthy to detail. And breaking out to a new frontier took much prayer to get rodeo committees to consider what we wanted to do at their rodeos. It was too much for them to think we would come and cook for the contestants for “free”/ We have seen the Lord open many doors and given much favor from the “powers that be” Only God could give us the Reno Rodeo for out first big break, when Coy Huffman introduced us to some key committeemen. We cooked the first year out of our motor home and on outdoor burners and fed around 500 contestants at Reno. Then on a smaller scale at private fellowship Bible studies at Cheyenne and then officially at the Labor Day Ellensburg Washington Rodeo.

Our mobile kitchen finally manifested in July 2000. There was a three month period there when our motor home was given another ministry and we were traveling out of a U-Haul trailer and cooking under a canopy. These were trying times and Ted and I vowed not to murmur like the Israelites but laugh instead. There was a lot of laughing going on during those sandstorms with dirt debris in the brownie batter!

Even when we gladly received our new rig, we had to contend with every appliance taking turns breaking down, the kitchen nearly catching on fire, the living quarters flooding, etc. The enemy did not want this happening.

We are currently gathering information on how to get sponsorships for the mobile kitchen rig. We would rather see Cowboy Churches around the country put their logos on the trailer than larger secular corporations, but that remains to be seen. We want to pay the whole thing off quickly so that finances can be geared toward better quality and quantity foods for the cowboys.

What Ted and I really want to convey to those who have dreams and visions and callings for the cause of Christ, is that He wants us to serve people in creative ways and do it with excellence. That is why I went to school to learn everything about my craft so I could do it the best way I could. And even now, I have to pray and ask the Lord what to cook and how to serve it and how to manage my time. I pray and ask God that the anointing will fall on Ted and me and pour out onto those we serve. The hospitalities that we have done over the past year and a half have amazed many and our hope is that they feel the love of Jesus and will come to know Him.

Ted has supported me from the beginning and has sacrificed many opportunities to preach because of this new ministry. He knows that we are both called to it because we are one in the Spirit. I couldn’t do it without him and he is becoming quite a pantry chef in his own right. Ted keeps me balanced and out of the flesh. My tendency is to be a Martha (explaination) but I desire to be a Mary, so I end up some where in between. Many of the rodeos are sending in volunteers to assist us and I have had some wonderful gals who have specifically flown in to be my armor bearers. They are truly gifts from God. In all of this, I’m finding out that its so much more than my wanting to be chef. I really did not see the whole picture in the beginning and its a good thing I didn’t or maybe I would not have gone on with it. I have learned to put what I want behind me and have become more like Jesus in the way of a servant. Matt. 23:11 says: “He who is greatest among you shall be your servant” and in Matthew 20:26 Jesus again said: “Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be our servant. And whoever desires to be first among you , let him be your slave just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many”.

Many times when Ted and I pull into a rodeo to set up and cook, the cowboys have no idea that we are cooking at our own expense. They may think we are paid and give no thought of what’s being done for them but that is when we are reminded of what is said in Philippians 2:7, “He made Himself of no reputation (stripped Himself) taking the form of a bond-servant and coming in the likeness of men”.

We do it for Jesus Christ and we cook as if He, the King, were coming to eat with us and if it is fit for a King, then those we prepare for and serve should feel like King’s kids. That is our mission and we praise God for the privilege of letting us serve Him in a way that we truly love. What are you doing to seek, serve and save those around you that are lost? What is your vision? If you want to be fulfilled, find some one to serve in Jesus name!