EastieThanksgiving/Organization

Notes from 2011

• Emailing students-l meant about 70 people showed up!
• Have someone whose job is to, during dinner, make sure food keeps coming out of the kitchen as it runs out at the table (people didn't eat nearly as much turkey as expected because, although we had tons, the plate kept running out and not being refilled).
• This year we had 3 turkeys: two at over 20 pounds and one at about 14 pounds. We had a lot of leftover turkey. Given that there were 70 people this is probably mostly due to the above point.
• How to carve a turkey: http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/11/video-alton-brown-on-how-to-carve-a-turkey.html
• (opinion) Make it clear to students-l people that they should either cook or help clean-up, not just come for East's free and delicious cooking.
• Food Notes
  • 6 pounds of carrots = enough for 70 people (with other sides), with a bit left over (using SkyeBerghel's recipe)
  • 108 rolls using AnnJohnston's recipe = rolls run out around the time people decide they've had enough
  • Infinity pounds of mashed potatoes = the right amount
• There were, and probably still are, many Eastie people in Sontag. Knock on their doors and see how many of them will be around, and will let you use their kitchens.
• If you are getting reimbursed by the deans, don't give them the list of reimbursements and forget about it - make sure you actually get money and pay people.

Notes from 2009

• Get people to sign up earlier for food items
  • If nobody has signed up for something, just go ahead and assign somebody
• Get people to give you receipts earlier
  • Might be a good idea to have a hard deadline (probably day before) for receipts (with a "you won't get reimbursed if it's after this time") to make sure you actually get receipts (or, at minimum, amount to be reimbursed).
• Have people pay before getting food. Less hassle than finding everyone after the event.
• Food items (for 28 people)
  • 2 turkeys -- just the right amount
    • Find somebody who knows how to carve in advance, 'cause JamesBrown won't always be around to save the day. :-)
    • Get some disposable rubber gloves for whoever does carve. It's much less icky
  • 2 boxes of stuffing -- not enough
  • 4 pies and a cake -- still too much? (or maybe not, I thought it was good)
  • 108 crescent rolls + 4 loaves of bread -- just the right amount
  • used 2 gallons of milk and 3 gallons of apple juice; could have used 1 more gallon of milk (had 2% and skim)
• Remember to tell people cooking to bring serving utensils so that we don't have to use Linde's
• Bring more disposable silverware, because not enough people bring real stuff
• Remember to e-mail Linde presidents in advance (thanks for the prompting this year, MadeleineOng)

Notes from 2008

• We actually had a TON of rolls this year – 4x Sarah’s, 2X Kaylins + 3x Sweet potato biscuit
• Had a descent amount of dark meat left, no white – maybe b/c dark meat was all on the bone, and we didn’t really have an easy way to get it off of the bone out on the table?
• 3 turkeys for ~45 people ? (or was it 2, I don’t remember since I’ve added this long after the fact)
• Do NOT buy canned sauce, no matter what
• 10 lbs of flour was way not enough
• Don’t forget the white sugar, don’t buy 3 bags of brown sugar (we used ~1)
• Drank 11 bottles of Martinelli’s, ~2 gallons milk (1 fat free, 1 2%)
• Need more cornbread, possibly
• Nobody complained about the lack of ham
• Too many pies
  • 2 strawberry rhubarb, 2 pumpkin, 2 apple, 1 pecan (+ 1 pumpkin cake, 1 cheesecake [large, from store], 1 chocolate caramel cheesecake [very, very popular]
• Having someone the night of who’s willing to mostly take charge, and isn’t drained from organization stuff is REALLY helpful (aka, enlist someone who’s only going to do organization type stuff during and after the actual dinner, and have other people do all of the stuff that gets the stuff onto the table)
• If you’re going to have a deadline for things, send out the email earlier
  • Alternatively, tell people the deadline for if they want the organizer to buy ingredients, but let them get stuff on their own
  • This is somewhat of a hassle, since then you need to get costs from them, and then reimburse them. It also makes it harder to figure out if you’re going to have food
• Try to find a way to get people to sign up earlier, and stop leaving it to the last minute; that’s really irritating because it’s hard to figure out how much food you need since you don’t know how many people you’re feeding
• Having an informal leftovers dinner the next night helps get stuff out of the fridges quickly