Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Extreme Catering Challenge

Hi! I hope everyone had a great weekend! Ours was pretty eventful, luckily Friday night we got to enjoy a calm peaceful night at home, because the rest of the weekend turned into somewhat of a circus!
My husband had told me that his sister would be in town this weekend, I was excited to see her and that we would get to spend a little quality time with her since we have not seen her since the wedding. Well, she is an amazing musician and coaches/manages an all star marching band. It just so happened that they had a competition at a local high school, so they drove all the way up from Tampa Friday night, and arrived early Saturday. The kids practiced all day and had the competition that evening.

My sister-in-law wanted to give the kids a good meal, something they rarely get while they travel. Normally, they get bagged lunches, boring old ham and cheese, the kind of lunches you would get on a field trip when you were a kid. These kids were out practicing and working their butts off, they deserved a good meal! Oh, did I forget to mention we were feeding 110 teenagers, and we were preparing not one but two meals!!! Let the challenge begin.... So with a small budget, I believe around 250 dollars, my husband and sister-in-law ventured into a Wal-Mart (it takes a lot to get my husband to go into a Wal-mart, but they knew they had a strict budget and that would be their best option) to stock up on all the ingredients for the day!

So lets sum this challenge up:
Cost: 250 Dollars
Meals: 2 (lunch and dinner)
Mouths to Feed: 110
Challengers: Me, my husband, sister in law, and 2 of our friends(we called and asked them for help, they had no idea what they were getting into)


Ingredients:
  • 20 pounds of ground beef
  • taco seasoning
  • 20 pounds of chicken
  • 15 heads of lettuce
  • 4 bottles of Caesar dressing
  • tortilla chips for days
  • 12 bags tortilla wraps
  • salsa
  • bags of mozzarella cheese
  • shredded cheese
Challenge 1 : Nachos for lunch
We started cooking at about 9:45, lunch needed to be at the high school and served around 11:45. We had one team of people browning meat. we had multiple burners and skillets going. We had another team chopping up lettuce. We finished around 11:15 am and the hubs and my sister-in-law took the food to the kids. I got to stay home with my friends and catch a breather! We went and grabbed lunch for all of us, and met them back at the house for challenge 2.

Challenge 2: Caesar Wraps for Dinner
The men manned down the grill while the ladies were inside chopping up lettuce and mixing it with Caesar dressing in the big tin pans we had. I think it took 4 rounds on the grill to get all the chicken cooked. After each round they would bring a batch inside and me and the ladies would chop the chicken. After getting about halfway through the first batch our hands were already bothering us. Then a light bulb went off in my friends head, don't you have a food processor! oh Duh!!! So we chopped chicken in to big chunks and then threw it in the food processor for a pulse or two to get it chopped up nice and small! We ended up filling almost 2 large tin pans with chicken!! We finished just in time to meet the 4:45 deadline for dinner.

My husband and sister-in-law brought it and served it to the kid-o's. It was a huge success and they said the kids were so thankful to have a hot meal instead of those lousy old brown bags. All in all the day was a challenge, but we all rose to the occasion and knocked it out! We were happy with the outcome and even more impressed with our extreme catering skills.

Needless to say, I did not get around to much else this weekend. After that event, we went to a housewarming party for one of my best friends and by Sunday we were so tired. The hutch is now sanded and primed, I hope to paint it and get it all finished this weekend! Can't wait to share the final product! Thanks for reading! :)

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