[Sca-cooks] OOP -- Box dinners

[a5foil]

I thought you might be interested. This turned out to be the easiest "feast"
we ever prepared -- 200 box meals for the chorus students at my daughter's
high school, for their dinner in between an afternoon rehearsal and the
evening concert.

Each meal was packed in a styrofoam box with packets of mayo and yellow
mustard, a bag of potato chips, a bag of chocolate chip cookies, a small
peppermint pattie, and a "picnic pack" containing a plastic knife and fork,
salt and pepper, and a napkin. The kids were asked to pick ham, turkey or
cheese sandwich. We ended up making 100 turkey, 80 ham and 20 cheese, on
basic white bread with iceberg lettuce. We also got a selection of sodas and
bottled water.

Monday about lunchtime Tom and I went to the local grocery for bread and
sandwich bags, and then to Sam's Club for everything else. We went home,
cored and rinsed the lettuce, and then took everything to school, arriving
about 3:00. We were given the use of the cafeteria kitchen, but only needed
3 prep tables and two rolling carts. We had two sandwich prep stations --
one parent volunteer to put 3 slices of meat and a bit of lettuce on the
bread, one parent volunteer to bag the sandwich. We also had a boxing
station. My younger daughter Tamsin and I laid out 10 boxes at a time,
loaded them with the
picnic pack, mayo, mustard, mint and cookies. Then as sandwiches were ready
we put a sandwich and chips in each box and closed it. Every 3 to 5 boxes
Tam labeled each box with marker and I stacked them on a cart. When the cart
was full, someone took the cart into the cafeteria and stacked the boxes on
a table. The sodas were put in coolers with ice, and we had enough small
coolers to keep the various kinds separate.

The dinner break was only half an hour, but it seemed to be sufficient. When
the kids got back from rehearsal all they had to do was come into the
cafeteria, pick up a box and a soda, and sit down to eat. And the meals got
rave reviews from the kids -- they thought having everything in a box was
very cool, appreciated having a whole soda each, and loved not having to
stand in line.

It took about half an hour to get everything offloaded and set up. Actual
prep time in the kitchen was about 2 hours, with about 15 minutes more for
cleanup. Our total budget was $450, and we spent about $410.

Cynara