A View From the Kitchen......Stake Youth Conference July 14-18 2010

Me and Cindy and the Guacamole!

In all of our planning meetings it never occurred to me that feeding 400 people at a time would be any different than feeding 50 or so at girl's camp or that one stint we had of feeding the masses on a Stake Youth Trek.  But I was wrong.  This was very different because #1 we (our little team of 5) were doing all the cooking and #2 we were doing all the clean up.  Above and beyond that we were doing all the shopping, hauling, storing, hauling again, running to the store for last minute items, staging ice water at all the different locations and on and on it goes.  The logistics of all of this were at times mind boggling.  The weather was the hottest of the year.  And did I say there were lots of people at this thing?  From the Stake Center we were doing two meals a day plus getting the food ready for the members who were doing breakfast in the mornings.  We would start getting those boxes ready right after dinner so that people could come and pick them up by 8pm.  We also had several nights of serving watermelon or brownies for the evening events.  Wow!  It was a lot! 

We were blessed to have access to some walk in coolers (I will not disclose the location here as it is top secret and if I told you then I'd have to kill you!) and so we were constantly making trips to load and unload food there....but it was such a blessing to have them, I don't know how we could have pulled this off without them!  Luckily we had lots of people that pitched in to help us.  Lots of the Stake Young Men's Presidency that did our hauling and fetching for us and many, many willing hands that stepped in to serve and prepare food with us!  In fact Cindy Knudsen, wife of the Stake Young Men's president just finally started showing up full time with us in the kitchen and was there helping with everything...she was amazing!  Thanks so much Cindy!  

Our first lunch on thursday was so amazing I just HAVE to describe it in detail!  In the planning stages, each of us on the committee sort of headed up the planning and preparation for one of the meals.  Janine See was over this first lunch and I could not believe the amount of work she put in to have this beautiful home made lunch.  It was Taco Salads which in my world could have been pretty simple with lots of pre made stuff....but not in Janine's world.  She and Danelle Dickerson had pressure cooked all the chicken (which was delicious) and did all the beans (two kinds) from scratch.  Then Janine had made by hand probably 4 gallons of salsa (yummy), she did acquiesce and buy the chips, but then the day of, dropped off a case full of avocados to make fresh guacamole for 400.  And all the lettuce had to be wash and chopped by hand because she doesn't believe in pre bagged lettuce!  So Cindy and I got busy scooping avocados and the race to lunch began!  I have to say it was big hit and a spectacular, yummy lunch!  Wow!  She had really thrown it down (As Bobby Flay would say) so now we all had to live up to her legend!