After a great show in Quincy, MA last night Matt (tour cook, not me) and the gang laid out a nice snack spread of leftovers and other assorted goodies. I was so tired that I was not to much help. I hit the sack as soon as we pulled out and slept through to the morning. I woke up about 6:00 AM a bit groggy but got going pretty fast. Jay and Dave Marden were up and doing breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage and all the usual breakfast items.
Lunch was split again but to add some spice, it was remote. We needed to cart the lunch over to the stadium where the corps was rehearsing. The lunch was cadet-style grilled cheese which means we butter the bread with mayonnaise. Now this is the way my family has always done it, but many people find it strange. We setup a bit of a line to assemble the bread, cheese and mayo. Tessa, Alice, Elaine and I were able to get the 400 sandwiches made in about an hour and a half. After we got the first large pan finished Matt, Dave and Jay grilled them up and put them in hotel pans and into the cambro for transport. The rest of the lunch was packed and shuttled over to the corps.
After lunch departed we started on dinner. We planned dirty rice since we had lots of onions, peppers, celery, ground beef and rice. Alice and I started by chopping peppers and onions then I did the celery. I cooked the vegetables on the flattop. We saved off some of the vegetables to cook without animal fat so we could serve a vegan version of the dish. While I had a quick shower and shave, Matt browned the ground beef. Then time was getting tight so I started to cook the rice. I used the oven method to cook the rice. We decided to cook about 32 pounds of rice so we would be sure to have enough. While the rice cooked we portioned out the meat and vegetables into 8 foil lined hotel pans and added the creole spice mix that Alice had made up earlier in the day. Once the rice was done, we added a good amount to each pan, added a bit more chicken broth, mixed it all up and and covered them with foil and put them back in the oven for a bit.
We served the dinner with corn and salad. Lots of members, volunteers, and staff said they enjoyed the meal, so I think the team had another success. I saved some of the rice I made to give to our Asian members, they miss their rice so much that I thought a little treat of plain rice might be well received.
We are off to see the show and since we are doing snack back at the housing, we have the rare treat of having nothing to do at the show.
Here are some shots.
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| Cooking the Holy Trinity - Carrots, Onion and Celery |
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| Member Shun Sasaki enjoying Dirty Rice and some plain rice I made special for our Asian members |
