Things you learn as a cook and event planner

Greetings! I am sorry I have not updated my blog in a while. I have been neck deep in a huge fundraiser for my office and it has taken most of my time and the blog was the last thing I could think about. But today is a bit smoother and I decided to put down some observations about planning a large meal, cooking that meal and cleaning up that meal.


The meal was for the Mother/Daughter/Friend banquet at my church. Last year the men stepped up to cook a meal for the banquet as catering it was getting too pricey and most of the ladies didn't think we could do it. Well, we did and we did it well. This year it was kind of expected that we would do it again, and we agreed. My buddy Dave and I were pretty much in charge of last year's meal and we got the nod to go ahead and do it again this year. This year we decided to go with Tomato Basil and Lemon Pepper pork loins with italian seasoned asparagus, with wild rice and balsamic vingrete and honey grilled peaches. Desert was to be ice cream with little sugar snacky things flavored with strawberry. The menu was tried out on a small group and knew it was good, but that was with 10 people and not 100! Anyway, we did the meal on the 6th and it turned out well and everyone was happy. But in the course of doing this, I observed and learned a few things about preparing a meal for 100 plus people.

- Church kitchens are set up for serving guests, not cooking for them
- If you stir rice too much, you get wallpaper paste. (I know this, but was unable to stop it from happening)
- There really is such a thing as too many cooks in the kitchen.
- There is no substitute for a real fire grill when it comes to making grilled food. It just can't be done properly.
- There is no such thing as a fresh peach in the month of May. (at least on in Illinois!)
- NO cooking banquet event will be a success without a good working crew. (of that, we were in abundance of!!!)
- When clearing the food plates, and if you are the cook/planner, do not be the one that scrapes the plates... every plate you find with food on it you will take as a personal insult because they did not finish their food.
- No matter what you prepare, SOMEONE will ask for Ketchup!!
- Leaving them with a tasty dessert can fix main meal problems.
- And I know now why cooks/foody types drink after preparing meals... they need to!


All in all, the banquet was a great success and it was fun! It is however, a fairly involved activity and you alway want to please or at least satisfy them all. I think we did it last night at the banquet.. or maybe they were just being nice.

That is all for now! Take it for what it's worth!

Later!