Feed A Crowd For Less
Our church hosts a fellowship brunch one Sunday a month. Various groups take turns cooking food for 100 (give or take)--and naturally, this requires some frugal planning. Last month, my group baked the equivalent of 8 ham and potato casseroles to serve with a make-ahead green vegetable salad and fruit. Along with 100 bran muffins from scratch, I also made some novice mistakes.
So let's talk quantity cooking today. Did you volunteer to prepare a Lenten meal after church, or or offer to coordinate a rehearsal dinner for a friend? Where do you turn for advice for such large quantities? How can you multiply the loaves and fishes to feed everyone?
1. Ask for help. Maybe you pray before you even crack open a cookbook. Maybe you phone the seasoned volunteer and pick her brain for ideas. Maybe you, like the Reluctant Entertainer, first consider friends who would be glad to contribute. Whatever you do--don't do it alone.
2. Create a low-cost menu. Rather than looking for deals on a pre-set menu or heading to Sam's Club out of habit, scribble a menu plan that's frugal by its very nature. Look at seasonal foods like turkey when it goes on sale in the fall, or strawberries when they begin ripening in June. Think of what you could make with an inexpensive protein base like eggs (baked french toast or strata), beans, or ground beef.
3. Fill in with inexpensive foods. Do you know the caterer's trick of placing the less expensive items first on a buffet? A giant basket of breads, big bags of Costco rolls, pans of sizzling cornbread--all help fill the plate. A hearty soup plus hot bread makes a satisfying meal. My friend Jordana, a soup master, turned me on to Twelve Months of Monastery Soups
4. Develop resources for cooking big on a budget. What works at home, with 2 can of condensed soup, can become prohibitively expensive for 100 people. What's more, you can't always multiply a recipe without adjusting--and who wants to risk wasting all that food? Yet the caterer's cookbooks I read required too much fussing. Here are the bookmarks I check:
- Cooking For Crowds is a 1963 text you can read online, free of charge. It features simple recipes geared toward volunteers, almost all of which eschew processed ingredients.
- A Kentucky Creation is one cook's record of church menus, cooked to feed the hungry. I trust her real world advice!
- Ellen's Kitchen has tons of advice and menus geared toward cooking for 100.
Do you have a favorite quantity cookbook? What's your favorite feed-a-crowd menu? Let me know in the comments, and next week we can tackle shopping for a crowd.
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6 Responses to “Feed A Crowd For Less”
February 22nd, 2010 at 4:31 pm
This is perfect, I’m signed up to feed the Lenten crowd next week after church. I’m used to cooking for ten to fifteen, but 100 will be interesting. Thanks!
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:54 pm
I have the Church Suppers cookbook, which is really helpful. It has good, down-home recipes, great rolls and breads.
http://www.amazon.com/Church-Suppers-Favorite-Recipes-Communities/dp/1579124534/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266882670&sr=8-1
Those are all good tips, though! We have a shared meal every week at church, but we just ask folks to bring enough to feed their own family plus another family that size. That seems to cover things when we have guests join us. Yesterday I made curried chicken on rice – a nice, inexpensive meal for a crowd.
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:28 pm
The More with Less cookbook by Doris Jantzen Longacre has a few good recipes arranged for a crowd, especially the baked goods recipes (my favorite cookbook, full of great recipes) and its sister book, Living More with Less has a whole chapter on frugally feeding a crowd.
For a crowd, I’m fond of pans of cornbread, big pots of soup, or something served over rice or pasta.
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:03 pm
I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this. Our extended family is pretty big so anytime we all get together it can be a challenge. My grandfather always rsed to fry fish caught from his pond so all we had to buy and make was fries, hushpuppies and coleslaw – all pretty cheap:) Now that he’s not abl to fish as often though we’re trying to branch out a bit from the tried and true to something we can afford to do as often as we’d like to get together. Our other favorite – low country boil – gets expensive. But oh it’s yummy:) And easy!
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:41 pm
These are great ideas. If I need to cook for that many people, I break out my trusty “Food for Fifty.” It is the classic book for catering. It is the book that I used “back in the day” in cooking class.
Usually, you can find it at used.addall.com – my go to site for out of print books – for about $5 plus shipping. (I am not affiliated with this or any other website, but it is an outstanding tool to research prices).
I prefer older cookbooks, so I have and use the 5th edition (1971). Finding that edition for under $10 took a couple of months, but I feel like it was worth it. All of the versions have very good menus and recipes that come out well time after time. Since it is meant to be used in a “for profit” company, it uses all of the caterers tricks to keep down food costs.
March 11th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
great post! I’ve used Ellen’s Kitchen before. We host community meals every week at our church, so sometimes I help with that.
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