Dinner for 150

[liralen]

So I signed up to help with cooking for a farewell dinner for one of our pastors, and it's been oddly frightening and exhilirating trying to plan for 150 meals.

Especially as the assignment has been split between one guy doing the meat, one lady doing all the desserts, and I get to figure out everything else. He's decided on turkey, as it's that season, and turkey can be so inexpensive right now, especially compared to all the other meats.

I am planning on stuffing, a steamed vegetable, green bean mushroom soup cassarole, salad, and rolls. Costco did the first two, no problem. All I have to do is add butter and broth to Pepperidge stuffing mix. Easy Peasy. They also had 6 pound bags of suspiciously familiar mixed vegetables, good vegetables, but they really looked familiar to what a number of the middle-weight restaurants around here serve. They also have a really good salad selection, but I got all the dressing at Safeway. mizkit's Ted posted a beautiful soft roll recipe that got me all excited. A 25 pound bag of bread flour at Costco is only a measley $3, this compared to a bag of 25 rolls being $5, and I was hooked. I also wanted whole wheat rolls, which they didn't have.

So I'm committed to a lot of baking Friday and Saturday. Should be interesting to do. What might be funny would be handing out pre-mixed bags of all the dry ingredients with the shortening worked in (I love how shortening is pure enough to be so shelf stable) and instant yeast worked in, and just have people add water, time, and baking and maybe get them to make some rolls for me. The church has a list of people willing to do certain things, and I may be using up all the cooking folks.

There are moments when I'm daunted by the sheer scale of it. There are other moments when it seems way too simple... and I wonder at the moments of huberis.

Comments

[greenlion.livejournal.com]

My mother used to do crazy things like make all the sweet rolls for the Easter sunrise service breakfast.

I believe it involved at various times making full use of the church's fridge and oven space, and others doing a good bit ahead and taking advantage of freezer space.

Good luck...

[archangelbeth]

Sounds like you're going to have stuff even for the non-meat-eaters. Yum! O;>

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Wow. Cool. Yeah, there's plenty of oven and fridge space, so I think I'll have everything prepped and cooked beforehand. Have four different people bring the bean cassaroles, as they should be warm that morning, if possible. There's good stove space, for the gravy, and the cranberry sauce is better with a couple day's aging.

The rolls are what scare me the most, but I think I can par-bake 'em, i.e. bake 'em enough to set them completely and just not brown them too much before hand and just do it...

I think I can. I *think* I can...

*grin*

Thanks for the luck! It's very much appreciated.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'm even subbing veggie broth from some of the chicken broth in the stuffing.

Also have one lady looking at an eggplant dish to serve as a 'turkey substitute' of sorts.

I hope that works out, but it's really up to her. Still, we planned for non-meat-eaters. *grin*

[archangelbeth]

If there are any non-meat-eaters in the group, I bet they will thank you.

YUMMY! Now I'm hungry...