How to Cook for 100

My daughter is hosting an event tonight at her museum and 100 people signed up to attend. Her apartment is way too small to handle food of that volume so I offered to prepare most of it for her. This is the sun dried tomato and kalamata pasta I make so often. It will be served in small individual cups at the event. I boiled 8 pounds of pasta for 100.

It is mixed with the sliced olives, halved grape tomatoes and fresh basil. The sauce is made with sun dried tomatoes, oven roasted tomatoes, olive oil and red wine vinegar.

This is all tossed with the tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese.

This made 8 gallons of salad. The cooler with the pasta was so heavy that both my husband and the Blog Tech had to pair up to carry it to the car.

I also made gazpacho. It will be a nice refreshing treat for a hot garden party. This will also be served in individual small cups.

I put seeded cucumbers in a food processor and pulsed until it was slightly chunky.

You can see the liquid from the cukes gathering in the bowl. I used slices of stale bread to soak the liquid up. Then the bread was squeezed to release the juices but it maintains the cukes flavor.

The bread is then processed along with 8 garlic cloves to make a tasty thickener for the soup.

My gazpacho contains tomatoes, red and green bell peppers, Vidalia onions and celery. I pulsed all of the vegetables to a uniform consistency. Then I mixed in the bread/garlic paste. Add a large bottle of good tomato juice.

I added some cracked black pepper and sea salt, fresh parsley and some sherry vinegar. This made 8 quarts of gazpacho.

My daughter likes to serve individual cups of crudite' with dip so she needed some ranch dressing. We like serving individual cups to avoid double dipping. Double dipping grosses me out!

I added about 4 cups of Hellman's Mayonnaise to a large bowl.

Then added 2 cups of sour cream and a lot of granulated garlic.

This is a good way to use fresh herbs from your garden. I chopped up a bunch of chives, parsley and dill and added them. Add salt and pepper. Thin with buttermilk until you have the consistency you desire.

This is a wonderful creamy ranch dressing that is great on salads too.

The mother load....my favorite ham recipe that I have shown so many times on this blog. But how else can you serve 100 people good food at an affordable price? This is a 17 pound ham that cost me 21.00 and some change.

Nothing smells better than this when it is cooking.

I sliced it down into small thin slices. Much smaller than these but I forgot to take that photo.

Then I made rolls. I made my favorite potato rolls.

I made them small so my daughter can make ham sliders.

I made 200 rolls! And I forgot the finished photo! I also gave her several jars of my homemade whole grain mustard. It goes perfectly with the ham and rolls.

Everything is packed in coolers and on it's way to her event along with the Blog Tech who is the photographer for the evening. Maybe we can get a post out of him when he returns!

So, in case you have to cook for 100 people anytime soon, this is how it is done!