Pulling Off the Ginormous Feast
Creating the menu for the Winter Rendezvous is easy. Expanding the recipes out is where your guesstimation skills are tested. How much of each dish should we make for the Feast?
Well, you start with the expected attendance; notionally, that’s about 325 or so this year. Might be more, might be less. How much can hungry (and cold) Scouts eat? In one sitting? I start with the assumption that they’ll wolf down about three-quarters of a pound of protein apiece. So, we’re looking at 245 lb of meat, give or take, spread across five entrees (one is a vegetarian entrée, so perhaps a little less).
Then, you have to visualize how many hotel pans each finished dish will make. A minimum is four pans’ worth: two serving lines X two seatings. A dish they’re more interested in merits, say, six pans. Something they’ll eat the heck out of rates eight. (I have occasionally gone as high as ten pans or so, but this usually winds up generating a lot of leftovers.) Back and forth, one massages the numbers.
On top of the entrees, there are three sides and three desserts and something of the same process has to be applied to them. At the end of it all, we want everybody to feel stuffed and warm and well content. And we don’t want too high a mountain of leftovers to dispose of on Sunday morning (though there is always stuff left over, which we salvage as much as possible from and send home with people).
And all of this guesstimation has to be done in the shadow of a budget. I can be as crazy as I want and nobody will tell me what I can’t cook, as long as I keep bringing in the magic under budget. Lots of people can cook. Fewer can manage the logistics of the big feed. But the numbers - both in terms of shopping lists and budget - are where the true challenge lies, and they are not for the faint of heart to deal with.
Well, you start with the expected attendance; notionally, that’s about 325 or so this year. Might be more, might be less. How much can hungry (and cold) Scouts eat? In one sitting? I start with the assumption that they’ll wolf down about three-quarters of a pound of protein apiece. So, we’re looking at 245 lb of meat, give or take, spread across five entrees (one is a vegetarian entrée, so perhaps a little less).
Then, you have to visualize how many hotel pans each finished dish will make. A minimum is four pans’ worth: two serving lines X two seatings. A dish they’re more interested in merits, say, six pans. Something they’ll eat the heck out of rates eight. (I have occasionally gone as high as ten pans or so, but this usually winds up generating a lot of leftovers.) Back and forth, one massages the numbers.
On top of the entrees, there are three sides and three desserts and something of the same process has to be applied to them. At the end of it all, we want everybody to feel stuffed and warm and well content. And we don’t want too high a mountain of leftovers to dispose of on Sunday morning (though there is always stuff left over, which we salvage as much as possible from and send home with people).
And all of this guesstimation has to be done in the shadow of a budget. I can be as crazy as I want and nobody will tell me what I can’t cook, as long as I keep bringing in the magic under budget. Lots of people can cook. Fewer can manage the logistics of the big feed. But the numbers - both in terms of shopping lists and budget - are where the true challenge lies, and they are not for the faint of heart to deal with.