This event was dubbed " The Midnight Meatball Madness", and was held at the Marriott Executive Suites Hotel, in Charlotte, North Carolina. This event was held to make 450 pounds of meatballs, for the upcoming Italian Festival, which will be held on May 19-21, at St. Philip Neri's church, in Fort Mill, South Carolina.We had approximately 10 volunteers, that started at 12:01 AM, on Saturday morning, in this effort to make the meatballs. This would be one of two meatball making sessions, in which the goal is to make close to 1000 pounds a meatballs, which would be sold as meatball sandwiches or with spaghetti.
The first step in the process was to get the me mixture properly mixed, with all the necessary ingredients. As luck would have it, the commercial mixer in the facility, was out for repair. Which meant that all the mixing had to be done by hand. While one person was mixing, the others were rolling out meatballs, and we all took turns at various tasks.
After the first few meatballs wore rolled out, everyone found their niche, and we were moving right along. It was estimated, that we would probably be finishing up about six o'clock in the morning, which was our deadline. The hotel needed their kitchen back, in order to prepare for the the breakfast crowd and their daily events. I must say, I personally thought we might be cutting it a little close, with all the work that was ahead.
Even though everybody was serious about their job, we had a great group of people working together, and had lots of laughs, in the process. This also made the work atmosphere, a lot more enjoyable and help keep everybody's spirits up and awake.
Our crew was so efficient and diligent, that before 3 AM, we had finished rolling out all 450 pounds of meatballs, we had one finished rack in the walk-in freezer, cooling down, several racks in the oven, and a few racks waiting to go in the oven, as soon as the others came out. At this time, we knew, we were well ahead of our predicted schedule. The coordinator of this event was very kind and generous, in bringing in, several snack items and drinks. This production ran like a perfectly well oiled machine.
As the last remaining meatballs were rolled out, we started to form a strategy, of how we were going to start the packing process to transport and freeze the meatballs, for the actual festival dates.
The first rack of meatballs that was in the freezer came out, the second rack when in to the freezer, while the last racks of meatballs, were in the oven. We were using gallon size Ziploc bags to store the meatballs, and package them inside of 150 quart coolers, for the transport back to the church. The packing process was very fast and successful. At 3:52 AM, the last meatball was packaged and we started to do a quick cleanup. The helpful staff members of the hotel, told us not to worry so much about the cleanup, they actually had a crew coming in to do the morning cleanup, before they started to do their prep work. Basically, within three hours and 52 mins., we mixed, rolled, baked and packaged all the meatballs, in record time. What was estimated to be a six hour job, took less than four. We were all sore and tired, by the end of the day. It was rather satisfying to have completed this mission and after a well deserved rest, we would feel great gratification and sense of completion, for a well deserved cause. It was an extreme pleasure to work alongside such fine individuals, as these. My wife and I still have four trays baked ziti to do for the event. We really had a great time.
No comments:
Post a Comment