The goal: Feed 65 hungry high school football players a pre-game dinner completely by myself (since I procrastinated too long to ask someone to help me) with a budget of $130.
The menu (as per Spencer's request): Spaghetti, meatballs, fruit salad, Caesar salad, garlic bread, and cookies
Gathering supplies: One giant trip to Costco for 12 lbs. meatballs, 12 lbs. fruit, 24 jars sauce, and paper products.
Two trips to Safeway--one to buy 16 lbs. noodles and order 14 loaves of garlic bread and the other to pick up the garlic bread and buy the makings for 8 Caesar salads. (Totaled well over $200, but paper supplies will last through several more meals)
The method: Me laboring for hours over a hot stove, while AnnaLisa baked cookies by the dozens.
The results: Sauce splattered floors and walls....
a completely trashed kitchen...
a full table...
and famished football players who were scolded by their coaches to only eat "a little" so they wouldn't get sick during the game...
which meant 10 lbs. of leftover spaghetti for me to take home.
which meant 10 lbs. of leftover spaghetti for me to take home. What would you do with 10 lbs. of spaghetti and meatballs if you didn't have room in your fridge or freezer to store it?
Me? I thought about reenacting "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" for my kids, but didn't think I could afford the professional clean-up services I was going to need after dropping meatballs from my ceiling.
Sooooo, instead we ate as much of it as we could stomach...
and offered the rest out as a "free spaghetti dinner" to our church email group.
Two hours and 11 families later I'm still dreadfully over budget, but have now earned the bragging rights to say that I've singlehandedly fed over 100 people in one day. I'm pretty sure that's got to at least start to make up for the sad fact that my kids have eaten just as much cookie dough today as spaghetti.
PS Going light on dinner didn't seem to help Spence's football team too much who ended up being totally whomped by Thomas Jefferson HS (the one where you have to have an IQ of like 430 or so to go there)
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You, my beautiful eldest daughter really are "wonder woman"!!
ReplyDeleteWhen you set out to do something-you truly do it right.
Can't believe that you did not go around table by table offering them seconds-like any good babushka would!!
wowzers Lara. That is insane. That's also one lucky football team.
ReplyDelete(Next time...assuming that you are crazy enough to do it again...uh yeah...no meatballs.)
Did you feed Varsity, JV and Freshman? Wow! 65 players? I also love your trashed kitchen. Mine looks like that after cooking for 4;)
ReplyDeletelara, you're awesome! sometimes i really don't know how you do it.
ReplyDeleteWow, this is what I have to look forward to?!?! Too bad the school didn't let you cook in their industrial kitchen!
ReplyDeleteI don't know how you do it Lara! You are truly amazing! Spence's team and the 11 families you fed have to be really grateful to have you around! If I could only be more like you. Please loan me some of your energy!
ReplyDeleteIf only those families you fed could see what you went through. You are very sweet to do that. Too bad they couldn't come over and help you clean it all up. Good job Lara!
ReplyDeleteSeriously girl, where do you get all your energy? You fed a football team? Wow. Why? Does everyone take a turn? Man, when I played sports I just packed a bigger lunch.
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