Big Dinner for the Church's School

Our church school has a fund-raising dinner once a year. They sell tickets to a dinner, the staff and students give speeches and entertainment, and the dinner guests are asked to pledge money for the upcoming year. Most of the money for the school comes from the pledges because they have a restaurant cater the dinner, so most or all of the ticket income goes towards paying the caterer. This year they asked Randy to fix the dinner. Since it’s for the church, he did it for free - the only thing they had to pay for was the food. And since Randy shops for ingredients instead of prepared foods, it was a lot less expensive.  His menu included sliced Pork Loin with and Apple Cream Sauce, Peas, Sweet Potato Casserole, and Sweet Sensation Salad (with mandarin oranges, goat cheese, and candied pecans) (desserts were supplied by other people). He made everything from scratch, right down to the salad dressing. He spent two entire days working on this in the church kitchen. I was there most of the time trying to help, but my help in this kind of cooking is very limited. We were told to prepare for 320 people. Pork Loin for 320 people, when you want to serve generous portions, is a lot of pork loin!

People in our Life Group came in to help pull it all together, and several teenager students volunteered to serve. We couldn't have done it without them!

We had a great turnout, even with a thunderstorm in the area. The total cost of the food was less than $1,000! That means that over $2,200 from ticket sales went to the school instead of a caterer. And, of course, it was all wonderful!  People keep asking Randy for his recipes but he doesn’t give them out. 

3/20