You say poh-tay-tow, I say poh-tot-tow

Worked Teacher Appreciation Luncheon all day yesterday.  It was exhausting!  I was literally on my feet for 6 hours straight.  Which reminds me that when I find a job – it totally needs to be a desk job.

Previously (before they took my job) for the Teacher Appreciation Luncheon effort, I would have participated in the planning (via email) with maybe a coffee-meet-up thrown in along with a twenty buck contribution.  And then I would have capped the effort off with a hostess-with-the-mostess approach by working for an hour serving the lunch.

But this time around I was in charge of the student participation component of the meal (each child cut out a star and wrote their Christmas wish for their teacher on it.  We then hung the stars on paper Christmas trees throughout the luncheon room.  Cute, right?!).  And I also planned and executed the lunch – from purchasing supplies, to set up (starting first thing in the a.m., right after carpool drop off), through lunch service all the way to clean-up and beyond.

Like I said…it’s exhausting.

First off, people, please bring what you’re supposed to bring.  Unless you have the stomach bug – in which case no, no we don’t need your salad after all.  But other than that, please provide the dish you committed to, and please make sure it’s enough to feed the 10-to-15 people like we requested, and not just 3.

Take the mashed potatoes for example.  Someone supplied a little, tiiiiiiny container.  And someone substituted stuffing instead.

But God is present in all things and the balance of the mashed potatoes we desperately needed to round out our “Christmas Dinner” theme walked in the door (a huge crock pot full – complete with another crock pot full of gravy!!!) 5 minutes before lunch started.  Seriously.  We were right in the middle of calling the other party planner out of her morning spin class to run and get some mashed potatoes asap.  But then the potatoes walked in the door.  Those there were some divine-intervention spuds!!

Even so, it did get to be pretty slim pickin’s at the end.  We slowly downsized to smaller serving spoons as the meal went on and then began serving little dollops instead of having them help themselves as part of our potato conversation efforts.  (wished we thought of that sooner, d’oh!)

There was even one point where we were trying to come up with a recipe for MORE potatoes using rolls, heavy cream and butter.  But saner heads prevailed and we settled for moving the rolls closer to the gravy for a make-your-own-biscuits-and-gravy concept, while adding the heavy cream and butter to thin out the remaining potatoes.  Though we were forced to pull the potatoes totally off the table towards the end and reserve them for the last batch of teachers to come through so they could get a little taste.

But all’s well that end’s well and we received so many thank yous from these wonderful people who are with our children all the live-long day, that it made me feel guilty we don’t do more to thank them for their efforts.  Except for provide them with a Christmas Dinner with too few potatoes and lots and lots of stars!

P.S. How do you spell potatoes?  Singular is potato and plural is potatoes??  Anybody else think that looks weird?!!

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