Crowd Coming? Fix This Giant Green Salad

Erma, only you could make a Daiquiri a DIET Drink. Are you sure about the calories, or lack of? Why hasn’t someone marketed these for the Low Calorie Crowd? Serve these in the office and not only do you serve a Good-For-You diet drink, but as a bonus, with a few of these under the belt, the stress level would drop as well.

I’m sending along a copy of the recipe I have used several times when feeding a large group, such as your Rehearsal Dinner. It is a basic tossed salad with the addition of sugared nuts and dried cranberries. I think it most useful as a guideline for how much to prepare. You know, you put out a giant bowl and say to yourself, how much stuff do I need to feed 100 people

Giant Green Salad for a Crowd:

5 bunches of romaine lettuce, torn
20 cups of torn leaf and iceberg lettuces
6 cups dried cranberries
3 sweet yellow peppers
3 sweet green peppers
3 sweet red peppers
4 cups walnut halves
3 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup sugar

In a heavy skillet, melt the butter. Add the walnuts and cook over medium heat until the nuts are toasted, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle on the sugar and cook an additional 2 to 3 minutes until the sugar is melted. At once spread the nuts on a foil lined jelly roll pan to cool. This part can be done several days ahead.

Chop the peppers coarsely in a food processor.

In a large serving bowl, like the Retro Oval Serving Bowl, or several smaller bowls, mix the lettuces, cranberries and peppers. Make the Dressing below at least a day ahead and refrigerate.

Just before serving, sprinkle on the sugared walnuts and drizzle on the Dressing. Toss the salad so that all the lettuce is coated.

Serves 100.

Dressing:

4 envelops Italian salad dressing mix
2 cups vegetable oil or olive oil
1 cup red wine vinegar

Place all ingredients in jar or container with a tight fitting lid and shake well.

As I sat here sending this e-mail, I heard that Rosie O’Donnell is considered to have the inside track to replace Bob Barker on The Price Is Right. That should kill the show fast. I never saw her on The View (who has the time?), but I did catch her other show a couple of times. She is NOT funny. She is crude, and unrefined, and definitely not a lady. How she manages to stay on television, and popular, is beyond me.

More Cheap Rehearsal Dinner Ideas

Count on you, Max dear, to come up with a Rehearsal Dinner menu that didn’t break the bank. Best part, none of us there had a idea that you hadn’t spent hours in the kitchen and received your grocery’s “Shopper of the Week Award” for what you spent. Your frugal German ancestors must have been applauding you from their graves. I don’t know anyone who can put on a fancy dinner for next to nothing like you can.

When we first met, I remember you bragging that you never spent over $15.00 a week on groceries. Boy, was I envious? Happily, some of your penny-pinching ways rubbed off on me.

Here is the entrée Evelyn selected for Rachel’s Rehearsal Dinner, and I thought it was easy and inexpensive? I should have known that you would make me look like a piker.

Parmesan Green Beans would have fit in with Evelyn’s menu, although that would have made two cheese/creamy things on the menu. I think there is some rule against that, isn’t there?

Anyway, we cheated a little on this one. Instead of boiling chicken after chicken to get enough white meat for a crowd, or horrors, buying already cooked and chopped chicken breasts at outrageous prices, we bought two of those 68 cents a pound monster frozen turkeys. Like 20 pounds a piece they were, and we baked them early in the week. We wanted all white meat so we had turkey legs for dinner a couple of nights. So, not only did we spend less than $25.00 for the turkey for Tracy’s Creamy Chicken Casserole, we also had two meals of Baked Turkey Legs. I thought that was pretty thrifty, and worthy of you Max.

Everyone at the Rehearsal Dinner raved over this, and even the men scraped out the last little bit of creamy sauce from the casseroles. If Evelyn had catered this event, there is no telling what they would have charged for this item. And I guarantee it would not have been as tasty as our turkey casserole.

Tracy’s Creamy Chicken Casserole:

1 cup cubed cooked chicken
1/2 can of cream of chicken soup, undiluted
1/2 cup of sour cream
scant 1/2 cup of mayonnaise
1 hard cooked egg
1 celery rib
1 small green onion
1 teaspoon lemon juice
dash pepper
1/2 cup cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup crushed corn flakes

Shred the cheese in a food processor. Chop the egg, green onion, and celery in the processor.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan like the KitchenAid 3-Qt Covered Saucepan, and stir in the crushed corn flakes. Set aside.

In a large bowl mix everything but the buttered corn flakes and cheese. Transfer to a greased medium sized casserole like the CorningWare 2.5 Qt. Oval Casserole. Sprinkle with the cheese and top with the corn flakes. Bake, uncovered at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes.

Serves 4 to 5.

Tracy’s Creamy Chicken (or Turkey) Casserole was originally meant for the Ladies Luncheon type event in part because it could be made up the day before, and because it fed a lot of women for very few pennies.

Rehearsal Dinner Recipes That Won’t Break The Bank

So the neighbor’s daughter finally got married, Max? I remember a couple of months ago you asking if I had any ideas, or had been to any weddings. Evelyn must have been living under a rock if she and her daughter didn’t have hundreds of suggestions for the wedding and reception. Lately it seems that “bigger is better” is the underlaying theme of all brides.

You are right, they spend a fortune, or close to what a house costs. And for what? A couple of hours that the couple usually cannot recall without the wedding pictures? What a waste of time and money.

When I hosted the Rehearsal Dinner for Nick and Barb we had about 50 for dinner out at the house. We had a couple of hams, buckets of potato salad, and I made pan after pan of Parmesan Green Beans. No one guessed how easy, and cheap, the Beans were. I love this casserole as there is not a ingredient in it that all of us don’t have on the shelf all the time.

The recipe comes from the days when we were all counting every penny, and a can of green beans was about a quarter, so the total cost for 8 servings was .50 to .60 cents. Even today you are still talking less than a dollar and a half for 8 servings, which makes it perfect for a crowd.

Parmesan Green Beans:

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
dash of salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
dash garlic salt
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
4 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
2 (14 ounce) cans green beans, drained

Met the butter in a medium saucepan. Stir in flour, salt, pepper, and garlic salt. Stir in milk and heat until thickened. Add the Worcestershire and 2 tablespoons of the Parmesan cheese. Stir in the drained beans and cook until heated through. Serve in a pretty casserole such as the Corelle Cord Casserole Set and top with the remaining 2 tablespoons of Parmesan.