Feeding the masses...

When I tell people that I am the youngest of five kids, their mouth hangs open. Then I say, "We're Catholic" and they nod with understanding. Back in the 60's when I was born, large families like ours were the norm. At least they were in our neck of the woods.

Over the years we have seen the pros and cons of having a large family. Pro: We can field a basketball team with matching DNA. Con: We rarely are in the same place at the same time now that we have grown up and are each living our own lives. But despite the pros and cons, we tend to have a good time when we get together!

Recently we held a party in honor of my nephew in-law's recovery from testicular cancer - it was called "The Jungleberry Ball & Testicle Festival". We held it on my brother's farm in Tennessee on Halloween weekend and included Ugly Dress & Ugly Vest "contests", karaoke, dancing, apple bobbing, bounce house etc. It was a BLAST! Unfortunately not everyone could be there (that would be 37 people including my parents, siblings, nieces and nephews and great nephews. Wow... I haven't done that math before... Wow!) but we did get 23 of us there for the party.

What do you do with 23 people that come for a long weekend? Where do you house them? How do you feed them? Easy. Assembly line. We aren't like the Duggar's so we don't have barracks-style sleeping or cafeteria grade kitchens. We have regular sized homes that we cram into for the sake of being together!

To prepare for the Jungleberry Ball & Testicle Festival, my sister in-law and niece started cooking and freezing food a week in advance. They borrowed an RV and set up their pop-up camper. From there, we just rolled with it! With relative ease, we fed and housed 23 people in a four bedroom, three bath house... and we had a lot of fun in the meantime!

So it's just after Christmas/New Year's now and my brother's gang arrived from TN shortly after Christmas to our hometown in Connecticut where we stacked everyone like cord wood and shared big family meals together again. Having recently broken in my crock pot, I headed up the food this time (my sister in-law who is usually Chef Extraordinaire is recovering from knee surgery) so I had some planning to do in order to make sure nobody went hungry. Yeah, right. Here is what I served ~25 people for most meals over five days (four dinners).

Breakfasts were easy - eggs, bacon, English muffins, cereal, oatmeal, yogurt, and fruit. Superbly easy because I managed to not have to cook bacon once! I did do some quality control checks though. :-)

Lunches were easy - leftover ham (my gosh was there a LOT of ham!) for sandwiches, turkey chili, and leftover everything else.

Yes, lobsters eat BMWs.

Dinners:

• Spaghetti with spicy turkey marinara sauce, garlic bread, and tossed salad.
• Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy (duh!), green beans, and tossed salad.
• Lobster (yes... lobster!!!), homemade macaroni and cheese, butter... yes, butter is a side dish (see Dad's nutritional ideals), and tossed salad.
• Pulled pork, homemade macaroni and cheese (even better the second time around!), a shite-load of appetizers because I forgot to start the pork before I went skiing for the day, and tossed salad.

Okay, who am I kidding? Tossed salad = copious amounts of cookies.

We also ate baked brie, hard salami & cheese, sea salted flatbread, and the obligatory veggie platter. And cookies. Did I mention the cookies?