A long week, with a good ending..

Well it might be appropriate (somehow) that today is the Ides of march.  The feeder’s world has kind of been disrupted lately.  It’s been over a week since I have put pen to paper, or more realistically finger to keyboard.  A lot has transpired betwixt then and now, not the least of which was a nasty cold/flu/virus thing that knocked me out for most of the time.  Nonstop coughing feeling like, well…..  Anyway it pretty much took over.  A week ago we went up to Baltimore (Ball’mer) so MFO could attend a workshop on preservation of archive stuff in the face of a disaster (sea level rise, zombie apocalypse, etc.).  She is developing the disaster plan for the St. Mary’s County Historical society.  Probably that journey warrants a blog of its own, which we will get to eventually.   Quiz: where is Waldo (The Feeder)?

Writer’s note:   what follows is kind of long, but I wanted to make sure you realize what goes into a/the Gala, where you sit down, have wonderful food, and enjoy yourself.  Behind the curtain:

Fortunately I rallied enough that we were able to attend the Ryken High School Gala this past weekend.   It turned out really well.  The “theme” was “The Chef’s Table” which was meant to allow guests to see an “open kitchen” and get a peek on how something like this gala works. Delivering food to your table as we have said, takes a lot of hard work by a lot of people.   You don’t just show up and get food ready for 400 people.  So, the day before, tables must be set, 

(salad) plates laid out

And in the back of the house (aka Kitchen) the culinary team gets to work,

Prepping the food  

Making soups and sauces

not your light duty Immersion Blender!

Straining the result

Check on the (peekeytoe) crab in the walk in

Et cetera!  All of which makes for a long day.  Has to be ready for the next day.

So the day of the event might start with a “staff meeting”

And then the work begins as (400) guests start to arrive

I could go on for pages and you would be asleep, but let’s look at a couple of things, first the

ANATOMY OF THE SALAD

and....Voilá

Same for the Peekeytoe crab cake with Fava Beans

plate by plate

The first two courses could be prepared that way, but for the main course of Red Wine Braised Short Rib, you can’t much do that except kind of a la carte.  For that, you kind of need an assembly line approach. 

Assemble all the ingredients (short ribs, potato gratin, asparagus)

Then, plate by (all 400) plates

Plate it, hand it to staff and out they go.

who serves it to you moments later...

It was quite an evening, I hope those that attended were able to watch the precision that brought everything to you.  I of course enjoy that.  I was very appreciative of the Ryken folks to allow me to poke around.

Again thanks to our Chefs Michael Kelley (Canard’s Catering) and Mike Price from NYC (Market Table and The Clam, and the whole Canard's staff for their time, hard work, and exceptional skills.

And oh boy were we 

DFD