We made it! How we fed 1000 hungry teenagers and lived to tell about it.

Yep, I am still alive, barely. So tired that I can hardly move but alive none the less. After prom went great! Friday night we decorated from 2:30 until 9pm. The school was completely transformed into an Asian wonderland that look amazing.

Our dragon was the best decoration though. We used 6 long tables, placed the head at one end, and snaked them back and forth to make the body where we served the food. LOTS of food!!!
What, you ask, do you serve that many kids?
26 Pizzas- 13 cheese & 13 pepperoni each cut into 16 pieces
5 sub sandwich platters- with 32- 2" sandwiches
1000 mini egg rolls
A Nacho cheese fountain- by the end of the night we had used 2 1/2 gallons of nacho cheese sauce thinned to run through a chocolate fountain.
48 large bags of tortilla chips
4 large bags of pretzels
9 huge bags of M&M's
12 huge bags of skittles
9 big boxes of mini donuts
15 Dozen brownies
50 dozen assorted cookies
Fruit skewers made from:
6 watermelons cut into cubes
24 pounds of strawberries
20 pounds of grapes
10 melons cut into cubes
6 pounds of cheese cubes
6 large boxes of Triskets & Wheat Thins
3000 Chick Fil A chicken nuggets
600 Otter Pops (we bought 1000 but we shoved 2 boxes into the freezer in the boxes and 2 days later, they were still not frozen. Only the ones we took out of the boxes froze. That's what we get for being lazy.)
92 gallons of theater popcorn- Picture a big guy in a small car with 4- 48 gallon bags of popcorn. It looked like something from a circus. Wish I'd taken a picture of that.
1000 fortune cookies with custom fortunes that we made up ourselves. Every fortune had part of the school's name in it.
1500 bottles of water and 600 pound of ice to chill them.

Now picture this: The closest kitchen is about 1/2 a mile away from where we were serving the food. OK, maybe only a 1/4 mile down a long hallway, filled with kids. One oven with only 2 racks and both the nuggets and the egg rolls had to be baked. 15 minutes for 2 trays. The nacho cheese sauce also had to be heated in a microwave before we could add it to the fountain. We would run down the hall, put nuggets in the over, heat up a pitcherful of nacho cheese and then run it back to pour into the fountain, check table and refill trays that were gettin low, run back and take the trays out of the oven, reload and place back in oven, run the hot food to the warmers, repeat 10 million times in 4 hours. I wish that I had worn a pedometer to see how far we ran. Thankfully, we had 4 great volunteers helping us (and 2 not so great). It still was like being a short order cook for 1000 people.

Here was our schedule.
7pm- arrive to prep and organize
8:00- realize that we forgot to cut 10" skewers in half and start to do that with sissors and small saw. Avoid cutting off fingers.
8:30- our dear husbands dropped off 20 boxes of egg rolls and 600 pound of ice
9:15- pick up the subs.
9:45- went to pick up the pizzas which were not ready. We asked if they could deliver them but none of them had a car. Gina said they probobly all had DUIs. So we got her brother to go pick them up because we had to meet the delivery guys back at school.
10:15- chicken nuggets arrive
10:20- start cooking nuggets and egg rolls and putting them into huge roasters.
10:30- open water bottle 12 packs and get ice on them
11:00pm- 12:00 start skewering fruit, set out all food, start up the cheese fountain
12:00am to 3:30am- run, cry and serve food.
3:30 to 5:30am- tear down tables, clean, laod cars and then head home.
6:00am- go to bed.
I will admit to not even unloading my car until Monday morning. I just could not face it on Sunday!!
One suggestion- if anyone asks you to be in charge of food for After Prom- JUST SAY NO!!