Monday, November 8, 2010

Spaghetti Dinner Details

We had spaghetti with some options: meatless sauce, sauce with meatballs and a standard meat sauce available. We had dinner salads and the choice of 2 dressings, dinner rolls, butter, and salt & pepper. We provided a dessert table and ALL the dessert was brought by family and friends. People will ask what they can do and having them bring a dessert is a simple way for people to provide help. We had a lot of cookies, Texas sheet cake, apple & cherry pies, brownies, cupcakes, and Jell-O.

We purchased most all the food and miscellaneous items from Gordon Food Service (GFS), except the meat. We bought all the meat from a local meat market. They tend to have better pricing on bulk quantities. GFS has a free service that assists you in calculating ingredient quantities for benefit dinners. If you do not have a GFS near you, check with anyone that works in the cafeteria at the local schools or talk to someone who does catering, they may be able to help in deciding how much to buy. On www.allrecipes.com, I believe you can edit the serving sizes and it will tell you the quantity of each ingredient needed or appropriately altering a standard spaghetti recipe would work as well.

Even though we used GFS, I don’t have the exact recipes or ingredient quantities because a friend of the family volunteered to cook all the spaghetti for us using their own personal recipes. However, I can tell you the process we used to prepare and serve the food.

The day before-
I would highly recommend preparing the meats and sauces the day before. The pasta, dinner salad, and dinner rolls can all be prepared the day of the event.
-Brown the meat for the meat sauce and bake the meatballs (if you choose to have meatballs).
-Combine the browned meat with sauce in order to make your meat sauce. Place in disposable chafing dishes and cover with tin foil or chafing dish lids. Then, store the meat sauce in a refrigerator overnight.
-Combine the baked meatballs with sauce and place it in disposable chafing dishes (cover with tin foil or chafing dish lids, as well). Store the meatball/sauce combination in a refrigerator overnight.

Combining the meats and the heated sauce and then allowing it to cool together will enhance the flavor of the meat. If you are using store bought sauce, heat up the sauce and again, combine the meat with the sauce so that both may cool together overnight.

You should also have extra sauce that wasn’t combined with any meat to be used the next day with the pasta.

The day of-
You’ll have 4 pots on the stove throughout the entire dinner-  
Pot #1 for boiling water in order to reheat the noodles
Pot #2 for reheating the meatless sauce- low heat; stir to prevent burning
Pot #3 for reheating the meat sauce- low to medium heat; stir to prevent burning
Pot #4 for reheating the meatballs and meatless sauce combination (if you choose to have meatballs)- medium to high heat; stir to prevent  burning

Earlier that morning, start boiling the noodles as well as warming all the meats and sauces. As the noodles are done, store them into sterilized coolers that contain cold water.

There will be 3 chafing/serving dishes on your food/serving table. The only chafing dish you will be serving pasta out of is chafing dish #1. The remaining 2 chafing dishes will only contain the meat and sauce combinations, as explained here:
Chafing Dish #1: Used to serve the reheated pasta combined with the reheated meatless sauce. To reheat the cooled noodles place them into pot #1 until they are warm enough to serve, remove them from pot #1 and transfer them to chafing dish #1. Then, transfer an appropriate amount of meatless sauce from pot #2 into chafing dish #1. Repeat this process to keep chafing dish #1 full throughout entire dinner.
Chafing Dish #2: Used to serve the reheated meat sauce from pot #3 (with no noodles).
Chafing Dish #3: Used to serve the reheated meatballs and meatless sauce from pot #4 (with no noodles).
(Refill each chafing dish as needed.)

If you choose to have a dinner salad, I would recommend purchasing bulk bags of premade dinner salad. This way all you have to do is rinse the dinner salad about an hour before the dinner actually begins and serve. We served the salad out of an oversized mixing bowl. (Don’t forget appropriate utensils for serving the salad.) We purchased 2 normal sized salad dressings and served each dressing out of bowls using mini ladles.

If you choose to have dinner rolls, put them into a serving dish of your choice. Do the same for the butter chips. The dinner rolls and butter chips should be set up only moments before the actual dinner starts. Depending on the temperature, you may want to serve the dinner chips on ice so that they don’t melt. However, if they are too cold, it does make them impossible to spread. We chose to use butter chips because we felt it was more convenient for people, rather than attempting to butter their roll out of a typical butter dish, while standing in line.

Don’t forget disposable salt and pepper shakers.

We went back and forth about controlling people’s portions by having someone stand at the food table and serve cafeteria style; rather than treating the dinner as a buffet style dinner. Thankfully we had people serve themselves buffet style because we had a lot left over.

The food table was arranged in this order: Plates, plastic ware/napkins, chafing dish #1, chafing dish #2, chafing dish #3, dinner rolls, salad, dressings, salt/pepper, and parmesan cheese.

For drinks-
We served lemonade, water, and ice tea from drink coolers that were included in the cost of the dinner. From the bar, we served bottled water for $1.00; canned beer for $1.50; and canned soda for $1.50. We also served free peanuts at the bar.  Since legally, we couldn’t sell alcohol, the signs said, “Beer $1.50 Donation.” We also had the “bartender” checking ID’s when someone’s age was questionable. On the dessert table we had caffeinated and de-caffeinated coffee.
*Note*Check your facility’s policy on liquor and be sure to follow your local laws.

I would like to add that spaghetti isn’t the only option. I’ve been to Taco Dinners, BBQ’s, and pig roasts.

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