ChristineLS
08-23-2009, 08:59 AM
After we left for Syracuse (my hometown) our days were completely eaten up by weddingness... so I'll post a bit about those too.
Will and I went to my parent's on Wednesday afternoon, and then spent Thursday buying the last bit of food that wasn't time sensitive as well as the paper products as napkins and what have you. My brother works at BJ's Wholesale club, and so we all have free memberships there. That was a huge help in the wedding planning! There we bought Sterno trays, the sterno themselves (which otherwise is really expensive), pans, and so forth. On Wednesday Mom and Dad showed me how they were apparently solving problems Will and I had no idea that we had - like getting these $1 containers to store food without crushing them in the fridge (like a part time caterer at my dad's work told him to do), using these bowls that the previous owners left in the shed, washed and sterilized to present the food in at the tables, ice storage, etc, etc. My dad also rounded up some crock pots and a coffee percolator, an extra one, from my relatives who were more than happy to help out.
Friday was craft day. Will took the silk screened table cloths and a heat gun (what silk screen table cloths and a heat gun? I will post that in DIY - but his grandmother made a silk screen design of a rose and of a dahlia that we pulled onto muslin to make the table cloths - it was her way of being involved, and they looked beautiful. OMG though it was a ton of work) and set the pattern while I finished the name tags (again, that will be it's own thread), tied the raffeta on the wine bottles, washed the punch glasses, dried the punch glasses, and of course, because it was sunny and hot out, jumped in my parent's pool in between. :D We finalized the seating arrangement, and the evening I went to a high school friend's going away party (she's now in Korea teaching English) while Will did some work on the playlist.
Saturday was food day. My sister was going to tie the name tags to the punch glasses, since I ran out of time, but I woke up at 6:00AM to discover that my father was nearly done with it. I love my dad, and he's really funny when he gets on a mission - and this mission was to make sure that Will and I had a spectacular wedding. So when he saw a project unfinished, he really couldn't help himself...
Will and I woke up at 6:00 (him begrudgingly - I shook him awake and he goes, "I don't want to go to school" and I reply, "we're not going to school, we are getting food" and his reply, "I'm not hungry" LOL he's such a bear when asleep) so we would be among the first at the Syracuse Regional Market at seven - think really enormous farmer's market. We weren't really sure how much food to buy, so we sided with caution and overpurchased really. Judging by how much money was left in my wallet from when we started, we spent about $60-$70. We bought: 15 total heads of green, romaine, red and iceberg lettuce (turns out, that was really excessive for 80 people, but I was so afraid of running out and it was $1 a head!), easily ten pounds of grape and cherry tomatoes, two bunches of radishes, more cucumbers than we could find uses for, six giant peppers, three enormous organic white onions, six regular red onions, a pound of banana peppers, mushrooms already sliced, broccoli, a $3 gorgeous bouquet of flowers for my mom (but the thought crossed my mind to buy another and use it as a bouquet myself... then I remembered that I really didn't want/need one) carrots and I know I'm forgetting like two vegetables. Everything was super fresh.
While we were gone, my parents set up the six crockpots (one of ours, two of my folks', two of my uncle's and aunt's, and the best man's) and put the pork in it for pulled pork. We had to periodically check it to make sure that the circuits didn't break... we'd never done this before, you know.
So Will and I get back, and Will, me, my mom, my dad, and my sister get to work cleaning and chopping and sorting. We realized that we needed a new peeler, so I went to the Wegmans five minutes down the road (my former employer, actually) and picked up those with donuts and bagels. Got to feed the help! My father found the salad spinner that was a wedding gift when he and Mom got married... and it was missing the important part that lets it spin. After spending 45 minutes tearing the basement apart looking for it (missions... ;)), he goes to Wegmans and buys a new one for $6. So we rip and clean and spin and sort... we had about six boxes of salad, and each box held easily 20 cups. Whoops, I guess that was excessive....
Mom was boiling the pasta for the pasta salad, and then afterwards when we had all the vegetables chopped, we mixed the pasta salad and the regular salad together. We were done with that by 2:00PM. We jumped in the pool (absolutely a necessary part of cooking! ;)) and cleaned ourselves off, then pulled out the pork from the crockpots, pulled it, and then mixed it with the Dinosaur Barbecue sauce. That was done by 3:30. Three of the five dishes were finished, and stored in the fridge downstairs. The pork, for the record, was a Boston Butt Shoulder and the butcher (Wegmans...) chopped it up for us. We trimmed off the huge pieces of fat the night before, but we had 42 lbs, chopped off 6.5 lbs. The meat cost me $42.71. The pasta and dressings and olives and chickpeas and other food probably were about $140 at BJ's, the sterno racks and stuff were about $100, and the salt potatoes and rolls were another $100. For less than $500.... we fed a main meal to and now have the equipment to feed another eighty people!
Cooking for eighty turned out not to be so bad, because the recipes were simple and tasty, and we were really organized about it.
We all swam and relaxed for the rest of the day. We felt really accomplished, not going to lie. In the evening my best friend from high school came over and we chatted, and she showed off pictures of her new nephew (awwww) and caught up... which was great for my nerves, except I didn't really get nervous. I wasn't worried about it at all for the previous three days. So she left, and really late in the evening, the best man dropped by with another friend and we chatted, and by chatted I mean some logistics and they were going gaga for my dog, who was playing the crowd really well.
See, we left my Buffalo apartment key with my friend D. and he was feeding the fish. So we realized that we left all the cheese for the initial showing up at the apartment. We asked D. if he could give the best man (here on after, T.) the cheese so he could bring it up to Syracuse when he came to visit the night before. Well, D. takes it, drops it off to T. at his job, and then T. brought it up to us. It was about 15 lbs of Yancey's fancy cheese, different varieties, and while we would have happily eaten it later... we wouldn't be able to get stuff quite as tasty. We had purchased it from the factory in Pembroke, NY after D., our friend J., Will's bro, Will and I had picked the blueberries for another of the dishes.
That's a story on itself - Tuesday we went to Will's hometown to pick blueberries, and D's from NYC, and J. and I are not from around there. We are talking to the owner about rural verses urban areas, and mention that the berries are for the wedding. Well, we go to pay for them (a bucket, easily ten pounds, is only $10 so this was a great deal) and they ask how we know of the place. Will's bro introduces Will, and the cashier, the owner's wife, used to be a substitute teacher and remembered him well (though didn't recognize him, he's a bit taller these days!). So the owner and her smile, and give us a bucket (of two) for FREE. It was so nice of them!
So we were ready for the day of...
Will and I went to my parent's on Wednesday afternoon, and then spent Thursday buying the last bit of food that wasn't time sensitive as well as the paper products as napkins and what have you. My brother works at BJ's Wholesale club, and so we all have free memberships there. That was a huge help in the wedding planning! There we bought Sterno trays, the sterno themselves (which otherwise is really expensive), pans, and so forth. On Wednesday Mom and Dad showed me how they were apparently solving problems Will and I had no idea that we had - like getting these $1 containers to store food without crushing them in the fridge (like a part time caterer at my dad's work told him to do), using these bowls that the previous owners left in the shed, washed and sterilized to present the food in at the tables, ice storage, etc, etc. My dad also rounded up some crock pots and a coffee percolator, an extra one, from my relatives who were more than happy to help out.
Friday was craft day. Will took the silk screened table cloths and a heat gun (what silk screen table cloths and a heat gun? I will post that in DIY - but his grandmother made a silk screen design of a rose and of a dahlia that we pulled onto muslin to make the table cloths - it was her way of being involved, and they looked beautiful. OMG though it was a ton of work) and set the pattern while I finished the name tags (again, that will be it's own thread), tied the raffeta on the wine bottles, washed the punch glasses, dried the punch glasses, and of course, because it was sunny and hot out, jumped in my parent's pool in between. :D We finalized the seating arrangement, and the evening I went to a high school friend's going away party (she's now in Korea teaching English) while Will did some work on the playlist.
Saturday was food day. My sister was going to tie the name tags to the punch glasses, since I ran out of time, but I woke up at 6:00AM to discover that my father was nearly done with it. I love my dad, and he's really funny when he gets on a mission - and this mission was to make sure that Will and I had a spectacular wedding. So when he saw a project unfinished, he really couldn't help himself...
Will and I woke up at 6:00 (him begrudgingly - I shook him awake and he goes, "I don't want to go to school" and I reply, "we're not going to school, we are getting food" and his reply, "I'm not hungry" LOL he's such a bear when asleep) so we would be among the first at the Syracuse Regional Market at seven - think really enormous farmer's market. We weren't really sure how much food to buy, so we sided with caution and overpurchased really. Judging by how much money was left in my wallet from when we started, we spent about $60-$70. We bought: 15 total heads of green, romaine, red and iceberg lettuce (turns out, that was really excessive for 80 people, but I was so afraid of running out and it was $1 a head!), easily ten pounds of grape and cherry tomatoes, two bunches of radishes, more cucumbers than we could find uses for, six giant peppers, three enormous organic white onions, six regular red onions, a pound of banana peppers, mushrooms already sliced, broccoli, a $3 gorgeous bouquet of flowers for my mom (but the thought crossed my mind to buy another and use it as a bouquet myself... then I remembered that I really didn't want/need one) carrots and I know I'm forgetting like two vegetables. Everything was super fresh.
While we were gone, my parents set up the six crockpots (one of ours, two of my folks', two of my uncle's and aunt's, and the best man's) and put the pork in it for pulled pork. We had to periodically check it to make sure that the circuits didn't break... we'd never done this before, you know.
So Will and I get back, and Will, me, my mom, my dad, and my sister get to work cleaning and chopping and sorting. We realized that we needed a new peeler, so I went to the Wegmans five minutes down the road (my former employer, actually) and picked up those with donuts and bagels. Got to feed the help! My father found the salad spinner that was a wedding gift when he and Mom got married... and it was missing the important part that lets it spin. After spending 45 minutes tearing the basement apart looking for it (missions... ;)), he goes to Wegmans and buys a new one for $6. So we rip and clean and spin and sort... we had about six boxes of salad, and each box held easily 20 cups. Whoops, I guess that was excessive....
Mom was boiling the pasta for the pasta salad, and then afterwards when we had all the vegetables chopped, we mixed the pasta salad and the regular salad together. We were done with that by 2:00PM. We jumped in the pool (absolutely a necessary part of cooking! ;)) and cleaned ourselves off, then pulled out the pork from the crockpots, pulled it, and then mixed it with the Dinosaur Barbecue sauce. That was done by 3:30. Three of the five dishes were finished, and stored in the fridge downstairs. The pork, for the record, was a Boston Butt Shoulder and the butcher (Wegmans...) chopped it up for us. We trimmed off the huge pieces of fat the night before, but we had 42 lbs, chopped off 6.5 lbs. The meat cost me $42.71. The pasta and dressings and olives and chickpeas and other food probably were about $140 at BJ's, the sterno racks and stuff were about $100, and the salt potatoes and rolls were another $100. For less than $500.... we fed a main meal to and now have the equipment to feed another eighty people!
Cooking for eighty turned out not to be so bad, because the recipes were simple and tasty, and we were really organized about it.
We all swam and relaxed for the rest of the day. We felt really accomplished, not going to lie. In the evening my best friend from high school came over and we chatted, and she showed off pictures of her new nephew (awwww) and caught up... which was great for my nerves, except I didn't really get nervous. I wasn't worried about it at all for the previous three days. So she left, and really late in the evening, the best man dropped by with another friend and we chatted, and by chatted I mean some logistics and they were going gaga for my dog, who was playing the crowd really well.
See, we left my Buffalo apartment key with my friend D. and he was feeding the fish. So we realized that we left all the cheese for the initial showing up at the apartment. We asked D. if he could give the best man (here on after, T.) the cheese so he could bring it up to Syracuse when he came to visit the night before. Well, D. takes it, drops it off to T. at his job, and then T. brought it up to us. It was about 15 lbs of Yancey's fancy cheese, different varieties, and while we would have happily eaten it later... we wouldn't be able to get stuff quite as tasty. We had purchased it from the factory in Pembroke, NY after D., our friend J., Will's bro, Will and I had picked the blueberries for another of the dishes.
That's a story on itself - Tuesday we went to Will's hometown to pick blueberries, and D's from NYC, and J. and I are not from around there. We are talking to the owner about rural verses urban areas, and mention that the berries are for the wedding. Well, we go to pay for them (a bucket, easily ten pounds, is only $10 so this was a great deal) and they ask how we know of the place. Will's bro introduces Will, and the cashier, the owner's wife, used to be a substitute teacher and remembered him well (though didn't recognize him, he's a bit taller these days!). So the owner and her smile, and give us a bucket (of two) for FREE. It was so nice of them!
So we were ready for the day of...