#98 Food: My second favorite "F" word

As most of my friends and family know, I have a little bit of a potty mouth. So, when I say my second favorite "F" word, I'll let you figure out the first. HAHA! My favorite words are free, food, fantastic, and.... Anyhow, I am very excited to tell you about our night!
 
Today we went to Larry's Market in Brown Deer for our tasting with our caterer. We went to Larry's about a month ago to meet the catering coordinator, Jim, and just get to know the ins and outs of their catering process.

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We really liked Jim and liked what he had to say. He took the time to get to know us while we were chatting about Larry's and talked about himself enough to make us feel comfortable. So, we decided to set-up a tasting. We chose 3 different foods to try out:

Source. Copy and pasted from Entrees and Hot Sides menus

We did the Oriental with beef and the New Orleans with shrimp. However, they accidentally gave us chicken instead of Shrimp in the N.O. It was also our least favorite out of the 3. The Harvester and the Oriental were delicious. The chicken breasts were perfectly cooked (I was worried they may be dry), but they were good!

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Admittedly, the New Orelean's does not look good at all. Notice, I kept that portion small. The stuffed chicken on the Harvester we split in half. However, look how delicious the Oriental looks. The beef had some awesome seasonings on it. I couldn't stop eating it. Really, I had about half again as much as what's on my plate. HAHA.

•  The Harvester
• Most likely Mr. P's favorite
• The chicken was cooked perfectly
• The sage stuffing was quite tasty with good seasonings and flavors
• The garlic mash was good although a bit lumpy and could use some salt
• The Oriental
• Most likely my favorite
• The beef and vegetables were incredibly well seasoned
• The beef may have been a touch over-done
• The rice needed a little bit of soy sauce, but well cooked otherwise
• The New Orleans
• Our least favorite (will probably be changed if we go with this)
• The rice was good
• The seasonings were not very spicy (I expected more)
• There was no shrimp, but the chicken flavor was alright

Now we wait. Jim is taking the food we tried today, adding all the additional costs (service, delivery, etc) and e-mailing me a proposal based on everything we've talked about. I hate waiting. We can always change our options or add extras later on. This will just give us the base pricing with 3 entrees for 150-200 guests. Unfortunately, because Larry's isn't a "preferred caterer" we have to add $1 per entree. :/

We are having a buffet and we aren't asking guests what they will eat. So, they will actually "pretend" like there will be about 10-15 extra guests (plus our 150-200) and divide them into about equal amount of portions. We will probably be changing out the New Orleans to something else, but hopefully our guests will like it.

Larry's has catered at The Family Farm before, so they know all the ins and outs. We also discussed the logistics of doing a buffet meal for 150-200 guests. They call the tables on our behalf. The other thing they do is serve the protein. The guests will serve their own side dishes.

We also chatted about serving a salad and rolls at the individual tables. I think this will help with the wait that some will have to do. I'm thinking instead of doing tables 1-18 in order we do a random drawing? Does that even make sense? I just want to do something fun, I guess. I may not end up doing that. It does seem a bit ridiculous.

Am I all over the place with this post? I feel like I'm a little hyped up right now, lol. At the tasting Jim offered us anything we wanted to drink. Mr. P chose water. I really should have done the same. I chose coffee. Regular, black. At least there was no sugar in it? HAHA. It was good though and if we wanted that it that is what what we would have served at the reception. Now, I'm a little caffeine enhanced. Which isn't good since I work at 7 tomorrow morning and need to be in bed at 10 to be up at 6.

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