I shouldn't be blogging

... really, I don't have the time today
and honestly, "short on time" is the way I like to run things around here, so that's no problem with me.

No, today I have neither the time nor the faculties to write a long, involved, thoughtful post about something important. Instead I'll leave you with this.
Years ago, as many of you know, I managed a medium-sized restaurant, a large catering business, and an equally large fraternity meal service. It was challenging to say the least - loads of fun, and tearfully frustrating all at the same time. So it shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone that I volunteered to prepare a number of catered meals for team-meetings at our local church here in Lincoln. The team I cook for meets once a month and, typically, there are only 12 of them. I have a blast.

So yesterday I get a call from the church wondering if I can pull something together last minute and prepare a luncheon for this Thursday (which was, at the time, two days away) "SURE!" I said. After all, I love anything having to do with food prep. "So, how many," I asked...
Thirty.

"thirty?" I muttered

Thirty.

Now, to put things into perspective, I've cooked for over 1,000 before, plenty of times. I can wrap my head around any number of guests... provided I have at my disposal a commercial kitchen, a staff of at least 10, a double-wide convection oven, jacketed steam kettle, and fryer set-up. Oh yeah, and a walk-in cooler/freezer combo. I have none of those things. None.

So here I go, preparing a meal for 30 with one fridge, two skillets, and any number of nylon cooking utensils. The labor is easy, it's the cooking/storing space that's tricky.

The menu: nah. I'll make you wait until tomorrow for that. Suffice it to say I cooked over 12lbs of ground beef this morning. Don't know what twelve lbs looks like? Well, This is half of it:


Cheers, it's back up to the kitchen I go.
oh yeah, did I mention I have a baby? Hmm, good thing he's napping well today!