Cooking for a Crowd

Y’all probably think I’m ignoring you, but I’m honestly not being mean. I’m just trying to get ready for our monster crowd on Saturday. Posting my progress reassures me all is in order.

How do you feed 100 people at a party? It’s a question I ponder each year when deciding on my menu plan for our annual pool party. Here’s our offering for this year.

• Pico de Gallo and tortilla chips
• Vegetable trays
• Fruit kebobs
• Salad
• Chicken fajitas
• Panamanian rice
• Guacamole
• Cake

Many people show up with food offerings such as chips, dips, side dishes, desserts, and so on. Eva, one of our neighbors, is from Panama and insists on making the rice which I think is very generous. We always have too much food and no one ever leaves our house hungry.

The trick to getting things done on a large scale is to break each component down into manageable tasks. I make a work plan and do one task per day in the weeks preceding the actual party. Prepare as much ahead of time as possible.

© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

I made croutons for the salad by baking loaves of homemade bread over the past few weeks. Cut the loaves into small cubes, drizzle a bit of olive oil, add garlic, and bake in the oven. Let them cool and then bag and store in the freezer. The salad itself will be assembled right before time to eat.

© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

All the onions as well as the green and red bell peppers needed for the fajitas have been prepared. Bags and bags of them are waiting in the freezer along with a few hundred flour tortillas. My husband will cut the chicken Friday night and marinate it all overnight. Then he’ll make his Pico de Gallo (which I’ve probably spelled wrong) recipe and that will be ticked off the list. It’s a type of salsa that goes with tortilla chips.

© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved

I’ve baked 4 huge cakes. Each has been carefully wrapped and put in the freezer. I’ll thaw them on Friday as a couple of friends are coming over that night to help me decorate them. They don’t look like much now, but wait until you see what we’re going to create out of them.

After decorating the cakes, I’ll work on the fruit kebobs. Dipping the fruit in lemon juice will keep them just fine until I put the whole shebang together Saturday about an hour before the party. You’ll have to see what I do with them next week, too.

Today I’m going through all our party supplies and assembling the flatware, plates, serving dishes, decorations, ice chests for drinks, and so on. We have giant party flags on long bamboo poles that we stick in the ground around the front and back yards which I’ll get out today, too.

The cloth napkins I worked on yesterday are done, the food plan is in place, and tomorrow I’ll clean the back porch and do yard work after my morning flute lesson. My husband will take care of the pool business. This isn’t so bad and all will work out just fine.