tammylc
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Posts posted by tammylc
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How many regular cans is equivalent to a #10 can? I've decided to use canned instead of dried chickpeas to save some time, but I can't get organic beans in a #10 can...
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Thanks for the portioning tips. I was waiting until I checked out the yields on the falafel mix to make a decision re. the number of falafel per person, but I've had a couple people suggest 4/person, so I'll aim for that plus a few extras.
With all of the side dishes, I was thinking of the meat as more of an accent than the center of the meal. But I'll check out the pricing and see what looks good. The more I think about it, the more I think kabobs are the right way to go in terms of the chicken.
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I'm not intending a full breast per person - gotta keep costs down, and there's plenty of other food! So I'll probably buy 6 or 7 lbs of chicken breasts (whatever that turns out to be). My current plan is marinade them overnight in yogurt and garlic and cumin and lemon, then bake them shortly before service. Let them stand to reabsorb the juices, and then slice them so people can use the slices in pita sandwiches if they want.
My other thought was to cut up the chicken into cubes and make kabobs, and marinade and then bake those off. The advantage there is that it will be clear to the meat eaters that a serving is one kabob per person. The disadvantage is that I have to do a lot more prepwork... We'll see how my night goes...
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People were slow to sign up for the meal I posted for Wednesday, so I was thinking that I would have a very big group to cook for. But I was mistaken. I have 21 meat eaters, 15 vegetarians, 4 big kids (7-12) and 7 little kids (0-7). 36 adults, 11 children. Yowza.
The menu is pretty ambitious. Not because the individual items are especially complicated, but just because there's a bunch of them. I have a strong feeling I'm going to regret this...
Main Course
Falafel (for the vegetarians)
Marinated Chicken Breat (for the meat eaters)
Side dishes
Hummus
Tabouli
Yogurt & Cucumber Salad
Pita bread
I'm allocating 3 falafels per vegetarian and 1/4 lb of chicken per meat eater. For the side dishes, I'm making the amount that Moosewood Cooks for a Crowd says will feed 24 people, since there are three side dishes. And two pieces of pita bread per person. I'm hoping to find someplace to buy a bunch of baklava for dessert, without spending a mint. Does this sound like enough food? Too much?
Thinking out loud... I really should have been soaking chick peas tonight, so I could cook them tomorrow night. I might end up biting the bullet and buying canned, just to save the time - my schedule is busy this week. The tabouli will take the longest to make - while the bulghur soaks, I'll get my assistants to work on chopping the veggies and juicing the lemons for it. Meanwhile, I'll do hummus - cause that's going to be pretty easy, but will need lots of tasting to get the ratios right. Yogurt and cucumber salad after the tabouli is done. I'll start marinating the chicken tomorrow night. That and the falafel will need to go in the ovens about 5:30, which gives them a half hour to cook, and 15 minutes for us to get them plated.
Anybody have any thoughts to share?
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On my last visit to Trio I split the pairing with one of my dinner companions. Our waiter didn't even bat an eye.
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My current favorite is the Michel Cluizel single origin "Mangaro" from Madagascar, which is 65%. I generally like chocolates around 70%, although the Cluizel 85% is a superdark that I really like.
And while I really like the good stuff, I'll happily eat most chocolate if someone else is giving it to me. Except basic Hershey's bars or kisses, because they're utterly vile.
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I really appreciate this thread. I cook for 30-40 Senior Citizens at my church monthly. Rachel and FG have given me some great ideas. My budget is also limited and its a challenge for me, because cooking is my hobby.
Tammy, please keep it going.
Nice to know someone's reading...
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Instant oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly, applesauce, cheese - I'm not sure what else, since I'm not a picky eater.
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I was on duty as head cook again last night. The menu was Moroccan Cabbage and Orange Salad, Moroccan Chick Pea and Carrot Stew and Banana Cake for dessert. I had intended to serve the stew with couscous, but the cooks from the previous night had made way too much rice, so I just used their leftovers instead.
I was very proud of my food costs for this meal. Using almost entirely organic ingredients, I fed 30 adults and 7 children (although the children mostly ate out of the back up "picky eater" cabinet, so I really can't count them) for less than $50 total (plus my 10% pantry fee, so call it at most $55).
Here's the quantities:
Cabbage and Orange Salad
2 heads green cabbage, shredded (organic)
12 oranges, cut into segments (organic)
1 c raisins (organic)
2 lemons, juiced - about 1/2 c (organic)
1 1/4 c orange juice (Tropicana not from concentrate that I brought from home)
Salt, sugar, cinnamon from the pantry
Carrot and Chick Pea Stew
2 pounds dried chick peas, which I soaked overnight on Saturday and cooked on Sunday, when I had the time. (organic)
5 onions, diced(organic, from the pantry)
3 lbs carrots, sliced (organic)
2 bunches cilantro, minced (organic)
Turmeric and Cayenne (organic)
Canola oil (organic), cinnamon, salt from the pantry
Banana Cake
4 bananas (bought as "overripe" for 29 cents/lb)
3/4 lb butter (organic)
1 1/2 c milk (no hormones, but not organic)
6 eggs (free range)
Sugar, flour, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla (organic) from the pantry
Cream Cheese Frosting
1/4 lb butter (organic)
8 oz cream cheese (organic)
1 lb powdered sugar (organic)
Vanilla (organic) from the pantry
I had just the right amount of food - there weren't any leftovers (besides a little bit of cake) and everyone seemed to get enough to eat. Feedback was good. I was a little worried, because it turned out spicier than I had expected. I used less than 1/2 tsp of cayenne for the entire pot (the regular size recipe calls for 1/4 to 1/2 tsp, and I was roughly multiplying by five), and it still turned out to be noticeably spicy. But no one complained, and at least the people at my table appreciated the little bit of kick.
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Thanks for all the suggestions. We ended up trying two different techniques, both of which worked.
We put half the rice in a pasta strainer, with water in the pot below, and steamed it until it was hot.
For the other half, we put it in a pyrex dish, added some water, covered it in foil, and put it in a 300 degree oven until it was hot.
I wasn't interested in pilaf or fried rice or anything like that, because I was just using the rice to top with a spicy chick pea stew, so I wanted it plain. But if I encounter a bunch of leftover rice again in the future, I'll review them...
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No chicken stock, as the meal's vegetarian, but I get the general idea...
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I'm cooking common meal for my cohousing community tomorrow night. (For more on that, look here.) Anyway, tonight's cooks made too much brown rice, so there are a lot of leftovers, which I thought I'd use up tomorrow instead of making couscous for my Moroccan stew. At home, I usually just heat up leftover rice in the microwave, but there's no microwave in the common kitchen. Can anyone recommend another way to heat up 4 big bowls of brown rice?
Thanks!
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I'm already planning for my next time on deck, a week from tomorrow.
I'm making a Morroccan Chick Pea and Carrot Stew, served with couscous. At home I used canned chick peas, but I'm planning to boil these up from dry, since I'll need so many, and it will be much cheaper! I'm planning to do that Sunday afternoon and just store them cooked in the fridge until Tuesday.
There's a bunch of veggie chopping involved again - carrots and onions and cilantro. But other than that, it's a really, really easy recipe and very quick to prepare.
I'm trying to figure out the couscous. At home, I just combine equal parts couscous and water, let stand five minutes, then fluff with a fork. That works for 1-2 cups of couscous, but obviously I'm going to need more. Since we serve family style, I was thinking I could use my regular method and just prepare enough couscous for the table in the bowl I'm planning to serve it in - I'm thinking 2 cups dried coucous for 8 people, which would be 1/2 cup cooked per person. But if anyone has any suggestions for cooking a large quantity of coucous, I'd like to hear it.
The other thing I'm curious about is how to adapt spice levels. I know that you don't just triple or quadruple spices when converting a recipe, but I don't know what ratios I should use. The main spices in the recipe are cinnamon, tumeric, cumin and cayenne, IIRC.
Any thoughts on either of these questions?
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So what have other people been making? Have separate items been prepared for the kids or are people expecting them to eat the grown up food? I'd love for you to keep up this thread, letting us know how the co-housing meals are progressing (or not).
Meals I remember from last week:
Monday: Cincinnati chili
Tuesday: Baked chicken breasts and stuffing, assorted veggies as sides
Thursday: Chicken ratatouille with pasta
Coming up this week:
Tonight: Pasta again - this time with pesto and roasted red peppers
Tomorrow: Some marinated tempeh thing with various sides
On pasta nights most people leave some plain for the kids. The chicken and stuffing guy didn't do anything special. One of our members came up with the great idea of having a "picky eater" shelf and fridge. This has a bunch of quick and easy to prepare items that kids and picky eaters can choose from if they don't want the main meal. So that takes some of the pressure off of always making a kid friendly alternative.
I think it's a mistake to cater to the kids too much. The easiest thing to prepare is plain pasta which almost every kid will happily eat, but if the family is trying to use the common meal program a lot, then I'd worry about their kid getting undernourished! At least at home the parents would be making sure they got some protein by giving them fish sticks or chicken fingers or hot dogs or cheese or something...
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One of the major lessons I learned is to take into account the skill of my assistant cooks. Yes, there were a lot of veggies to be chopped, but it took them much longer to chop them than I thought it would, just because they didn't have the same level of knife skills that I have. That had the biggest impact on timing that I could see. So I might take that into account and delegate tasks differently in the future.
Would it be feasible to give a few basic lessons on cooking techniques to the assistants? They might enjoy it, and it would make their learning process (and the cooking process) faster.
Interesting idea. It's not something I'd feel comfortable doing - we're all adults, none of us are professionals, and I just doesn't feel right. I certainly didn't feel comfortable giving suggestions to my assistants yesterday.
But bringing in an outsider to teach a "Kitchen Skills for Cohousers" class that included some bulk cooking techniques and knife skills could be a neat thing. Hey Malawry - if you do end up visiting this summer, maybe we could convince you to jump in the kitchen for a couple hours and teach us all a thing or too...
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OK, so what have we learned?
1) Pasta, although cheap and easy to make both vegetarian and meaty, is a pain to make because of having to deal with huge pots of boiling water. In future, perhaps a pasta meal could me made with non-boil lasagna? Or, make baked ziti, as the pasta can be par-boiled (leave quite firm) a day ahead and stored in the fridge in plastic bags, coat with a little olive oil. Also, ziti is easier to scoop out of the water with a long handled strainer than spaghetti and then the boiling water can be left until cool to drain it into the sink.
2) Figure out how long you think everything will take on the day you're cooking, then add an extra hour!
Sounds like a great meal (especially the salad), congratulations!
I still think pasta is a nice easy staple. In the future, I'd probably only make one type of sauce, and then maybe have meat on the side (like sliced grilled chicken breasts or something). The biggest problem with pasta is that the people who outfitted the kitchen made some bad choices - ie. we only have one pot with a pasta insert - the others all need to be carried to the sink and strained in a colander, and that's a huge PITA when you're talking 20 quart pots.
To me, the prospect of making pans of lasagna sounds much worse!
Timing wise, we really did quite well. I think another 20 minutes would have been plenty - the big rush was in getting everything plated up and out to the tables at the very end. Plus, we had a little bit of dead time in the middle when we should have been setting the tables but they were getting some maintenance done to them.
One of the major lessons I learned is to take into account the skill of my assistant cooks. Yes, there were a lot of veggies to be chopped, but it took them much longer to chop them than I thought it would, just because they didn't have the same level of knife skills that I have. That had the biggest impact on timing that I could see. So I might take that into account and delegate tasks differently in the future.
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Well, that was fun. And exhausting!
I got up bright and early Sunday morning to go shopping. Then, around 4 pm, I went over to the common house to start with the cooking. In retrospect, I should have started a little earlier. We managed to get the food on the table right on time (6:15), but we had to work pretty steadily to do that, and I recruited a friend as an assistant when he showed up about 20 minutes before dinner and asked if there was anything he could do. Plus, we didn't have time to clean as we went, which made me feel bad for the cleaning crew that came after.
But everyone enjoyed the meal. Despite all my querying and calculating and saying "yes" to everyone who asked at the last minute if they could sign up, I still ended up with too much food and a bunch of leftovers. I don't have an exact count right yet, but we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 64 people, of which about 48 were adults and teens.
As many people were kind enough to inform me, it just takes longer to cook this much food! It took over an hour just for my giant pots of pasta water to boil. The stove was a little annoying - the burners are too close together to easily fit a bunch of big pots at once. Plus, the cooktop has a bunch of different BTU burners, so I couldn't get water going on the highest BTU burners and still have big front burners for cooking sauce. So I ended up shuffling pots around quite a bit, and damn those were heavy pots.
I spent about $160 on food. There's a 10% pantry fee that gets added on to that, and then the cost gets divied up among everyone who ate, with reduced rates for kids and teens. Cost per person will probably come in somewhere around $4 - which might be a little high compared to some other meals, but hopefully not too out of of line. I bought some ingredients (like the vinegar and honey and mustard for the salad dressing) that will end up being added to the pantry and will just reduce the cost of another meal somewhere down the line. And I didn't end up using two large cans of tomatoes and two green peppers that I had bought. And I had a bunch of leftovers, so clearly I bought more than I needed to anyway. Plus, the salad included a number of fairly expensive ingredients.
Here's what I made, and how much food I used. I've marked the things that I was able to get in organic - turns out you can't get organic peppers this time of year, so my goal of making the vegetarian sauce entirely organic was not achieved.
Salad
3 big bags spinach (organic)
22 oz of soft goat cheese
1 lb of pecan halves
A bunch of dried cherries
Salad dressing
Balsalmic vinegar, olive oil, mustard and honey to make up about 1.5-2 cups total of dressing
Pasta (for two pots of sauce - one veggie, one with turkey)
10 twelve oz packages of whole wheat pasta (organic)
1 lb of plain pasta (for the kids)
8 onions (organic)
8 green peppers
4 red peppers
4 lg cans of crushed tomatoes (organic - already in the pantry)
2 lg cans of diced tomatoes (organic)
2 cans of tomato paste (organic)
3.75 lbs of Italian turkey sausage, removed from the casings (2 packages sweet sausage, 1 hot - I make it just with hot at home, but figured I should tone it down for the crowd)
Chopped garlic, dried oregano and basil, black pepper (already in the pantry)
7 big loaves of garlic bread (cheap Meijer brand frozen)
Dessert
One of my assistant cooks was responsible for dessert, and we were using up some fruit left from a previous even in the common house, so I don't know for sure what we used. But there were three 9x13 pans of fruit crisp, and we easily could have gone through a fourth - we did manage to run out of dessert.
It was definitely a lot of work. My legs and back and arms all hurt last night, and my arms still hurt today from all the stirring and heavy pot lifting! But given that I spent three hours cooking on Sunday but will probably eat common meal 4 times this week, all told I think it's a pretty good deal!
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Thanks for the tips, Malawry.
The kitchen is really just a slightly souped up home kitchen. We have a 6 burner gas stove-top and two electric wall ovens. We've only begun common meals this week, so I'm not sure how we're doing on equipment yet - for example, I don't know if we've got our rice cooker yet, or what the array of oven equipment looks like - we're still getting set up.
Dinner is at 6:15. I have two assistants, and will usually aim to start around 4, unless I'm making something particularly complex or that needs a long time to cook. And I can do some prep the night before if necessary. All we're responsible for is setting the tables for dinner (including filling water jugs) and actually making the food. There's another team of people who stay after dinner to clean up and do the dishes.
Because this is our first week, everyone's been wanting to participate and meals have been very, very busy. Usually in the range of 48 adults and a bunch of children of assorted ages, filling every seat at every table. We'll see if the effect has worn off by the time Sunday rolls around!
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It's interesting to read all the notes about how bad the eating is in Ann Arbor. Come up to Flint sometime, and I'll show you a food waste land.
Oh, I hope this thread doesn't come across that way! Ann Arbor has great eats - just not in a certain category. I'm overjoyed with my options and the quality, and feel really lucky to live here! I know things are much, much worse in many other places.
And that's a great Tapawingo story - thanks for sharing it!
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Thanks for the suggestions, Chow Guy.
For Sunday's meal, I'm planning to serve the following:
Whole wheat pasta served with a tomato sauce of turkey italian sausage, peppers and onions OR a meat-free tomato sauce
Spinach salad with goat cheese
Garlic bread
Fruit crisp
I'm aiming to do it organic as much as possible - which probably means the pasta and vegetables, but not the meat or cheese. I'll report back on my food costs on Monday.
Other meals I've got planned include a quick and easy meal for when I have to cook on a weeknight - Moroccan Carrot and Chick Pea Stew served with couscous and salad. It's good, hearty, quick to prepare, and should be very, very cheap. And I'm intrigued enough by Rachel's falafel making technique that I'll probably make Middle Eastern night for my next meal - falafel, hummous, tabouli, baba gannoush, pita. Yum.
Oh, and to answer your question, I'm in Great Oak Cohousing, located in Ann Arbor, MI. Ann Arbor is a hotbed of cohousing right now - we've got 2 communities up and running and third in the forming stages, due to break ground this summer. Units are still available!!!
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I too have indulged in very moderate wine consumption throughout my pregnancy. Usually less than a glass with a nice dinner, where the meal really demanded wine to be all it could be.
But then, I've also eaten raw fish, soft cheese and lots of other things that "they" say you're not supposed to eat during pregnancy. I certainly don't chow down on these things everyday, but I've assessed the risks and feel comfortable with the level of risk I've chosen. Your mileage may vary, of course, and every pregnant woman has to make these decisions for herself.
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For example, you spoke of making a veggie stew from the Moosewood cookbook. But why stop there? You can also make braised stew meat, chicken legs, or any of a number of other meat items -- the food cost on these cuts of meat is extremely low -- and serve them on a platter alongside the veggie stew.
Well, in terms of "why stop there" - less work! While only a few people are vegetarians, most everyone seems to be quite content with a vegetarian meal, so I don't feel compelled to have meat. But I'll definitely keep your idea in mind - I'm probably going to end up doing these 2 or 3 times a month for the foreseeable future, so I'll have ample opportunity to try different things out.
JAZ - I really like your idea about enchiladas - I'll definitely add that to my future meal list.
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That's a good idea that's been used to good result at our community meetings. Salad bars, Cincinnati-style chili, taco bars, etc.
One thing that's a little different about the common meal program is that people know what the menu is and sign up in advance if they want to come. So I don't feel really strongly that I have to make something that everyone will like. Obviously I'd like to have good attendance at my meals, but I don't want to always have to cook to the lowest common denominator, either!
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Dinner is served family style at a specific time, so there aren't currently any plans for keep-warm systems.
For this week, one of my assistant cooks is planning to use up some frozen fruit left over from a party in the common house last week to make fruit crisp. Depending on how the budget looks, we'll probably get some ice cream to go with.
Right now I'm leaning towards either pasta or a stew of some sort. If I do a stew, I'll probably just do something from Moosewood and have it be an all vegetarian meal. If I do a pasta, I'm thinking of a tomato sauce with peppers and onions and italian sausage, with a simple veggie tomato sauce for the vegetarians and the kids. Or, one of my all time favorite pasta recipes - portabello mushrooms and asparagus in a Boursin sauce (with plain pasta for kids). But I have to see how the price of asparagus is right now. Plus salad and bread with any of these options.
Dinner for 40
in Cooking
Posted
You'd think so, wouldn't you? But it's not all that easy...
I did finally find a webpage with some substitution guidelines. Looks like a #10 can is approximately 6-7 lbs (depends on what's in it, of course). A standard size can is probably a #303. Judging from their substitution guidelines, looks like 7-8 cans is about the right number.