[Sca-cooks] What would you do?

[a5foil]

The group could afford to print the menu but not get front money to the
cook? I would have tossed the menu right out the window -- I mean, into the
recycle bin.

Then I would have prepared my own menu -- keeping as much of the original
one as possible, if that's what people were actually expecting -- in order
to stay under budget with foods that could be prepared with little effort.
And I would have done most of my shopping at Sam's Club or one of the other
discount stores, where I could get reasonable quality food cheap -- except
for spices, which I would get fresh and in small quantity from the natural
food store. In fact, I would have done the shopping in two runs -- one as
early as possible to get items needing pre-prep back home for the cook staff
to work on, and a second run by a non-cook for bread and butter and salad
greens and other stuff not needed until the next day.

And last, I would never EVER volunteer to cook a feast for this group again!

Seriously, I think the biggest problem here was that someone other than the
cook set the menu in advance. Except for horrendously large feasts, it is
actually possible to shop in the morning, preprep in the afternoon and
evening, SLEEP, and get the food out on time. You do need to have a good
staff that works well together and doesn't get upset when you yell.

Cynara