All right, I went crazy and volunteered to provide the snacks for this month’s meeting. I’ve spoken to the president, and he said that usually at least 40 and sometimes as many as 50 people show up for the meetings.
The meeting is in the hospitality room of the Coors building. This means that I don’t have to provide any beverages, we get free beer and other adult beverages, and canned soda is available, as well as ice cold water from the cooler.
I have pretzels and a couple of kinds of cookies. I have disposable snack plates, napkins, and forks. I am going to go all out and serve stuffed pasta shells as the main snack. Since there are vegetarians in the group, I will not use my usual meat sauce, but a mixed veggie sauce instead. I plan on cooking and stuffing most of Sunday, and on Monday I will heat up the pans of shells and take them to the meeting.
Any suggestions? I have already determined that I probably won’t do this again in the near future.
I’m not sure what kind of advice you are looking for, but if you have time and people to help carry the plates in, I find pre-plating the cookies make everything prettier. I prefer a lot of small plates, interspersed with stacks of napkins.
If the pretzels are the sort that people pick up with their fingers, putting a wide flat spoon (like a berry spoon) in the bowl is nice for service. Another option is to put single size servings into disposable cups. Yes, it takes a lot of cups, but it can be useful for portion control.
If necessary, get a buddy to help you with clean-up. The cookies and pretzels will create a layer of crumbs that will need to be swept up, especially if you have any children at the meeting. Take a roll of paper towels, and maybe a container of the bleach-wipe-up-thingies.
If I have room in my budget and on the tables, I like to “pad” my menu with pre-made veggie or fruit trays from the grocery store. That way, folks don’t “hit” your main dish so hard and there’s more to go around, or I don’t have to make so much.
A trick I also do: Use a long tablecloth for the tables, and hide all my accoutrements (coolers, baskets, paper towels, wipes) beneath them.
What exactly is your definition of “snacks”?
I think pasta is a bit much.
I would go for plates of cookies or perhaps a sheet cake, plus the veggie tray and, if you want to get fancy, some sliced fruit in cut out melons.
To splurge, maybe a cheese and cold cuts tray and bread.
I think you might regret the choice of stuffed shells. It seems like a lot of work for something that needs a knife and fork and plate and napkin to work at all, will be perceived by carnivores as not having meat, and might seem more like dinner than a snack to some.
If you really like the pasta idea, how about ravioli? That way you wouldn’t have the work of stuffing them but could heat them in the sauce. Maybe a pan of meat-filled and a pan of cheese-filled.
Everything went well. I walked into the meeting just as people started arriving, mentioned that I needed help carrying food in, and immediately got several people willing to help me bring in stuff and set it up.
My main problem is that I’ve never tried to make a dish for 50 people before. Fortunately, making veggie spaghetti sauce is pretty flexible. I spent ages stuffing the pasta shells, but they turned out pretty well. Some people didn’t eat the pasta, but everything that went on a plate got eaten. I served Chips Ahoy and Nilla Wafers, and had no leftovers. I also served pretzel sticks, and had leftovers. I think that serving the pretzel sticks in small disposable cups might have been a good idea.
Other people brought in some pastries, snack crackers, and cut up fruit and veggies.
The stuffed shells needed a plate and fork and napkin, but no knife. I got quite a few compliments on them. The idea was to have some snacks, and not dinner. The shells were filling yet vegetarian. If the meeting had gone on for more than a couple of hours, then I might have been tempted to provide some sort of meat. As it was, I looked at buying some cheese enchiladas, chips, and salsa for the snacks, but the restaurant I wanted them from closed early on Mondays.
The meeting area is actually a hospitality room in the Coors building. I had a long table available, and large trash cans. I was only responsible for removing whatever food and accessories that I had brought.