Wow, 80 folks. We probably ought to start seriously thinking about the meal planning. I was just thinking about how we might want to go about that. I know we talked briefly about it before, but 80 mouths to feed does change things somewhat.
If we set up a cooking tent, it'll make things much easier. We'll need a place to store the ingredients, as that will be a lot easier than sending someone to town for each meal. We'll need some burners, fuel, griddles, large cast iron pots, and some serving tables.
For breakfast, if we do scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, and toast, which is about as simple as it comes, we'll likely need close to 60 dozen eggs, 24 loaves of bread, 60 pounds of sausage, 60 pounds of bacon, 40 pounds of grits, and a few quarts of jelly, jam, apple butter.
For lunch, I suggest we just do sandwiches and chips, or potato salad, and set it out in a fix it yourself fashion. BBQ sandwiches would be a good choice, but it will need to be made before hand, and we'll probably need 40 pounds of it for each meal. Plus, 160 buns, 30-40 pounds of baked beans, a gallon or two of BBQ sauce, and 25 pounds of potato salad. Plus the plates and utensils.
For evening meals, we can do a gumbo, a brunswick stew, and a low country boil. Or we could do a fish fry one night. We'll probably need 20 gallons of each, plus another couple dozen loaves of bread or a whole lot of cornbread. And we'll definitely need some sort of dessert, like banana pudding, or pecan pie.
We'll also need several gallons of sweet tea, milk, soft drinks, and water. And we'll have to figure out what to do with all of our trash.
Of the top of my head, I think it will cost us around $30 per person per day for the food. That's $5 for breakfast, $10 for lunch, and $15 for dinner. So, it'll be less than $100 each for the 3 days.
I think if we can hash out the details and logistics of things beforehand, it'll go pretty smoothly. I know some folks will say, let's just all show up, fend for ourselves, and hunt, and we can certainly do that, but I contend that if we organize ourselves, it'll make things a lot easier on those that are travelling from long distances, which, I suspect is going to be the majority. I'd rather put in the extra time to plan this thing right and give everybody the opportunity to hunt and get to know each other.
I'm willing to help organize things, if need be.