22 and counting...

You know you've had a good activity when you take 22 tea-towels home to wash.

On Saturday evening our ward held their 3rd annual Youth Awards dinner. Makayla has done some great blogging on it and seeing as I was in the kitchen for the night, I have no photos to show so go here and here for a read of our 'most excellent' night.

From a kitchen slave I mean kitchen hand point of view this is what happened........

Chefs - Kit Porter, me, Stephannie Triffitt, Vicki Ziesel, Marie Ziesel and Phyllis Moores

Dishwashers - Rene Ziesel and Mark Webster

Waiters - Elders Quorum

Thankyou to all the sisters who made a cheesecake or cake for the dessert.

Menu

Cauliflower or Pumpkin soup
Marinated chicken drumsticks with stuffed creamy potatoes and sweet pine nut tossed salad
cheesecake or mud cake drizzled with raspberry sauce and whipped cream

Two wks before the event, us chefs got together and came up with the menu. I came up with the dessert idea - see where my head was? We then had another meeting a week later to work out the logistics of feeding nearly 100 people a 3 course meal and then through the week, we all did a wee bit of food shopping! We were each in charge of various items, me the pumpkin soup, Phyllis the cauliflower, Kit the chicken, Marie the salad and Vicki the potatoes.

Last year I made the pumpkin soup and had bought some really big 17 and 15 litre pots. We only had 60 people though so it was not too daunting. This year took a little longer with 96 people, but while I was out at the chapel helping put the potatoes together on the Thursday, Simon cut up all the pumpkin, potato and carrots for the soup. What a legend!

On Thursday morning we got together and put the potatoes together. Before coming to the chapel, we each boiled at home about 20 potatoes each. At the chapel we scraped out the insides of the 100 potatoes, mashed them and added the ingredients and then placed them back in their jackets. This was one of Vicki's recipes so I knew it was going to be delish. So with them all we had to do on Sat was pop them in the oven to cook (Vicki bought her own as the chapel one is hopeless) and pop them under the BBQ to keep warm.

Sat morning Kit cooked the marinated chicken at home (200 drumsticks). Sounds easy but she had not gone to bed until 4am as she had stayed up with Ashlee who was in labour all night. (Ashlee had a beautiful baby girl, Abby Rose(7"1) on the Sat at about 5pm), so she was exhausted but in usual 'Kit' style, cheerily plodded along.

Vicki and Marie got to the chapel first at 3.30 and started on the salad. I arrived at 4.15 and Kit at 4.30pm with updates of Ashlee in labour. Stephannie and Phyllis then arrived and our crew was ready to do 96 entrees, 96 mains and 96 desserts. Our dishwashers Mark and Rene started at 6pm and did not stop washing up for 3.5hrs. I was so impressed!

Bishop thanking some of the kitchen crew - Rene, Kit, Marie, Vicki, Phyllis and mwah. I think Steph was off changing Lachie's nappy. I was wearing the apron Jackie Webster gave me for my birthday 2yrs ago. She even embroidered my name on it.

With the dessert we decided that presentation was everything and tried to drizzle the sauce on and provide a dollop of whipped cream but by the end of it all we were all tired and getting a bit giggly from being overtired so some of them looked more like a swimming pool of sauce over the cake.

It was actually a really fun evening, partly because we were super organised and relaxed, having alot of laughs along the way.

A big thankyou too to Simon who took care of the kiddos all day and made sure Jonty was happy even though he hadn't had a milk feed since 7am and got the soup heated and to the chapel JUST in time for entrees.

Congratulations to our youth. It is great to see them officially recognised for all the hard work they do and the efforts they put into achieving their goals that will hold them in good stead for years to come. They really are a wonderful group of young people and although I am roughly 20 something years older, THEY are the example to me.