Tips on cooking for over 100

[gt0163c]

Late this month, my church is doing a variety show/silent auction/dinner fundraiser for the summer mission trips. I've volunteered to cook the meal and have a few questions/am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to make the whole process go smoother.

In the past, we've had around 150-200 people eating. We generally have about 50 people (those who are involved in helping put the whole thing together) eat first, so that leaves around 100-150 eating over the next 60ish minutes.

We have the menu mostly set.
Our main dish will be chicken fajhitas. So, that's grilled chicken, tortillas, peppers and onions (sauteed), cheese and sour cream.
We'll have a lettuce based salad, mexican rice and possibly chips and salsa and queso as side dishes.
We'll also have chicken tenders/nuggets available for the younger kids.
Dessert will be cookies made by the people going on the trips.

Questions:
Does anyone have a good, inexpensive recipe for Mexican/Spanish rice? This needs to be something fairly simple and flavorful without being "burn your tongue off" spicy. Although, being in Texas, we can handle some heat.

Similar question about seasoning or marinade for the chicken. We will be grilling the chicken, and I've got someone lined up to take care of that. But, if we don't end up buying preseasoned chicken breasts (which is an option as we have a contact at someplace that does food for Mexican restaurants), I'll have to come up with some way to season the chicken.

What's your favorite way to dress up a lettuce based salad that is widely appealing to a large number of people, affordable in large amounts and goes well with a Mexican themed meal? Oh yeah, and it also needs to be available and affordable at the end of March, in Texas.

Any recommendations for how to figure out how much food to buy? I'll have a fairly good estimate on number of people including number of adults and kids prior to needing to buy the food. But I've never been good at estimating the amount of food to make for a group.

Does anyone have any tips, ideas, recommendations for cooking for a large group? I've got some ideas about division of labor, lots of clean-as-we-go ideas and bits and pieces of how to make this work. I've helped on in previous years and in other events where meals for large groups have been cooked for. We have two ovens and multiple warming drawers, as well as access to a couple of homes with ovens not too far away (probably three to four homes within a mile, another three or four if we go to two miles out), although I'd like to do as much of it as we can at the church. Basically, I've got lots of parts of the plan, but I need to put it all together to come up with a master plan. And, any ideas or recommendations I can get would be greatly appreciate.

[khorrell]

GT - The easiest way to make spanish rice is to make a regular rice recipe (1 cup rice to 2 cups water) with salsa added at the same time as the water. You can use between one and two cups of salsa per cup of rice, depending on how tomato-ey you want it. You can make this up in advance and keep in the warmers, or use crockpots.

For salad, I would recommend simple lettuce, tomato and onion. Maybe cucumber. Its not fancy but it is also not offensive. If you want to get snazzy you could add beans (black or kidney) or shredded cheese. Both those items tend to fall to the bottom of the bowl, which can get problematic on a buffet.

You're going to need about 4-6 ounces of chicken per eater. Think about your congregation (young, old, etc.) and round up or down accordingly. About two tortillas per person, two teaspoons of sour cream, a couple ounces peppers and onions (you can buy them frozen or do fresh - check out the cost. Often frozen peppers are cheaper than fresh) and 1/4 cup cheese.

One head of lettuce will feed approximately 5 people, then throw in one or two tomatoes, 1/4 onion and a cucumber for each head of lettuce.

You might check the seasoning aisle at Sams/Costco/BJ's wholesale club for fajita marinade or seasoning. You can easily whip up a large batch of marinade using the seasoning, oil and lime juice (or vinegar, which is significantly less expensive but nowhere near as flavorful.) If you want to make it from scratch, there are lots of recipes at Allrecipes.com. You can sort by rating, then they have a feature that lets you scale the recipe to the size you need. I love that site!

It sounds like you have a good plan already in place. Hope it goes smoothly!

[Julie Rains]

It sounds like you have things under control but I'll mention a couple of things from my ventures in cooking for and eating in large groups. If you have bought enough (sounds like you have good counts there), you might want to plate the meals rather than serve buffet style -- that way you can control the portions. Then if you have extra left over, you can offer seconds but you'll make sure you feed everyone first.

For salads, don't mix odd things in hours before you serve; I was with a group that put in red pepper the night before a big event: the lettuce tasted fine but it looked awful!

Hope it goes well! Where is your group going?

[gt0163c]

Originally Posted by Julie Rains

For salads, don't mix odd things in hours before you serve; I was with a group that put in red pepper the night before a big event: the lettuce tasted fine but it looked awful!

Excellent tip. Thanks. We'll probably do almost everything the day of except for marinating the chicken and such. But especially the salad will be done that afternoon.

Originally Posted by Julie Rains

Hope it goes well! Where is your group going?

We have two teams this summer. The larger group is going to Reynosa, Mexico (just across the border from McAllen, Texas). They will be working with a group of missionaries who run a school for deaf children as well as do a lot of work in the community. Some of the team will be running an English language day camp in the mornings. There will also be lots of construction work done, possibly working to expand the deaf school, finishing up a "Ronald McDonald House" type shelter near a local hospital or building whatever else the city needs help building. And, there will be at least one trip to a local orphanage to hang out and play with the kids.

Our other team, the one that I'm a part of, will be spending two weeks in India. Our first week will be spent in Bangalore, working with a ministry to street children. My church funds a drop-in center for the street kids, so we'll be working primarily there. The ministry also hopes to have at least one foster home up and running by then, so we may be helping out there.
The second week we'll be on the southern tip of India working with a ministry called Homes of Hope that builds houses in the area wiped out by the tsunami a couple of years ago.

[Julie Rains]

Wow -- both trips sound amazing!