Now this is the story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down, and I’d like to take a minute just sit right there I’ll tell you how it went feeding 250+ people at a homeless shelter for my wife’s birthday. Hmm, that last part doesn’t quite have the right rhythm to it… Also, it seems that I write a lot, so fair warning that this will take more than a minute.
Well it’s been two months since the big event and I’m finally writing it up (see my original posts here and here). Sorry for all those waiting for it, I have no good excuses – but plenty of bad ones! Spoiler alert, we ended up feeding all the people and then some. There were a lot of things I learned during the process and I’ll try to write them down here so the next time my wife or I gets a crazy idea, I have something I can reference to remind me that nothing goes as planned.
The Research
We have to start way back to get to the event. We decided our menu would be Italian Beef sandwiches with homemade giardania (I can never spell that right), and roasted peppers as the main course, Frozen Smoke's baked beans and Meathead's Deli Slaw for the sides, and homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert. We didn’t have to bring anything to drink or plates/silverware, they had that at the shelter. We fundraised by doing a GoFundMe with some of our friends. Sounds simple, right? Well,
Well it’s been two months since the big event and I’m finally writing it up (see my original posts here and here). Sorry for all those waiting for it, I have no good excuses – but plenty of bad ones! Spoiler alert, we ended up feeding all the people and then some. There were a lot of things I learned during the process and I’ll try to write them down here so the next time my wife or I gets a crazy idea, I have something I can reference to remind me that nothing goes as planned.
The Research
We have to start way back to get to the event. We decided our menu would be Italian Beef sandwiches with homemade giardania (I can never spell that right), and roasted peppers as the main course, Frozen Smoke's baked beans and Meathead's Deli Slaw for the sides, and homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert. We didn’t have to bring anything to drink or plates/silverware, they had that at the shelter. We fundraised by doing a GoFundMe with some of our friends. Sounds simple, right? Well,
- How much coleslaw constitutes one serving? I found several different answers on several websites, and ended up going with ½ cup per person
- How many cups does Meathead’s recipe make? Can you just add all the volume measurements together? I assumed a bit less because some of the smaller ingredients would "fit" inside the larger ones
- Same questions with the baked beans
- What type of bread should we use for the sandwich? Ciabatta are expensive so we initially ruled that out, but after going through several types and with a generous donation, we ended up with a few days to go deciding on the Costco "artisanal rolls" which are basically ciabatta
- How much meat should go on a sandwich? That depends on the type of bread we use, which again was a decision that came down to the wire. Based on some test runs, we ended up using 2.5 oz per sandwich, which I’ll discuss later
- What cut of meat should I buy? This ended up being a harder decision than I anticipated, for reasons I’ll discuss
- How much raw meat should I buy to get the right amount of cooked meat? I also considered losing some weight to the meat slicer, which was not insignificant
- How much gardiania per sandwich? How many people would prefer spicy vs. non-spicy?
- How many peppers should we use, and how many peppers per sandwich? How many green bell peppers vs. red?
- After all those decisions were made, how much do all the ingredients cost? That depends on which store we get them at (Fred Meyer/Kroger, Costco, Costco Business Center, Restaurant Depot, Cash and Carry), the brand, and also if we buy cases, bundles, or individual units. I had a spreadsheet set up for this one to figure out the sizes/weights (what weight of cabbage do you need for 8 cups?)
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