Weekend Wrap-Up

50 cups of cooked chicken breasts
10 cups dried cranberries
5 bunches celery
3 lbs of chopped pecans
1 gallon mayonnaise
3 cups honey
120 oz mandarin oranges
6 lbs strawberries
7 heads of lettuce
24 oz feta cheese
2 lbs candied pecans
4 bottles of raspberry vinaigrette
6 cake mixes
32 oz cream cheese
1 lb butter
1 package powdered sugar
2 coolers
2 totes
1 late night
1 long day
1 satisfying feeling

What?  You don't cook for 60 people every day?  Well if you ever want to, this would be your grocery list!

On Saturday, I successfully (with the help of my mom and a good friend) catered a luncheon for 60 women at my mom and dad's church.  My mom is in charge of the women's ministry and they were having a one day conference that included lunch.  There are not many caterers in their town, so my mom approached me a couple of months ago about possibly preparing and serving the meal and after some discussion I agreed to do it.  I thought it would be a fun experience and would help me decide if this was something I would possibly want to do in the future (and since it was so successful, the answer is mostly yes -- I might have a few restrictions, though).

So, after a lot of deliberation between my mom and me and my mom and her committee, we finally agreed on a menu:

Honey Chicken Salad
Strawberry Mandarin Salad with Raspberry Vinaigrette
Croissant
Miniature Bundt Cakes (two flavors - dark chocolate and lemon, both with cream cheese frosting)

I have made the chicken salad many times and it always gets great reviews and I knew it would be easy to assemble.  I cooked a batch of chicken in the crockpot every day for the past week, shredded it, cooled it, vacuum sealed it and froze it.  I had planned to serve the chicken salad in a tart shell, similar to the picture on the recipe, however not all things go as planned.  I had a hard time finding the tart shells in stock at the grocery store or at Sam's so I called a caterer that we use at work and she told me she could order them, which sounded great to me so I gave her the go ahead.  Well, next time I will make sure I know exactly what is being ordered before placing the order.  When I went to get the tart shells on Friday morning I realized they were not what I had pictured in my mind.  Instead, they were like itty bitty, one-bite pie shells that should be filled with pudding or custard and served for dessert.  Needless to say, I panicked!  Everything had been going so smoothly up to this point and this was something pretty huge to have go wrong.  So I called my mom, freaked her out a little bit and then we began wracking our brains for a plan B (note to self: always have a plan B!).  After tossing around the idea of making our own shells with phylo dough, we finally decided to place a wedge of cantaloupe on the plate and serve the chicken salad on the cantaloupe.  It ended up working out great and saved us quite a bit of time so I'm happy we ended up with that option.

After my last minute shopping trip, I loaded up my car and headed out of town.  Once I arrived in my home town, I began baking 70 miniature bundt cakes.  We decided on the bundt cakes because they were automatically individual servings and would look pretty on the plate.  I just used box mixes to save time and money, but I jazzed them up with cream cheese frosting - plain cream cheese with toffee topping for the chocolate and lemon cream cheese for the lemon.  While I am still on Weight Watchers, I did sample the lemon cake and I must say it was to die for!  I fell in love with lemon cake at my cousin's wedding last year where they served several different flavors of cupcakes and the lemon cupcake they had was AMAZING!  I can't say my cakes were better, but they were pretty darn close!

The night before the event, I had a lot of last minute prep work to do - make the frosting, chop and measure out the lettuce, peel and slice the cantaloupe, and slice strawberries.  Thankfully, my mom was a good sport and helped me out.  My dad, however, was not so happy when we sent him to the store at 11:00 p.m. to buy another cantaloupe :)  We finally went to bed a little after midnight, but there was just no way to avoid that last minute stuff.  I did as much as I possibly could have ahead of time to save time, but some stuff just wasn't avoidable.

{Christy and I frosting the mini bundt cakes}

 The morning of the luncheon, I still had to frost the cakes, mix up the chicken salad, assemble the lettuce salads, and plate the meal.  My good friend Ali had planned to help me but had another conflict, so my other good friend Christy was gracious enough to drive to my home town and meet me at the church to help out.  Had it not been for her, I would have killed myself trying to get everything done!  Lunch was to begin at noon and I think we filled the last beverage glass and set down the last plate at about 11:50, which was impressive!  Again, doing as much prep ahead of time saved us a lot of time.

{Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the food plated, but if you look really closely you can see them.  But take my word, they looked YUMMY!}

 I heard great things about the meal and had several people ask for recipes (and even had a couple ask for business cards!!  LOL!), so I would say they were all satisfied.  I've decided that as much work as it was, it was still fun and I would still do it again in a heartbeat!  I might have a few restrictions, like the max number of people (100 might be my limit) I would be willing to serve, but overall, I had a blast.  Plus, it was fun to hang out with my mom and do something together!

And just in case you are wondering, I won't be eating chicken for a while!  After cooking it all week and smelling it in the house all week, I am a little bit turned off.  I even woke up smelling it in the middle of the night one night and just about gagged!