post-gig

Remember the huge catering gig I mentioned a week or so ago? It's a thing of the past. It was actually much less painful than I'd thought it would be. The World's Greatest Boss (hereafter refered to as WGB) planned well and we only had three minor glitches.

Yesterday four of us made 35 banana cream pies in about two hours. We developed a good system early in the process, so it went really quickly. Toward the end of the second hour we had the first minor glitch: I dropped a pie. It was not as bad as I'd thought; it had a lid, and we were able to jiggle it back into place, so we really only lost one piece.

The second minor glitch occurred in transporting the pies from the shop to the church (which is where the gig was). We discovered that banana cream pies can't be stacked four high without damage to the bottom pie. That took care of a couple more pieces, but again, nothing we couldn't work around.

We arrived this afternoon in more than enough time to unload the appetizers and put them out. I was safely ensconsed in the downstairs kitchen, pulling pies out of the fridge, before the 210 guests attacked the table. I was very happy that WGB's husband volunteered to help with appetizers!

The third minor glitch was that, although both WGB and I remember saying we needed to pack a skinny scraper, it didn't get packed. That meant we had to pack Cool Whip into the decorator with a pie server. It wasn't quite as efficient, but it worked.

Serving actually went quite smoothly. Again, we developed a good system. WGB plated the slices, I garnished with Cool Whip and strawberry slices, and my good friend Curly Sue covered the in-between things, like dressing plates, slicing berries, and refilling my decorator. Sue and I have worked other gigs together and have been known to hang out and terrorize people on occassion, so it was great fun. It helped that I had comfortable shoes on!

The very best part of the event was that my kids were serving meals to the paying guests. This was our big youth mission trip fund raiser, so all the youth work. After we finished, I stood in a shadow and watched them work for a while. It's just such a novel thing to see! When I left, Vicky was serving dinners, and Alex was refilling tea glasses. I bet they sleep well tonight!