catering shmatering

I realized that some people may have never ever had experience cooking for a crowd so I'll start posting more tips and hints from my catering insight.

This weekend I catered a small conference and the biggest nightmare (which can go either way) is too much/too little food. I had planned for 35 people for a day-long intensive and ended up having only 14 people. Luckily, Costco will accept returns. I felt so guilty after finding out that they just trash the food returns--all that good food (i'd gotten it two days before) wasted!

Looking for some ideas of what to make that can multiply easily? Here's the menu I used this weekend that was both creative and not too difficult--considering I had three meals + snacks to do for this conference.

Breakfast:

Hashbrown casserole
scrambled eggs
cut melons (cantelope & watermelon)
pigs in blankets
OJ
Coffee

Lunch:

Hot dogs
Hamburgers
grilled chicken
pasta salad
green salad w/pumpkin seeds, pomegranate, goat cheese with olive oil/vinegar as the dressing (LIGHTLY TOSSED!!)
melon (remainder from breakfast)
Madeleine Cookies

The beauty of this menu was that a lot of the breakfast items (pigs in blankets and melon) worked both meals. Since there were ample left overs (due to the planning for a much LARGER crowd), people were free to snack on those throughout the morning. If you have a grill available to you when you're doing a lunch for a crowd, the clear choice is a cookout. Easy to prep, easy to cook, easy to clean. IF you're interested in how I made the salads or anything, msg me and I'll send the info.