[Great Hall of Rockwall] Feast or Famine?

[kirsh01 at clearwire.net]

Greetings unto the shire,

OK, I admit, I have been lurking.  I hope everyone is doing well.  I was just
looking over this thread, and decided to offer my 2 cents.  So, welcome 
or not,
here it is ;). 

As some of you might remember, I have a bit of a history in the kitchen.  Here
are my thoughts.  First, I wouldn't try to reheat the stew in one big batch. 
Splitting it up into 20qt batches would be quicker.  Second, the stew doesn't
all have to be heated at once.  I would aim for trying to heat 2 20qt batches
early.  When they come up to temp, pull them and hold them in your
Nescoes/crock pots/chafing dishes.  Once those are empty, you can reload for
round two.  You would only need 2 burners, and would be rotating what was
warming up.  If you started the process around 9:00am, you should be fine.  I
have found that when I am running out of time to reheat, cranking up 
the burner
works only if you stir continuously.  If you are short of holding pans, 
walmart
sells the cheap wire/foil chafing dishes that use sterno to heat.  I would
recommend setting up a water bath for the thicker items like stews to avoid
scorching. 

Anyway, those are just some thoughts from this peanut in the gallery. 

Abraam Samuel ben Jucef
(M.K.A. Lyle Kirshenbaum)

Quoting Kelli Quinn <willowhare at hotmail.com>:

>
> Would it change the situation any if rather than planning stew/soup 
> for the full 450, we only plan servings for about half that number? 
> The other half of the meals could be taken up by easier to prepare 
> stuff, like cold-cut sandwiches, brats, hot dogs, Italian beef and 
> the like. Or corn dogs. We could call them "stick jock dogs". 
>
> While this would not change the simple physics of heating the stew to 
> legal temperature, it could make it easier to handle. Once the 
> stew/soup is gone, it's gone. Or, do we have to intend to have enough 
> servings of everything for everybody? I don't know the rules on this 
> one. 
>
> And while 12/8 may be cold in Wisconsin, it tends to be a little 
> warmer inside that building with hundreds of people milling about. 
>
> We probably need to get a list together of the absolute minimum of 
> on-site kitchen equipment we are going to need over to the feastocrat 
> as soon as possible so they can plan accordingly. 
>
> And a more mundane question: since we are technically event staff, do 
> we still need to pay for admittance? We'll still need to pay for 
> feast of course, but what about the door entry fee?
>
>
> "I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far 
> write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all."
>
> Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)
>
> Down the Rabbit Hole: downrabbit.blogspot.com 
> ________________________________> Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 23:22:21 
> -0700> From: danieldebear at yahoo.com> To: 
> greathall at shireofrockwall.org> Subject: Re: [Great Hall of Rockwall] 
> Feast or Famine?>> Here are the physics of the matter. To bring a 40 
> qt, pot of water to a boil from room temp on a professional stove 
> takes about three hours. Now you have a lot of frozen or semi frozen 
> veg's add an hour or so. Now you have stew either with meat or veg. 
> So if we have all ingredients ready and are in the kitchen at 6 or 7 
> we can do it. All ingredients have to be pre cooked. We could do that 
> at someones home the weekend before by using big cookers and have 
> everything done and in bags by the day of the lunch. So we could pull 
> this off. The stews have to come to a 10 min rolling boil and then 
> maintained a 140 degrees while serving. We can probably do this if 
> the Pot comes off the heat just as we start to serve.> Guys this is a 
> lot different than making stew for even a hundred people. And it is 
> totally different than cooking at home. I have an 80 qt. pot for the 
> main stew and when it is empty we can just load into someones rig and 
> wash it at home. I believe I have a 40 qt for veg soup somewhere. For 
> the Brats we could use the slow cookers. we would keep feeding more 
> in as we take them out. As long as the temp is on high and is above 
> 140 degrees. If we have pb and j sandwiches for the kids we will have 
> at least one parent go into apoletcitic shock and scream that if 
> there child sees peanut butter from 100 yards away they will go into 
> shock and die. I have no idea whatsovere how to do mac and cheese in 
> this situ. When did we agree to make kids meals anyway. If they do 
> not like what we offer they can go get em a happy meal. We are 
> cooking for 450 people we do not have time for custom menus. If 
> somone can figure this problem out I will be there to help. I still 
> think that we can bring our own sheet pans and bake brownies and 
> cornbread that AM early. We are going to need a lot of help.> a still 
> scared Lord Daniel
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